From NPR’s ALL THINGS CONSIDERED July 27th with Richard Patterson…
“Why do so many lawyers turn to fiction?
RICHARD PATTERSON (Author, “In the Name of Honor”): Well, they may be desperate to leave their current profession for one thing, but aside from that, if you think about what lawyers do, clients tell you the damndest, most remarkable stories, that’s the first thing. The second thing is you’re on (unintelligible) with people you don’t often achieve in - outside of law. Then there’s arranging all these messy facts into a narrative which is pleasing and persuasive to a jury or a judge.
And if you’re a writer, you have to make it as clear and concise as you can because judges and law clerks are America’s most tired and cynical audience. So, if you think about that, arrangement of narrative, writing clearly, telling stories, rearranging facts is a perfect training to be a novelist.
NORRIS: Okay. So you’re describing when you talk to the jury, but anyone who has read a legal brief or has spent any time plowing through any kind of legal document knows that legal writing is something unto itself. It sometimes doesn’t even resemble English.
So, for someone who spent so many years writing legal briefs, how did you find your voice as a writer of fiction?
Mr. PATTERSON: Well, first of all, that’s bad legal writing.
NORRIS: Oh, okay.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. PATTERSON: There are tons of it. There’s tons of it out there, okay?
NORRIS: Maybe I (unintelligible) good legal writing.
Mr. PATTERSON: I once began a brief, Michele, something like this. Plaintiff’s argument is like a dead mouse on the kitchen floor. If they pretend to ignore it, maybe the jury and judge won’t notice it’s there. And then I try to tell a story. Now, mind you, you’re a little constrained by cases and facts and things like that. But I try to engage the reader in the first paragraph because there’s lots of things that they have to read. You want them to keep on reading. So, even as a laywer, I always worried about telling a narrative that made sense or making an intellectual argument that was coherent and as vivid as I possibly could.
NORRIS: I want you to talk to us about your first book, “The Lasko Tangent,” because…
Mr. PATTERSON: Oh, yes.
NORRIS: …the first book is where you first are introduced to the character Christopher Paget…
Mr. PATTERSON: Right.
NORRIS: …who then comes back and resurfaces later in books that had sort of wire circulation right out of the gate.
Mr. PATTERSON: Yes.
NORRIS: Tell me about how your writing has evolved over time, for instance, writing about Christopher Paget in “Lasko Tangent” and then later in “Degree of Guilt.” How did your writing change…
Mr. PATTERSON: Well…
NORRIS: …the more that you practice the craft?
Mr. PATTERSON: Yeah, those are very different books. “The Lasko Tangent” was a first-person novel, with a certain flavor that came from sort of the sensibility of the protagonist. By the time I got to “Degree of Guilt,” his second appearance, I was a very different person. I hadn’t written for seven years. And now I’m using a multiple narrative where you’re on all sorts of different places depending on the scene and the character. You’re dealing with different sensibilities. It’s a much wider canvas.
And that enabled me and enables me to do all sorts of things with fiction that I couldn’t have done if I chucked the tools I had in “The Lasko Tangent.”
NORRIS: You often write stories that ride the crest of some of the thorniest issues in the news cycle. Is that something that is particularly challenging, or is there some freedom in that because there are a particular set of facts that you can always fall back on? Or is it easier to create worlds entirely of your own making?
Mr. PATTERSON: It’s more challenging to do some of the things I’ve done. As you know, I’ve written about things like abortion, the Israelis and Palestinians, most recently, PTSD. In order to do those books right, you only have to do extensive research, so you believe in the world that you’re creating. But you have to arrange all of that in the narrative, which nonetheless entertains. You can’t write about a sleeping pill where you just simply disgorge for pages all the things you learned about X, Y or Z.
NORRIS: Why did you decide to write about PTSD? Is this based on what you’ve learned about the experience of men and women who are returning from Iraq or Afghanistan? Or have you been wanting to tackle this for some time?
Mr. PATTERSON: Well, actually, the first time I tackled it was a quarter century ago in a book called “Private Screening.” I was just fascinated with the experience of veterans who would come home because that was such a divisive war and really so terrible for the people who were involved in it.
NORRIS: So that would have been veterans coming back from Vietnam.
Mr. PATTERSON: From Vietnam. I mean, they thought that the war was meaningless and murderous. The cause was frequently unpopular. And one of the most vivid encapsulations of the effect of unremitting combat in ambiguous circumstances was given to me by a Vietnam vet who said to me 25 years ago, if you put your cat in the backyard in the morning and lob hand grenades all around him, at the end of the day, you’d have a different cat.
So I started seeing the effects of the Iraq War. I remembered very well my experiences among veterans of Vietnam. I felt it’s time to return to the subject.
NORRIS: And I’m looking at your book at around page 352, there’s the scene where someone was being almost interrogated about what is PTSD. What do you know about him? How well does he sleep? You know, in describing PTSD, it seems like there are many tools in your box that you can use to help people understand this.
Mr. PATTERSON: Yes. I mean, the first thing that needs to be said about PTSD is that it is not the, quote, unquote, “fault of the military,” or the people we send to fight, but it’s inherent in the nature of war itself and never more so than the nature of modern warfare that our folks who are experiencing now. We have 750,000 people suffering from PTSD to some extent or traumatic brain injury. We have a hundred thousand people who are homeless. We have thousands of suicides…… Read Full Story on Npr.org
