Dean Koontz Interview
Becky: When and
why did you start writing?
Dean Koontz: at
the age of eight, I was writing stories, making them into little booklets and
peddling them to relatives for a nickel.
Which was odd considering that there were no books in our house, and
reading wasn’t considered a sensible use of time. I was a regular presence at the library by
ten. As a college senior, I sold a short
story, and thereafter never looked back.
But why? I’ve long been compelled
to write, no less than to eat. I don’t
really know why. It’s just the way I’m
made.
I’ll tell you though, I’m glad that I began when I did, long
before this dreadful economy. It’s much
more difficult these days for a young writer to build a career. In the last few years, the average family has
lost nearly $15,000 in disposable income, which means a lot less money for
books and other pleasures. No one ever
imagined that the paperback market would collapse to 15% of its former size,
but people without jobs won’t buy any books.
It really isn’t primarily the internet that’s eating away at the
audience for books, it’s the lack of economic growth. Until that changes, it is going to be a cold
market for everyone but especially for new writers, which is a terrible thing
for the culture
B: How have you
managed to produce such a large, successful, and diverse amount of work in a
relatively short amount of time?
DK: I spend on
average 60 hours a week writing, and I’ve been doing that for over 40
years. It’s hard work but at the same
time it’s play. A long writing session
flies by, whether I get six or seven pages out or only one. When you stay at it like that, it’s
surprising how much you can produce. And
I’ve come to the conclusion that the imagination is like a muscle, that it
grows stronger the more you use it; over time your ideas get better, your
execution gets better… the success of the work depends on how in tune you are
at any moment with the culture at large, by which I do not mean scoping
the market and writing what is wanted.
You can strive to connect with the culture only so long, only
with limited success; the connection has to be natural, a consequence of who
you are, of what you’ve read and seen, of what you’ve thought and dreamed. Diversity?
I bore easily. So I like to go
from flat-out scary, like The Taking,
and then do a change-up with a comic novel that is full of heart, like Life Expectancy. I read everything. I have no prejudices about genres of fiction,
and I find “literary” fiction to be just another genre. I also read a lot of science—especially
quantum mechanics, molecular biology and associated subjects—poetry and
philosophy, and I particularly enjoy really intelligent cultural theorists and
critics like Philip Rieff, whose book My
Life Among the Deathworks is brilliant.
If you take in a variety of material, you’re almost certain to produce a
diverse body of work.
B: How do you
manage such seemingly effortless transitions?
DK: Do I? Does it seem effortless? Hah! I
conned you. What I already said about
packing your brain with a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction is key to
being able to shift gears. It also helps
to set challenges for yourself, take on a story or an approach to storytelling
that you’ve never tried before. Risk
falling on your face in a public way.
That tends to inspire the extra effort that might make the change-up
look effortless. With Innocence, because of the nature of the
narrator (as it is ultimately revealed), I had to a lyrical voice that from
start to end spoke in luminous prose that suggested transcendence. In The
City, I chose to tell the story through the first-person narration of a
57-year-old piano man who tells about a wondrous, scary, and amazing chain of
events that occurred when he was only 8, 9, and 10. I’d never done a looking-back kind of
first-person narration, which allows an adult voice to recall the conditions of
childhood, sort of like Scout in To Kill
a Mockingbird, looking back as an adult to those key events in her
past. There are great advantages to
this, but there are also limitations and traps that make the task challenging
and exciting.
B: If you could
choose one book that defines your personality, not necessarily one of your own,
which would it be and why?
DK: The book
that is most like me, that is infused
with my own take on life is Life
Expectancy. As Jimmy Tock says in
that story, “No matter what happens, no matter how bad things get, there’s
always cake.” I’m no Pollyanna, but I’m
an optimist, and I find humor in almost everything. The character that I like to think is
most like me is, strangely enough, a young girl with a disability, Leilani Klonk
in One Door Away From Heaven. Every moment I spent writing her scenes was a
dream, and I felt as though I knew her as I know anyone in real life.
