Sex, Politics, Religion, and Writing: Uncensored Interviews with the artists and authors of MLR Press
The Richard Stevenson interviewed by Sarah Black
Q: You write the Don Strachey mystery series. Was it hard for you to find a publisher for Death Trick back in 1981, when you started the series?
A: My timing was lucky, and it was not difficult. This was near the giddy beginning of the gay publishing boom of the late '70s and through the '80s. Editor Michael Denneny, a smart and brave pioneer of gay publishing, was building a terrific list of gay books at St. Martin's, and he read Death Trick and snapped it up.
Q: Did you feel that having a gay detective was a risky choice? What made you decide on this type of mystery, knowing as you must have that your reading audience would be smaller than for a more traditional mystery series?
A: I wrote it because it was what I deeply wanted to write. I wrote the first page of Death Trick, and I felt as if my whole life as a writer had been leading up to that moment, and I had found my voice and my mission. And that mission was to advance the cause of gay liberation through entertainment. Joseph Hansen, with his Dave Brandstetter novels in the early '70s, had been the first creator of mysteries where the gay characters were decent and sane, and not pathetic wretches or serial killers. I wanted to do that too, but with a lighter tone and a protagonist who wasn't so sad. The biggest risk in all this was using the book for my own belated coming out. I was still married at the time. I showed the book to a grizzled old newspaper guy I knew, and he said, "Lipez, I think you were smart to use a pseudonym on this. Otherwise people would think you were queer." So I had to explain a few things.
Q: Do you think Don and Timmy have changed in substantial ways in the more than two and a half decades since you started writing their story? Do you think these changes mirror society's changes during the same time? Or have they grown in more personal ways?
A: Don and Timmy were both grown-ups when the series began---they were around 40, as I was---so they didn't have a lot more growing up to do. They have grown older, although miraculously in 26 years they have aged just ten years (unlike myself). Quite a feat, huh? Denneny told me gay readers would not want to read about an old-fart detective, and I compromised by aging Strachey and Timmy at less than half the natural rate. I've read that Sue Grafton has done something similar with Kinsey Milhone in that series. The Strachey series has changed with the times, however. The biggest change came after Death Trick, which is the only pre-AIDS book in the series and is gleefully racy. After that, AIDS was always a small or large factor in the stories; in Third Man Out it was critical to the plot in two ways, which I won't give away. Another change is, I had a caricature of a gay-baiting police detective in the first three books; I ditched him when the cops in Albany became more enlightened. I'm proud to have played a tiny part in that social enlightenment.
Q: What has it been like to know these guys for so long?
A: It's been gratifying. There's a bit of me in both of them---the good-boy Richard in Timmy, the bad-boy Richard in Strachey---so they are always with me. During periods when I haven't written a new Strachey book for a while---usually because I haven't had a good idea for one---I have felt vaguely guilty over leaving these guys in suspended animation. But when they show up again they don't seem to complain.
Q: Are you writing other fiction besides the Strachey mysteries?
A: I wrote a caper novel, Grand Scam, in 1979 with my friend Peter Stein, but nothing since then. But I am planning a spy thriller set in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. I was in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, 1962-64, and then worked as a Peace Corps program evaluator, and later did newspaper reporting from the area. So I know this part of the world. The Peace Corps, by the way, was the best thing I ever did. It took me out of Central Pennsylvania, where I grew up, and out of myself, while at the same time doing something more or less useful. I'm returning to the region in February to research the new novel. And while this will be my first real visit to Djibouti, I'll get to spend several days in Addis Ababa, too, and that will be like going home.
Q: You write in your day job as a journalist. How does that affect you as a writer? Can fiction and non-fiction coexist in peace?
A: I haven't worked regularly in journalism for a few years. I do an occasional op-ed piece for the Boston Globe or the Berkshire Eagle. I love the ethics of journalism, where you always try to be true and honest, and I love the ethics of fiction, where you can lie and get away with it.
Q: In your job as a mystery reviewer for Washington Post Book World, have you noticed any big changes in the mystery world? What new trends are you seeing?
A: It's interesting how conservative and unchanging the genre is. Mystery readers tend not to want experimentation. Mostly they want more of the same. This means there's a steady stream of pretty formulaic stuff. Amazingly, though, fresh new voices do come along. Recently I reviewed mysteries by Karin Fossum, a Norwegian, and Gabriel Cohen, a guy from Brooklyn, that brought conviction and insight and a fine sense of style to the police procedural, a form that you'd think might be dead of exhaustion.
Q: What do you like to read yourself for pleasure? What's in your to-be-read stack?
A: I recently re-discovered Charles McCarry, the great espionage writer. The Tears of Autumn, about the Kennedy assassination, may be the finest spy thriller ever written by an American. It's also the only truly plausible Kennedy assassination-plot book I've read, fiction or non-fiction. (Though Don DeLillo's Libra was beautifully written and scary.) So I've been reading McCarry books I never got around to when they came out. Since my partner Joe and I are going to India and Southeast Asia soon (along with Djibouti), I'm reading fiction and non-fiction set there. Emma Larkin's Finding George Orwell in Burma may be the best non-fiction book about that tragic country, and I'll re-read it before we go there.
Q: What fiction do you remember reading that was important to you? Who are your literary influences?
A: I think the greatest book in English is Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, even though it was originally written in Spanish. It's the magically composed history of the human race told through the history of one family. The writers who have influenced me, of course, are the crime-fiction greats, especially Raymond Chandler. Whenever I start a new Strachey book, I read the beginning and end of The Big Sleep to remind myself of how it ought to be done. When I wrote Death Trick I had been reading the early Fletch books, by Gregory McDonald. And although my stuff came out different, I think McDonald influenced me; he had that mixture of breeziness and seriousness I was aiming for.
Q: Okay, I want to get personal now. You live in New England? What the heck is going on with those Patriots? Is it true Tom Brady has been replaced by a cyborg?
A: Tom Brady---was he the father in The Brady Bunch or one of the children? If you are referring to pro football, I'll have to consult one of my lesbian friends. A guy came up to me in the Pittsfield YMCA locker room one time and said, "Hey, how about those Celtics?" I thought, ah, yes, the ancient Irish. But I just said, "Yeah, wow!"
Q: We here at MLR Press are official pirate-advocates. Who is your favorite pirate? Have you ever dressed up as a pirate in the privacy of your barn?
A: You seem to know that Joe and I live in a converted barn. What are you, Alberto Gonzales? My favorite pirate is probably Ken Lay. But I don't have a Ken Lay costume, I don't think.
Q: What kind of music do you listen to? Do you play an instrument? Does music influence your fiction?
A: I love jazz but have no musical talent. If I could write like Lester Young played, I'd be the man I want to be. But I can't.
Q: What are you passionate about in your life?
A: Justice, language, everybody having as sweet a time as possible. And cheeseburgers.
Q: Your spouse is an artist. What is it like living with another creative person? Simpatico, or do you drive each other crazy?
A: Muy simpatico. We work in very different forms. Each finds the other's work interesting and surprising and satisfying. We're lucky that way, and others.
Q: So what are you working on? What are your plans at MLR? When will we see a new book?
A: I'm about to write a new Strachey set partly in Thailand. I can't wait to get going---and to do the research! I love Thailand. It really is a land of smiles and guiltless hedonism and hard work and humane Buddhism and good humor. This paradise also has a shaky military government and a crooked police force---altogether an excellent spot for Strachey to mix it up.