Episode 089 - The "Both-ness" of Compelling Characters with Ben Winters
July 20, 2021
In this week's episode of The Indy Author Podcast, author Ben H. Winters discusses the "both-ness" of compelling characters. We talk about how he used the concept of “both-ness” in his own books, including THE QUIET BOY, UNDERGROUND AIRLINES, and THE LAST POLICEMAN, and how other authors have—or haven’t—used it in some of his favorite books, including THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. We talk about the importance of recognizing “both-ness” in people not only in books but in real life. And we talk about “other-ness,” and how to portray characters who are not only separated in some way from the rest of the world they live in, but sometimes even from ourselves.
Ben H. Winters is the author of the novels THE QUIET BOY, GOLDEN STATE, the New York Times bestselling UNDERGROUND AIRLINES, THE LAST POLICEMAN and its two sequels; the horror novel BEDBUGS; and several works for young readers. His first novel SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS was also a Times bestseller. Ben has won the Edgar Award for mystery writing, the Philip K. Dick award in science fiction, the Sidewise Award for alternate history, and France’s Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire. His writing has appeared in Slate and in the New York Times Book Review. He also writes for film and television and was a producer on the FX show LEGION. He lives in LA with his family.
Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!
Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast, today my guest is Ben Winters. Hey, Ben, how are you doing?
Ben: Thanks. How are you?
Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Ben H. Winters is the author of a number of my favorite books, including the recently released THE QUIET BOY, GOLDEN STATE, the New York times bestselling UNDERGROUND AIRLINES, THE LAST POLICEMAN, and its two sequels, the horror novel BEDBUGS, and several works for young readers.
[00:00:28] His first novel SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS was also a Times bestseller. Ben has won the Edgar Award for mystery writing, the Phillip K. Dick Award in science fiction, the Sidewise Award for alternate history, and France’s Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire. His writing has appeared in Slate and in the New York Times Book Review, and he also writes for film and television and was the producer on the FX show LEGION. And he lives in LA with his family.
[00:00:53] So I had invited Ben on the podcast, not only because a number of his books are my favorites, but I had been lucky enough to listen to some talks that Ben had given in the virtual book tour for THE QUIET BOY and Ben, one of the things that you had mentioned that I was very intrigued about was the both-ness of compelling characters.
[00:01:13] But before we get to that, I wanted to say that this morning I saw a very exciting announcement about THE LAST POLICE. Is that something that you can talk a little bit about?
[00:01:25] Ben: Now, yeah. Fox is going to do a, they're not officially doing a series yet, but they ordered a pilot based on my book, THE LAST POLICEMAN. So they're going to shoot that in the fall. If all goes well, they'll do a series of it, which would come out probably at some point next year. So it is the series is to be called THE LAST POLICE, which is an adaptation of THE LAST POLICEMAN. Cause the guy who's creating the show has decided to change the gender of the hero to young woman instead of a young man.
[00:01:51] So it's a re-imagining of the novel, which is awesome and exciting and interesting, but it required a new title. So yeah. I'm excited about it. It's huge and wonderful and terrifying and fun. ...
Ben: Thanks. How are you?
Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Ben H. Winters is the author of a number of my favorite books, including the recently released THE QUIET BOY, GOLDEN STATE, the New York times bestselling UNDERGROUND AIRLINES, THE LAST POLICEMAN, and its two sequels, the horror novel BEDBUGS, and several works for young readers.
[00:00:28] His first novel SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS was also a Times bestseller. Ben has won the Edgar Award for mystery writing, the Phillip K. Dick Award in science fiction, the Sidewise Award for alternate history, and France’s Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire. His writing has appeared in Slate and in the New York Times Book Review, and he also writes for film and television and was the producer on the FX show LEGION. And he lives in LA with his family.
[00:00:53] So I had invited Ben on the podcast, not only because a number of his books are my favorites, but I had been lucky enough to listen to some talks that Ben had given in the virtual book tour for THE QUIET BOY and Ben, one of the things that you had mentioned that I was very intrigued about was the both-ness of compelling characters.
[00:01:13] But before we get to that, I wanted to say that this morning I saw a very exciting announcement about THE LAST POLICE. Is that something that you can talk a little bit about?
[00:01:25] Ben: Now, yeah. Fox is going to do a, they're not officially doing a series yet, but they ordered a pilot based on my book, THE LAST POLICEMAN. So they're going to shoot that in the fall. If all goes well, they'll do a series of it, which would come out probably at some point next year. So it is the series is to be called THE LAST POLICE, which is an adaptation of THE LAST POLICEMAN. Cause the guy who's creating the show has decided to change the gender of the hero to young woman instead of a young man.
[00:01:51] So it's a re-imagining of the novel, which is awesome and exciting and interesting, but it required a new title. So yeah. I'm excited about it. It's huge and wonderful and terrifying and fun. ...
click here to read more
[00:02:03] Matty: I would love to have you back at some point and talk about what your experience proves to be with seeing that book represented but changed as well and how those combined creative visions work there. So congratulations on that. That is very exciting.
[00:02:19] Ben: Thank you.
[00:02:20] Matty: So the topic that we wanted to focus on is this idea of the both-ness of compelling characters. And it's the idea that it's important to give protagonists and antagonists both positive and negative characteristics. And so Ben, to lead into this, I'm wondering if you can describe Jay Shenk, who's the protagonist of THE QUIET BOY and how Jay demonstrates that both-ness in his character?
[00:02:45] Ben: Sure. It's nice that you caught on to that because it was something I talked about a couple of times when discussing this book, that idea. So Shenk is, Jay Shenk is a middle-aged trial lawyer, a personal injury lawyer, so his professional job, the way he goes about his job is what we might think of as somewhat ethically ambiguous. Like we use the term ambulance chaser. He makes his living by finding likely people to convince them to sue hospitals and doctors. And so the plot of this novel is largely launched when he hears about, through this network he keeps illegally, of nurses who feed him information, he hears about this sick kid, and he chases down the family and gets them to sue.
[00:03:26] So he's not a good guy in that sense. We would think of him as being something of corrupt or at least an ethically ambiguous individually. But at the same time, he is full of love. He loves these families. He loves these kids. He loves his own son, although it's a complicated relationship. He loves and mourns the wife that he lost.
[00:03:44] And so it's important to me with all of my characters, and particularly a character like that, who proves really to be one of the two protagonists of the book, along with his kid, but we have to see him as more than one thing. For the book to work, for the reader to be engaged with the book, you have to see that character is more than one thing.
[00:04:04] You have to both recognize that he's not good and what he's doing is bad and wrong. And we shouldn't want people like that in society. But at the same time, we have to love him and recognize that for all of his faults, he is full of empathy and full of love. And when he goes out in the world, he's trying to help other people, and at the same time trying to help himself. And that's the both-ness that you're talking about, that complicatedness that I think it's so valuable to find in one's characters.
[00:04:32] And also frankly, to find another people like in reality, in real life. And I say this in the times that I've taught writing to kids, sometimes the things that make us a good writer also make us a good person, which is being able to see that other people are complicated, to see that the first impression we get of someone isn't always totally accurate, and to try when we meet other people to see them in three dimensions and to give them a second to be more than we think they are at first. That's hard sometimes.
[00:05:01] So anyway, I'm smiling as I think about it because I love that character so much. I'm so proud of having created him, even though he's a scumbag, like he is, he just is. So there you go.
[00:05:13] Matty: It's easy to look at lawyers as the easy target, but you have personal connections with a number of lawyers. Is that right? Can you describe that a little bit?
[00:05:23] Ben: My life is full of lawyers. Lawyers do get a bad rap. They are an easy target. Starting with Shakespeare, everyone loves to quote that Shakespeare line, First let's kill all the lawyers. But yes, my father is retired now, but he was a lawyer, judge, actually, a patent judge. My brother is a lawyer. I married a lawyer. My grandfather was a lawyer. And really my dad didn't stop telling me that I should maybe think about law school until after I'd published my fourth or fifth book.
[00:05:47] I don't know if that's chicken or egg, like I've always been very drawn to lawyers, and also, I find the life of the law really interesting. And I think that as a novelist, it's a really compelling way to think about the world, to think about the kind of matrix we all live in, of right and wrong and justice and fairness and unfairness, because the law is this sort of artificial system that we've built to weigh things that can't be weighed. Like how much is it worth to a person financially if they are harmed in an accident? There's no answer to that. God didn't send down a table that says, if you lose an arm in a farming accident, you're owed X amount of money and the person who's responsible should go to jail for this amount of time.
[00:06:30] But we've entrusted one another, the law especially in a free society is a system by which we've trusted one another to adjudicate. And I find that endlessly interesting as a storytelling dynamic, and it's just a way to think about the world. And then there's been law or systems of law in all of my books, but I think this is the first one that is explicitly like a legal book, and it takes place in courtrooms and has legal arguments. And I found it to be a really fun way to think about the world.
[00:07:00] Matty: I assume you tapped into your circle of lawyers to be your subject matter experts for those.
[00:07:06] Ben: My brother, mostly. My wife is a specialist in health law and food laws, so she wasn't much use beyond her moral support in this one. My brother works and lives in New Hampshire and he has a small practice where he does everything. They do divorce and DUI, and he has done medical stuff. So I talked to him, but he also referred me to some friends of his who were very in this world of personal injury, medical malpractice. And then also tracked down some lawyers here in LA, where I live, because California has some very specific laws around medical malpractice and how much you can recover and what the system is.
[00:07:41] I know you have a lot of writers who listen to your podcast, and I'm a big believer in in research. I think it's super important and an often-neglected aspect of craft. of If you were writing the book that has any connection to reality, you don't write fantasy or pure science fiction that might not necessarily, but my books do. I just find it endlessly inspiring and important to talk to real people. Like, how does this law work? How do you know what exactly is the timetable for trial? How much money can we sue for? Cause there's so much, you don't even know that you don't know until you ask.
[00:08:12] And the secret is that everybody loves to talk about themselves. So if you call someone and you're like, Hey, I'm writing this novel, THE LAST POLICEMAN, which was one of my first books that was really deeply researched. Like I talked to astrophysicists about the asteroid in the book. I talked to forensic scientists about the deaths in the book. And then there was a whole subplot that had to do with life insurance. So like I called this guy who's been a life insurance adjuster for his whole career. And I was like, tell me everything. And the guy was like, yes, finally! So I think it's a really underexploited resource. Like all the people around something and they want to talk about it.
[00:08:52] Matty: So when you were doing the research into the legal aspects of THE QUIET BOY, and you were thinking through the importance of making Jay this both-ness kind of character, were there any points at which you had to struggle between sticking with the absolute accuracy of the legal details or having to futz it a little bit in order to give Jay the personality that you want it to give him?
[00:09:16] Ben: It's a good, important question because I think that although I do really believe deeply in the groundedness of the work and making sure I do all this research and that everything is accurate, there also comes a time when you have to be like, all right, it's a book and things are going to happen that might not really happen in the courtroom. Just If you watch name your favorite legal drama on TV, it usually isn't that exciting. Or if you watch GRAY'S ANATOMY, every week there isn't a helicopter crash. Most of the time stuff is pretty boring. So you're writing about the events just by nature of it being a novel you're writing about things that don't normally happen. So I think there is some and latitude to come up with crazy stuff or to push the limits of what is realistic in order to create those exciting plot moments.
[00:09:58] So there's definitely some things I think that to whatever handful of actual practicing medical malpractice attorneys in Los Angeles County read this book, they might be like, I'm not sure about that, but I decided that's probably okay. The end of the day, the most important thing is the book feel real and be absolutely compelling as a story.
[00:10:18] Matty: Yeah. And I think even the subject matter experts, if you get subject matter experts that are good at advising fiction writers, they kind of understand that.
[00:10:25] Ben: Yeah. It's not the same as writing non-fiction.
[00:10:29] Matty: You had mentioned the idea that it's important to recognize that both-ness in this character both in characters and in real life. Do you feel as if you started with one before you appreciated the other? Do you think you had always had that experience of recognizing that and in real people and you brought it to your characters, or do you think creating the characters gave you insight into the real people you interact with?
[00:10:53] Oh, that's a nice question. I think that being a writer for me at least helps me to think about the world more carefully and more empathetically, I think. I think that there's definitely a part of you when you're a writer that it leads you to be isolationist and want to be left alone and be like, oh, I'm just doing my work, leave me alone. That sort of thing. But I do think that. But I try to tell my kids and everything too. It's that people are complicated, and we need to be sympathetic to others.
[00:11:25] Yeah, I yeah, I think it's both, probably. I think probably one of the things I like about writing is bringing into the books my own sense of how complicated other people are. But also in doing that, it's a virtuous circle where I try and see the world more interestingly too. Who knows how successful I am? You'd have to ask my friends, but yeah, it's both.
[00:11:46] Matty: When you are teaching writing, what age kids teaching?
[00:11:49] Ben: This is a long time ago now, but I did spend a few years back when I was younger, I lived in New York teaching kids. It was like third, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. That range. I was never an actual proper teacher, but for a couple of years I did like writing enrichment. So I would come once a week and do fun exercises and stuff. And I loved it. I found it really inspiring. And I had a lot of respect coming out of that for the actual classroom teachers. Cause I don't know how they do it. I really don't. It's so hard to both be in loco parentis and dealing with discipline and helping kids to thrive as human beings. And at the same time trying to teach them anything. it's I don't know how anybody does that. It's amazing. But it was fun was definitely fun.
[00:12:28] Matty: You were working with the kids, were there lessons that you either brought to them or learned from them about characters and stories that apply to this both-ness aspect?
[00:12:40] Ben: You know, kids have a natural understanding of people that I think we almost tend to lose as we get older in this way. Although like kids’ stories tend to be a little simplistic sometimes. And I think the great kids’ novels don't do this, but a lot of children's literature is very much like here's the bad guy, here's the good guy and it's clear right away. And they do that annoying thing where like villains have some sort of deformity or like other physical aspects where they're clearly like bad and they've been marked that way.
[00:13:10] So I think that one of the things that makes literature more adults and not young adult and not children's literature is a sense that people are more complicated. So I've tried to, when I taught, help kids to think about that. And you do exercises where you have them rethink the fairytales, for example, from another point of view. You know, the with isn't, no one's born a witch, right? You try to help children to think about how does somebody become that way? Why do they hate children so much? What might have happened in their past? Even that sort of thing can be useful. Which is why books, like WICKED are so neat where it's, oh, what is the backstory here? How did somebody get to be a witch? That's interesting.
[00:13:52] Matty: One of the children's books that you had mentioned, again in one of your conversations during THE QUIET BOY tour, was THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH. And I thought that was very interesting because when you're talking about compelling characters, Milo, the protagonist of THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH, is pretty much the least compelling character there is. Like he's defined by his non compellingness at the beginning. So for people who might not be familiar with THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH and Milo, can you talk a little bit about Milo's character?
[00:14:19] Ben: I love that character. Basically he's this very, well, not boring is the wrong word, but he's bored. He's a really bored kid, right? Like he thinks life is really dull and he wishes it were more interesting. He thinks nothing ever happens to him. And then this mysterious car comes in the mail, and he drives it through a mysterious toll booth to this mystical land and he has this whole adventure. And it's analogous to Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ, although she yearns for something more exciting. He doesn't even really realize what's lacking in his life.
[00:14:47] But the kind of moral of the story is almost the same where it's like you have to be excited and engaged and interesting for interesting things to happen. You can't just sit around and wait for them to come to you. It's a wonderful story and it's full all these crazy, imaginative details. I love that book. I think about it all the time and my kids have all read it now, which is nice.
[00:15:07] Matty: Yeah. It is a great book. Another book that you mentioned on the other end of the spectrum is Patricia Highsmith's books. So Patricia Highsmith is one of those authors that I can only read in very particular moods because I pretty much don't like any of her characters.
[00:15:25] Ben: I know she's definitely not warm hearted. She just doesn't have an expansive and loving view of humanity.
[00:15:33] Matty: Yeah. The closest I can get is feeling sorry for some of them. But how do you reconcile the fact that you had mentioned her among your favorite authors and yet is she showing both-ness in the development of her characters?
[00:15:46] Ben: Oh, no. but Almost a hundred percent not. Highsmith's characters are pretty curdled and pretty sour and pretty full of poison, basically. As I think, sadly I think that she was a pretty unhappy person and I think that's reflected in a lot of the characters. And she, like a lot of the great mystery and suspense writers, had a pretty dim view of humanity and what it was capable of. So everyone is always looking for their chance to get their own and there's a lot of psychopaths. But so for her, I don't read Highsmith for a kind of warm, fuzzy, or even a sense of the vast sea of human emotion. With Highsmith, you're really getting wonderful plotting and a kind of low dread that can be very satisfying in certain moods, like you said. I love STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. I can read that book a lot. I have read it a lot. I love THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. It's one of my absolute favorite books.
[00:16:39] So yeah, it's just you get different things for different writers. Like I love Dickens, I love John Le Carre, I love Highsmith. All for very different reasons.
[00:16:48] Matty: Did you watch the movie of THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY?
[00:16:51] Ben: I did. The Matt Damon one? I did. There's an earlier one too, with someone else. Is it Malkovich maybe? But yeah, I love that movie very much. And the Philip Seymour Hoffman performance in that is incredible.
[00:17:03] Matty: And Matt Damon is interesting because Matt Damon is sort of naturally likable. He normally plays naturally likable characters. And so seeing him in a different role ...
[00:17:15] Ben: Yeah, he's a great actor. He was great in that because he really buries himself in that part in a very satisfying way. And also what's fun about that part is that the character himself, Ripley, is such an actor, right? So Damon's having a good time portraying somebody who is himself portraying someone, so it's quite a layered performance. And it's funny, cause in the book you're like, wait, how does he really do this? He's so good at imitating that he can actually pretend to be this other person. It's Yeah, he pulls it off in that movie. It's a good one. They're supposedly redoing it right now on TV. They're going to do it as a mini-series or something. I forget what the casting is, but they just announced it. So we'll see. Yeah, it's a perennial. It just works. It's a great story.
[00:17:48] Matty: One of the characters in THE QUIET BOY, one of the quiet boys, is the young man who is injured and becomes a sort of golem figure where he's just not there. Can you talk a little bit about that without making it a spoiler?
[00:18:09] Ben: It's not really the spoiler. It's pretty early on really. And he's the more or less the title character, although some would argue that Ruben, that there's another character who could be considered the quiet boy, but yeah, basically he's suffered an accident and he goes to the hospital, and he undergoes the surgery and then he essentially wakes up but doesn't wake up. He's just, he's literally just walking in circles forever from the time he wakes. He never recovers speech or language. He doesn't seem to have any expression in his eyes, and he never stops walking.
[00:18:39] And it is weird. It's a medical mystery that might be a supernatural mystery and the central preoccupation of the story is figuring out what is going on with this kid. And cause it's what Shenk is suing over, obviously, but it also the way that it ripples out to his family and to other people in this world. And I was really interested in that. Again, it's another kind of both-ness or duality. Like he's either then the victim of some extremely unusual neurological problem, or he's been inhabited by some sort of demon or something from another dimension. And maybe it's one, maybe that's the other, maybe it's both. And it's like this crazy weirdness at the center of the book. And that's what I wanted it to be because it's like you have these two plots or two lawsuits in the book, it's this large set of characters, but they're all revolving around this kid who is just walking in circles all day long.
[00:19:37] Matty: One thing I thought was very interesting about that character is that for much of the description, you can imagine this as someone who's suffered some neurological damage and they're functional from a physical point of view, but as you described are not really there from a personality point of view. But there was maybe like one line where someone says, he walks all the time, he never sleeps and he never urinates or defecates, which puts it into a completely different sort of category of situation.
[00:20:09] Ben: There's definitely a supernatural aspect here. Cause basically if you're in a coma, if a person's in a vegetative state, then you still have natural bodily function, including hair growth and all this other stuff. But I wanted Wesley's situation to be different than that, which is part of why the walking, as opposed to just lying there. I wanted it to be more remarkable and bizarre and still possible, it's still explicable, but just barely. I wanted this to be walking in this line of could this be real or not? And yeah, that was part of the you've got to get into those nitty gritty details.
[00:20:42] But it's funny, I think different readers have experienced Wesley in different ways, which is exactly what I wanted. It's like a coma, but it's not a coma. You use the word golem, which is a good word. Like that is the classical, that Frankenstein monster kind of thing where it's, is he alive or dead, or is he a possessed form of flesh? Like what's going on with that kid. And of course it's driving his mom insane, which is part of one of the stories of the book too, is how do you grieve someone who is neither alive nor dead. That's rough.
[00:21:14] Matty: When you were thinking through Wesley, did you approach his character differently than you did, let's say, Ruben or Jay, knowing what was going to happen to him?
[00:21:26] Ben: Wesley the character developed as I wrote, just figuring out who he was. It's weird for him to be a teenager forever, because he gets frozen when he's 14, which is a very specific time, or 15, no, I think it's 14, it's very specific time in a person's life.
[00:21:40] So it's funny like that character in a way, he needs the least character development because his development is frozen at that spot.
[00:21:48] The one fun thing about that character was that I did give him that backstory that he was in a band with his friends as I was at that age, and so some of the rich detail of what that's like to be a kid trying to learn how to be a rock and roll musician was very drawn from my experience in a way that I don't usually, I don't usually write that way from my own experience at all. So that's fun.
[00:22:09] Matty: A lot of the other books I'd read before I read THE QUIET BOY were scenarios where you had changed one major thing about the backstory much of it was very realistic, but there was some big tweak, right? Not even a tweak, some big change that set up the story. So I'm thinking specifically of THE LAST POLICEMAN and UNDERGROUND AIRLINES. Can you talk a little bit about that and then how that gave you permission to maybe do certain things with characters that you wouldn't have been able to do in a more strictly realistic storyline?
[00:22:42] Ben: Definitely this is the first book of mine where it's more or less largely set in the reality that we actually inhabit. And there's one strange thing, but it's something maybe other than that, it's we all live in, like we took place now in like the real world. So the other books, LAST POLICEMAN as you said and UNDERGROUND AIRLINES and GOLDEN STATE also take place in what are essentially alternate realities or alternate versions of our reality. The thing is that with all those books my aim was that the characters, although they live in a world that is different than our world, the characters behave more or less as we do, except confronted with these unusual situations.
[00:23:19] So like the whole point, I think, of THE LAST POLICEMAN to the extent that I can say what the point is, is this guy is, he's a cop, he's facing the end of the world. There's an asteroid, that's coming. It's going to destroy all life on earth. And how does that affect him? What does he do? It wasn't like he's some outrageous action hero. He's just a regular guy, essentially. He's essentially a beat cop, who's then hastily promoted to detective cause all the detectives quit, but like he's just making decisions as you or I would.
[00:23:48] And that to me is what was interesting, is creating the unusual premise and then seeing how that affects regular people. This book is almost an inversion of that because it is a book about our real reality, but then there's this one very odd thing that happens right at the center of it. As opposed to the reality is different and everybody's regular. So I don't know. Who knows where ideas come from, but I guess the only thing that links all of these books is that they are all of them in some way or another mystery stories or thrillers, mystery more than thriller, each with some sort of high concept or strange supernatural conceit, so that it isn't just a regular mystery. There's some deeper mystery also happening.
[00:24:32] Matty: It's very appealing, one of the things that I really liked about LAST POLICEMAN was this idea that in most cases you have a protagonist who's acting in an unusual way in the normal world. In THE LAST POLICEMAN, you have someone who's acting in the usual way in an abnormal world. It's a fascinating take on the scenario.
[00:24:52] I understand that you rewrote THE LAST POLICEMAN from third to first person. Did I understand that correctly?
[00:25:00] Ben: Not only that, but I rewrote it from third to first person and I rewrote it from a traditional past tense to present tense. So ultimately the book ends up being it's in first person and present tense. "I'm staring at the victim and he's staring at me." That's the beginning. And that happened rather late in the process, probably irresponsibly late in the process. I had written most of the book in third person and in past tense, and it just wasn't working for whatever reason, just didn't feel right to me. And I think the intimacy of first person felt much better. And also with mystery novels, the first person means necessarily that there's certain things that the reader will never know anything that the protagonist doesn't know, unless very keenly observant. But for this book, it felt like that kind of mystery novel, where you're just exactly where the protagonist is at all times, as opposed to a third person novel, you can cut away to the villain and be like, meanwhile, basically the bad guy's doing this, or meanwhile, the cops, whatever.
[00:26:01] And then the present tense. It was like, if you're writing a book where the world, the whole premise is that the world is going to end at the end of this trilogy, it's suddenly felt really artificial to me that it would be in the past. When would this be, who's reading this? Where is this book? So we felt like he should just be basically having his experience and we're having it with them. That felt more honest. And it just ended up working. I think it worked really well.
[00:26:28] But, yeah, those are the kinds of decisions you can't necessarily make in advance. Sometimes you have to just start writing and see, I'm sure you know this too, like every book teaches you how to write all over again. There's just never any going into a book, okay, now I know how to do this. They're all different. And they all like children, they all demand their own particular kind of attention.
[00:26:52] Matty: Did you find that capturing that duality or that both-ness was easier or harder when you were writing in first person?
[00:26:59] Ben: Oh, that's funny. I don't know if it was easier or harder. It's definitely different. Definitely writing in first person is a strange and kind of very intimate thing, because you come to really identify with the character. You don't get any break from him. Palace, the hero of THE LAST POLICEMAN, Hank Palace, is a different kind of beast than Shenk. He's a much more straightforward kind of person. Like he's a little guileless this almost, and he's just very honest and he's also young and he knows he's young.
[00:27:23] I don't know. His both-ness is almost in like how badly he wants to be good at his job, but he's not that good at it yet, which is funny. It was actually made it almost easier to write the police novel because I'm not really showing off all my deep knowledge of police work, because he doesn't know anything yet. He's figuring it out as he goes and there's no mentors around. So his both-ness is almost more a matter of the distance between the man and he wants to be in the man he is, which was hard to write cause it's the whole thing is obviously it's melancholy and poignant cause the whole time, you know what the ending is.
[00:27:57] But yeah, Jay was a more complicated character, I think, to write. And I don't think I would've wanted to write him in first person because he's not self-reflective at all. Palace is quite self-reflective, and he almost is constantly criticizing himself and wishing for things, trying to make himself work harder. But Jay, I think is just he's just like a force of nature. So it's going. So it's almost interesting to observe him from the outside.
[00:28:21] Matty: Yep. And you've paired him with a quiet boy, Ruben, his adopted son. What made you make the decision to have Ruben be adopted?
[00:28:31] Ben: Oh, I don't know. It's funny. That was one of the earliest decisions I made with this book, and I couldn't even tell you why exactly. I think ultimately the work that it does in the book, it makes the character from the very beginning, Ruben is concerned with identity and with the question of who he is and what his place is in the world, which isn't to say that is endemic to people who are adopted. I think there are probably plenty or most people who are adopted feel very comfortable with their identity and their place in the world and their family.
[00:29:03] But Ruben is Asian. He's also Jewish cause his father is Jewish. His mother was Jewish. But he's adopted so he's Asian. So when he looks in the mirror, he doesn't necessarily see what he might expect to see. And he's teased for it. From the beginning is he has a colleague who calls him the Rabbi because she finds it so funny that he's both Jewish and Vietnamese. So it became part of his struggle, part of his struggle with himself and who he is and who he wants to be which like part of the journey of the book is for Ruben, anyways, toward a stronger sense of self and self-competence and all that good stuff.
[00:29:39] So yeah, I don't know. I'm interested and I guess also too, the book really is about family and the question of family. And as we talked about with Wesley, once he's sick, is he still the same person that is their son? What is he now? And then, so for Ruben, the question of the nature of his family relationship to Jay, who is such a difficult father anyway, the fact that he's adopted, it helps to make the question complicated is the best way I can put it. There's a moment where he's, I'm not even, I'm not even related to this guy anyway. Why do I have to, once again, he is punishing me. He is dragging me into BS. Like, why am I putting up with this? There's no claim of blood in me.
[00:30:21] But there is, though. There's a pull. Family is different than just blood. And I think that's important, whether it's in adopted families or stepfamilies or even just strong friendships, family is a supernatural force. And I think that's part of Ruben's journey in the book too, is understanding that.
[00:30:38] Matty: I really liked the fact that in a lot of the scenes with Ruben and Jay, it's doesn't feel like a father / son relationship, it feels more like a caretaker, caretaker-ee, with Jay in a sense, being the person being taken care of.
[00:30:54] Ben: One of the things I'm most proud of in this book, which we haven't talked about yet, but it has two timelines. It's in the past and it's in the present. And in the first part, the first story, not in the book, but chronologically, Jay is middle-aged, and Ruben is 12, no, Ruben is 14. And in the present Jay is, I guess he's what's after middle-aged, before old. He's in his late middle age. She's probably in his fifties, late fifties, and Ruben is 24.
[00:31:22] And in the past, Jay is this force of nature. Very ebullient. Nonstop, affable character. And Ruben is this shy young man, teenager. And in the present, Jay is a wreck. He's fallen apart and Ruben has to rise to take care of him, to help him. And so those two portraits, father and son in past and present, I found very compelling and really interesting to think about. Like, how do you write the same person 10 years later?
[00:31:54] And also, I didn't want to give away what has happened to them, because basically the events at the end of the novel affect them both in a way that is still echoing through them. So anyway, it was just fun to think about to set them up and to see how their relationship has changed. Even though the love is still there. It's a very different kind.
[00:32:14] Matty: The last thing I wanted to ask you is a complement to both-ness and that's otherness. So you had mentioned about how Ruben is in this odd sort of out of sync with the rest of the world, being the adopted Asian Jewish boy. And I think that one of the most dramatic examples of characters who are in conflict with their surroundings is Victor in UNDERGROUND AIRLINES. So can you describe briefly Victor for listeners?
[00:32:42] Ben: Sure. It takes a moment just because UNDERGROUND AIRLINES, the premise of that book, the very dark and dystopian premise, is that we're in America, it's the present day, but in this version of America, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on his way to be inaugurated. The Civil War was never fought, and slavery is still legal in four states. So it's still legal under the constitution and still in practice. And so the novel is really, it's two things. It's a sort of very grim, dark portrait of the way that slavery might function sort of late capitalist society as we have now. And it's also a comment on the reality of America today, where the sort of echoes of slavery are still with us in so many ways. So it's that.
[00:33:23] Victor, the protagonist of that novel is himself a former slave who has escaped and been recaptured and is now working as an undercover agent on behalf of the federal government as a slave catcher. So he's a deeply corrupted individual who is doing this terrible work, betraying his humanity. And so the journey of the book is toward humanity for him, toward discovering that, his true self and a good self.
[00:33:53] But so yeah, he is at a remove from other African-Americans, from other people in the book and from his own past. He basically has to turn his back on who he is and who he was in order to do this, to stay alive. He's made this devil's bargain. So it was a tricky character to write for a lot of reasons.
[00:34:13] First, of all, because I'm white and I have nothing in my own life to compare to the experiences that he has had, although thank God no one does exactly. Although black people in this country now have experienced different things than I have, obviously. But also just because of the nature of the character is such that he's turned off his mind and his conscience and he's functioning in the world almost as an automaton, again, like a golem, doing what he has to do to live. That's at the beginning. And by the end of the book, I don't think it's a spoiler to say he has become a better person. And so a more fully realized person, which I try to show in the way that he interacts with others. And yeah, so it was a journey to write and a journey to for the character, I hope
[00:34:59] Matty: It's an interesting comparison to Jay Shenk because I was rooting for Victor before I understood in the story what his background was. And I had to keep reminding myself that he was doing a terrible thing, because at that point I was like on his side. I wanted him to succeed, even though succeeding was going to be horrible. Whereas Jay I disliked to begin with, and then I liked him more and more as I understood more that he was coming from a good place, as you had said before,
[00:35:30] Ben: It takes us back to Patricia Highsmith where like you root for Ripley. From the beginning she hooks you, cause he's on the run when somebody is chasing him and you don't know what he's done, something. But like you want him to succeed when the cops get close to him in Italy, after he's killed that guy with the oar, it's you're like, oh no, he's going to get caught. But he's just a murderer. He's just a creep.
[00:35:50] But that is one of the magic tricks that a good author can pull. It's a kind of dark magic of, tricking is the wrong word, but seducing you into rooting for a character who is doing something that is not right, because the power of good writing is such that like you're on that side. You're on that team.
[00:36:13] And then the real magic underneath that is to then take you on the journey with the character to hopefully, which is either usually a journey of redemption or of getting their just desserts. Although Ripley doesn't. He's totally successful. But Victor in my novel UNDERGROUND AIRLINES, he does turn back toward the light. And at that point, you've watched him, you've been along with him on his darker adventures. So you're ready to grow with them to change with them. And with Jay, he has his sort of his comeuppance, although it's all very murky and complicated until the end.
[00:36:48] Matty: Ben I can't think of a nicer way to end a conversation about the duality in both types of characters than with that summary. So thank you again for agreeing to be a guest on The Indy Author Podcast, and please let listeners know where they can find out more about you and your work online.
[00:37:02] Ben: Oh, I'm around. I'm on Facebook at Ben H. Winters. Oh, you know what it is. It's BenHWintersisawriter. That's my thing on Facebook. But then also I'm on Twitter. Ben H Winters. I do have a website, but I never really do anything on it. That's BenHWinters.com. And I'm yeah, you can get my books that I like to have to send people to bookshop.org which a great alternative to Amazon, or your local indie bookstore. And if they don't have the books, just ask for them. And be like, please order THE QUIET BOY. That's the best thing that you can do. Just go to a bookstore, you're like, I want this book, to be like, oh, we don't have it. Or we sold that and be like, oh, can you order me one? Because then they usually get a couple and then it's great.
[00:37:39] Or go to the library. People are always like, I'm sorry, I got your book at the library. I don't care. Get it at the library. That's great. Because then they buy it. The library buys it and then someone else will discover it who might not have otherwise discovered it. So any of those routes are available.
[00:37:51] Matty: Ben, thank you so much again. This has been so interesting and so helpful.
[00:37:54] Ben: It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
[00:02:19] Ben: Thank you.
[00:02:20] Matty: So the topic that we wanted to focus on is this idea of the both-ness of compelling characters. And it's the idea that it's important to give protagonists and antagonists both positive and negative characteristics. And so Ben, to lead into this, I'm wondering if you can describe Jay Shenk, who's the protagonist of THE QUIET BOY and how Jay demonstrates that both-ness in his character?
[00:02:45] Ben: Sure. It's nice that you caught on to that because it was something I talked about a couple of times when discussing this book, that idea. So Shenk is, Jay Shenk is a middle-aged trial lawyer, a personal injury lawyer, so his professional job, the way he goes about his job is what we might think of as somewhat ethically ambiguous. Like we use the term ambulance chaser. He makes his living by finding likely people to convince them to sue hospitals and doctors. And so the plot of this novel is largely launched when he hears about, through this network he keeps illegally, of nurses who feed him information, he hears about this sick kid, and he chases down the family and gets them to sue.
[00:03:26] So he's not a good guy in that sense. We would think of him as being something of corrupt or at least an ethically ambiguous individually. But at the same time, he is full of love. He loves these families. He loves these kids. He loves his own son, although it's a complicated relationship. He loves and mourns the wife that he lost.
[00:03:44] And so it's important to me with all of my characters, and particularly a character like that, who proves really to be one of the two protagonists of the book, along with his kid, but we have to see him as more than one thing. For the book to work, for the reader to be engaged with the book, you have to see that character is more than one thing.
[00:04:04] You have to both recognize that he's not good and what he's doing is bad and wrong. And we shouldn't want people like that in society. But at the same time, we have to love him and recognize that for all of his faults, he is full of empathy and full of love. And when he goes out in the world, he's trying to help other people, and at the same time trying to help himself. And that's the both-ness that you're talking about, that complicatedness that I think it's so valuable to find in one's characters.
[00:04:32] And also frankly, to find another people like in reality, in real life. And I say this in the times that I've taught writing to kids, sometimes the things that make us a good writer also make us a good person, which is being able to see that other people are complicated, to see that the first impression we get of someone isn't always totally accurate, and to try when we meet other people to see them in three dimensions and to give them a second to be more than we think they are at first. That's hard sometimes.
[00:05:01] So anyway, I'm smiling as I think about it because I love that character so much. I'm so proud of having created him, even though he's a scumbag, like he is, he just is. So there you go.
[00:05:13] Matty: It's easy to look at lawyers as the easy target, but you have personal connections with a number of lawyers. Is that right? Can you describe that a little bit?
[00:05:23] Ben: My life is full of lawyers. Lawyers do get a bad rap. They are an easy target. Starting with Shakespeare, everyone loves to quote that Shakespeare line, First let's kill all the lawyers. But yes, my father is retired now, but he was a lawyer, judge, actually, a patent judge. My brother is a lawyer. I married a lawyer. My grandfather was a lawyer. And really my dad didn't stop telling me that I should maybe think about law school until after I'd published my fourth or fifth book.
[00:05:47] I don't know if that's chicken or egg, like I've always been very drawn to lawyers, and also, I find the life of the law really interesting. And I think that as a novelist, it's a really compelling way to think about the world, to think about the kind of matrix we all live in, of right and wrong and justice and fairness and unfairness, because the law is this sort of artificial system that we've built to weigh things that can't be weighed. Like how much is it worth to a person financially if they are harmed in an accident? There's no answer to that. God didn't send down a table that says, if you lose an arm in a farming accident, you're owed X amount of money and the person who's responsible should go to jail for this amount of time.
[00:06:30] But we've entrusted one another, the law especially in a free society is a system by which we've trusted one another to adjudicate. And I find that endlessly interesting as a storytelling dynamic, and it's just a way to think about the world. And then there's been law or systems of law in all of my books, but I think this is the first one that is explicitly like a legal book, and it takes place in courtrooms and has legal arguments. And I found it to be a really fun way to think about the world.
[00:07:00] Matty: I assume you tapped into your circle of lawyers to be your subject matter experts for those.
[00:07:06] Ben: My brother, mostly. My wife is a specialist in health law and food laws, so she wasn't much use beyond her moral support in this one. My brother works and lives in New Hampshire and he has a small practice where he does everything. They do divorce and DUI, and he has done medical stuff. So I talked to him, but he also referred me to some friends of his who were very in this world of personal injury, medical malpractice. And then also tracked down some lawyers here in LA, where I live, because California has some very specific laws around medical malpractice and how much you can recover and what the system is.
[00:07:41] I know you have a lot of writers who listen to your podcast, and I'm a big believer in in research. I think it's super important and an often-neglected aspect of craft. of If you were writing the book that has any connection to reality, you don't write fantasy or pure science fiction that might not necessarily, but my books do. I just find it endlessly inspiring and important to talk to real people. Like, how does this law work? How do you know what exactly is the timetable for trial? How much money can we sue for? Cause there's so much, you don't even know that you don't know until you ask.
[00:08:12] And the secret is that everybody loves to talk about themselves. So if you call someone and you're like, Hey, I'm writing this novel, THE LAST POLICEMAN, which was one of my first books that was really deeply researched. Like I talked to astrophysicists about the asteroid in the book. I talked to forensic scientists about the deaths in the book. And then there was a whole subplot that had to do with life insurance. So like I called this guy who's been a life insurance adjuster for his whole career. And I was like, tell me everything. And the guy was like, yes, finally! So I think it's a really underexploited resource. Like all the people around something and they want to talk about it.
[00:08:52] Matty: So when you were doing the research into the legal aspects of THE QUIET BOY, and you were thinking through the importance of making Jay this both-ness kind of character, were there any points at which you had to struggle between sticking with the absolute accuracy of the legal details or having to futz it a little bit in order to give Jay the personality that you want it to give him?
[00:09:16] Ben: It's a good, important question because I think that although I do really believe deeply in the groundedness of the work and making sure I do all this research and that everything is accurate, there also comes a time when you have to be like, all right, it's a book and things are going to happen that might not really happen in the courtroom. Just If you watch name your favorite legal drama on TV, it usually isn't that exciting. Or if you watch GRAY'S ANATOMY, every week there isn't a helicopter crash. Most of the time stuff is pretty boring. So you're writing about the events just by nature of it being a novel you're writing about things that don't normally happen. So I think there is some and latitude to come up with crazy stuff or to push the limits of what is realistic in order to create those exciting plot moments.
[00:09:58] So there's definitely some things I think that to whatever handful of actual practicing medical malpractice attorneys in Los Angeles County read this book, they might be like, I'm not sure about that, but I decided that's probably okay. The end of the day, the most important thing is the book feel real and be absolutely compelling as a story.
[00:10:18] Matty: Yeah. And I think even the subject matter experts, if you get subject matter experts that are good at advising fiction writers, they kind of understand that.
[00:10:25] Ben: Yeah. It's not the same as writing non-fiction.
[00:10:29] Matty: You had mentioned the idea that it's important to recognize that both-ness in this character both in characters and in real life. Do you feel as if you started with one before you appreciated the other? Do you think you had always had that experience of recognizing that and in real people and you brought it to your characters, or do you think creating the characters gave you insight into the real people you interact with?
[00:10:53] Oh, that's a nice question. I think that being a writer for me at least helps me to think about the world more carefully and more empathetically, I think. I think that there's definitely a part of you when you're a writer that it leads you to be isolationist and want to be left alone and be like, oh, I'm just doing my work, leave me alone. That sort of thing. But I do think that. But I try to tell my kids and everything too. It's that people are complicated, and we need to be sympathetic to others.
[00:11:25] Yeah, I yeah, I think it's both, probably. I think probably one of the things I like about writing is bringing into the books my own sense of how complicated other people are. But also in doing that, it's a virtuous circle where I try and see the world more interestingly too. Who knows how successful I am? You'd have to ask my friends, but yeah, it's both.
[00:11:46] Matty: When you are teaching writing, what age kids teaching?
[00:11:49] Ben: This is a long time ago now, but I did spend a few years back when I was younger, I lived in New York teaching kids. It was like third, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. That range. I was never an actual proper teacher, but for a couple of years I did like writing enrichment. So I would come once a week and do fun exercises and stuff. And I loved it. I found it really inspiring. And I had a lot of respect coming out of that for the actual classroom teachers. Cause I don't know how they do it. I really don't. It's so hard to both be in loco parentis and dealing with discipline and helping kids to thrive as human beings. And at the same time trying to teach them anything. it's I don't know how anybody does that. It's amazing. But it was fun was definitely fun.
[00:12:28] Matty: You were working with the kids, were there lessons that you either brought to them or learned from them about characters and stories that apply to this both-ness aspect?
[00:12:40] Ben: You know, kids have a natural understanding of people that I think we almost tend to lose as we get older in this way. Although like kids’ stories tend to be a little simplistic sometimes. And I think the great kids’ novels don't do this, but a lot of children's literature is very much like here's the bad guy, here's the good guy and it's clear right away. And they do that annoying thing where like villains have some sort of deformity or like other physical aspects where they're clearly like bad and they've been marked that way.
[00:13:10] So I think that one of the things that makes literature more adults and not young adult and not children's literature is a sense that people are more complicated. So I've tried to, when I taught, help kids to think about that. And you do exercises where you have them rethink the fairytales, for example, from another point of view. You know, the with isn't, no one's born a witch, right? You try to help children to think about how does somebody become that way? Why do they hate children so much? What might have happened in their past? Even that sort of thing can be useful. Which is why books, like WICKED are so neat where it's, oh, what is the backstory here? How did somebody get to be a witch? That's interesting.
[00:13:52] Matty: One of the children's books that you had mentioned, again in one of your conversations during THE QUIET BOY tour, was THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH. And I thought that was very interesting because when you're talking about compelling characters, Milo, the protagonist of THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH, is pretty much the least compelling character there is. Like he's defined by his non compellingness at the beginning. So for people who might not be familiar with THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH and Milo, can you talk a little bit about Milo's character?
[00:14:19] Ben: I love that character. Basically he's this very, well, not boring is the wrong word, but he's bored. He's a really bored kid, right? Like he thinks life is really dull and he wishes it were more interesting. He thinks nothing ever happens to him. And then this mysterious car comes in the mail, and he drives it through a mysterious toll booth to this mystical land and he has this whole adventure. And it's analogous to Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ, although she yearns for something more exciting. He doesn't even really realize what's lacking in his life.
[00:14:47] But the kind of moral of the story is almost the same where it's like you have to be excited and engaged and interesting for interesting things to happen. You can't just sit around and wait for them to come to you. It's a wonderful story and it's full all these crazy, imaginative details. I love that book. I think about it all the time and my kids have all read it now, which is nice.
[00:15:07] Matty: Yeah. It is a great book. Another book that you mentioned on the other end of the spectrum is Patricia Highsmith's books. So Patricia Highsmith is one of those authors that I can only read in very particular moods because I pretty much don't like any of her characters.
[00:15:25] Ben: I know she's definitely not warm hearted. She just doesn't have an expansive and loving view of humanity.
[00:15:33] Matty: Yeah. The closest I can get is feeling sorry for some of them. But how do you reconcile the fact that you had mentioned her among your favorite authors and yet is she showing both-ness in the development of her characters?
[00:15:46] Ben: Oh, no. but Almost a hundred percent not. Highsmith's characters are pretty curdled and pretty sour and pretty full of poison, basically. As I think, sadly I think that she was a pretty unhappy person and I think that's reflected in a lot of the characters. And she, like a lot of the great mystery and suspense writers, had a pretty dim view of humanity and what it was capable of. So everyone is always looking for their chance to get their own and there's a lot of psychopaths. But so for her, I don't read Highsmith for a kind of warm, fuzzy, or even a sense of the vast sea of human emotion. With Highsmith, you're really getting wonderful plotting and a kind of low dread that can be very satisfying in certain moods, like you said. I love STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. I can read that book a lot. I have read it a lot. I love THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. It's one of my absolute favorite books.
[00:16:39] So yeah, it's just you get different things for different writers. Like I love Dickens, I love John Le Carre, I love Highsmith. All for very different reasons.
[00:16:48] Matty: Did you watch the movie of THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY?
[00:16:51] Ben: I did. The Matt Damon one? I did. There's an earlier one too, with someone else. Is it Malkovich maybe? But yeah, I love that movie very much. And the Philip Seymour Hoffman performance in that is incredible.
[00:17:03] Matty: And Matt Damon is interesting because Matt Damon is sort of naturally likable. He normally plays naturally likable characters. And so seeing him in a different role ...
[00:17:15] Ben: Yeah, he's a great actor. He was great in that because he really buries himself in that part in a very satisfying way. And also what's fun about that part is that the character himself, Ripley, is such an actor, right? So Damon's having a good time portraying somebody who is himself portraying someone, so it's quite a layered performance. And it's funny, cause in the book you're like, wait, how does he really do this? He's so good at imitating that he can actually pretend to be this other person. It's Yeah, he pulls it off in that movie. It's a good one. They're supposedly redoing it right now on TV. They're going to do it as a mini-series or something. I forget what the casting is, but they just announced it. So we'll see. Yeah, it's a perennial. It just works. It's a great story.
[00:17:48] Matty: One of the characters in THE QUIET BOY, one of the quiet boys, is the young man who is injured and becomes a sort of golem figure where he's just not there. Can you talk a little bit about that without making it a spoiler?
[00:18:09] Ben: It's not really the spoiler. It's pretty early on really. And he's the more or less the title character, although some would argue that Ruben, that there's another character who could be considered the quiet boy, but yeah, basically he's suffered an accident and he goes to the hospital, and he undergoes the surgery and then he essentially wakes up but doesn't wake up. He's just, he's literally just walking in circles forever from the time he wakes. He never recovers speech or language. He doesn't seem to have any expression in his eyes, and he never stops walking.
[00:18:39] And it is weird. It's a medical mystery that might be a supernatural mystery and the central preoccupation of the story is figuring out what is going on with this kid. And cause it's what Shenk is suing over, obviously, but it also the way that it ripples out to his family and to other people in this world. And I was really interested in that. Again, it's another kind of both-ness or duality. Like he's either then the victim of some extremely unusual neurological problem, or he's been inhabited by some sort of demon or something from another dimension. And maybe it's one, maybe that's the other, maybe it's both. And it's like this crazy weirdness at the center of the book. And that's what I wanted it to be because it's like you have these two plots or two lawsuits in the book, it's this large set of characters, but they're all revolving around this kid who is just walking in circles all day long.
[00:19:37] Matty: One thing I thought was very interesting about that character is that for much of the description, you can imagine this as someone who's suffered some neurological damage and they're functional from a physical point of view, but as you described are not really there from a personality point of view. But there was maybe like one line where someone says, he walks all the time, he never sleeps and he never urinates or defecates, which puts it into a completely different sort of category of situation.
[00:20:09] Ben: There's definitely a supernatural aspect here. Cause basically if you're in a coma, if a person's in a vegetative state, then you still have natural bodily function, including hair growth and all this other stuff. But I wanted Wesley's situation to be different than that, which is part of why the walking, as opposed to just lying there. I wanted it to be more remarkable and bizarre and still possible, it's still explicable, but just barely. I wanted this to be walking in this line of could this be real or not? And yeah, that was part of the you've got to get into those nitty gritty details.
[00:20:42] But it's funny, I think different readers have experienced Wesley in different ways, which is exactly what I wanted. It's like a coma, but it's not a coma. You use the word golem, which is a good word. Like that is the classical, that Frankenstein monster kind of thing where it's, is he alive or dead, or is he a possessed form of flesh? Like what's going on with that kid. And of course it's driving his mom insane, which is part of one of the stories of the book too, is how do you grieve someone who is neither alive nor dead. That's rough.
[00:21:14] Matty: When you were thinking through Wesley, did you approach his character differently than you did, let's say, Ruben or Jay, knowing what was going to happen to him?
[00:21:26] Ben: Wesley the character developed as I wrote, just figuring out who he was. It's weird for him to be a teenager forever, because he gets frozen when he's 14, which is a very specific time, or 15, no, I think it's 14, it's very specific time in a person's life.
[00:21:40] So it's funny like that character in a way, he needs the least character development because his development is frozen at that spot.
[00:21:48] The one fun thing about that character was that I did give him that backstory that he was in a band with his friends as I was at that age, and so some of the rich detail of what that's like to be a kid trying to learn how to be a rock and roll musician was very drawn from my experience in a way that I don't usually, I don't usually write that way from my own experience at all. So that's fun.
[00:22:09] Matty: A lot of the other books I'd read before I read THE QUIET BOY were scenarios where you had changed one major thing about the backstory much of it was very realistic, but there was some big tweak, right? Not even a tweak, some big change that set up the story. So I'm thinking specifically of THE LAST POLICEMAN and UNDERGROUND AIRLINES. Can you talk a little bit about that and then how that gave you permission to maybe do certain things with characters that you wouldn't have been able to do in a more strictly realistic storyline?
[00:22:42] Ben: Definitely this is the first book of mine where it's more or less largely set in the reality that we actually inhabit. And there's one strange thing, but it's something maybe other than that, it's we all live in, like we took place now in like the real world. So the other books, LAST POLICEMAN as you said and UNDERGROUND AIRLINES and GOLDEN STATE also take place in what are essentially alternate realities or alternate versions of our reality. The thing is that with all those books my aim was that the characters, although they live in a world that is different than our world, the characters behave more or less as we do, except confronted with these unusual situations.
[00:23:19] So like the whole point, I think, of THE LAST POLICEMAN to the extent that I can say what the point is, is this guy is, he's a cop, he's facing the end of the world. There's an asteroid, that's coming. It's going to destroy all life on earth. And how does that affect him? What does he do? It wasn't like he's some outrageous action hero. He's just a regular guy, essentially. He's essentially a beat cop, who's then hastily promoted to detective cause all the detectives quit, but like he's just making decisions as you or I would.
[00:23:48] And that to me is what was interesting, is creating the unusual premise and then seeing how that affects regular people. This book is almost an inversion of that because it is a book about our real reality, but then there's this one very odd thing that happens right at the center of it. As opposed to the reality is different and everybody's regular. So I don't know. Who knows where ideas come from, but I guess the only thing that links all of these books is that they are all of them in some way or another mystery stories or thrillers, mystery more than thriller, each with some sort of high concept or strange supernatural conceit, so that it isn't just a regular mystery. There's some deeper mystery also happening.
[00:24:32] Matty: It's very appealing, one of the things that I really liked about LAST POLICEMAN was this idea that in most cases you have a protagonist who's acting in an unusual way in the normal world. In THE LAST POLICEMAN, you have someone who's acting in the usual way in an abnormal world. It's a fascinating take on the scenario.
[00:24:52] I understand that you rewrote THE LAST POLICEMAN from third to first person. Did I understand that correctly?
[00:25:00] Ben: Not only that, but I rewrote it from third to first person and I rewrote it from a traditional past tense to present tense. So ultimately the book ends up being it's in first person and present tense. "I'm staring at the victim and he's staring at me." That's the beginning. And that happened rather late in the process, probably irresponsibly late in the process. I had written most of the book in third person and in past tense, and it just wasn't working for whatever reason, just didn't feel right to me. And I think the intimacy of first person felt much better. And also with mystery novels, the first person means necessarily that there's certain things that the reader will never know anything that the protagonist doesn't know, unless very keenly observant. But for this book, it felt like that kind of mystery novel, where you're just exactly where the protagonist is at all times, as opposed to a third person novel, you can cut away to the villain and be like, meanwhile, basically the bad guy's doing this, or meanwhile, the cops, whatever.
[00:26:01] And then the present tense. It was like, if you're writing a book where the world, the whole premise is that the world is going to end at the end of this trilogy, it's suddenly felt really artificial to me that it would be in the past. When would this be, who's reading this? Where is this book? So we felt like he should just be basically having his experience and we're having it with them. That felt more honest. And it just ended up working. I think it worked really well.
[00:26:28] But, yeah, those are the kinds of decisions you can't necessarily make in advance. Sometimes you have to just start writing and see, I'm sure you know this too, like every book teaches you how to write all over again. There's just never any going into a book, okay, now I know how to do this. They're all different. And they all like children, they all demand their own particular kind of attention.
[00:26:52] Matty: Did you find that capturing that duality or that both-ness was easier or harder when you were writing in first person?
[00:26:59] Ben: Oh, that's funny. I don't know if it was easier or harder. It's definitely different. Definitely writing in first person is a strange and kind of very intimate thing, because you come to really identify with the character. You don't get any break from him. Palace, the hero of THE LAST POLICEMAN, Hank Palace, is a different kind of beast than Shenk. He's a much more straightforward kind of person. Like he's a little guileless this almost, and he's just very honest and he's also young and he knows he's young.
[00:27:23] I don't know. His both-ness is almost in like how badly he wants to be good at his job, but he's not that good at it yet, which is funny. It was actually made it almost easier to write the police novel because I'm not really showing off all my deep knowledge of police work, because he doesn't know anything yet. He's figuring it out as he goes and there's no mentors around. So his both-ness is almost more a matter of the distance between the man and he wants to be in the man he is, which was hard to write cause it's the whole thing is obviously it's melancholy and poignant cause the whole time, you know what the ending is.
[00:27:57] But yeah, Jay was a more complicated character, I think, to write. And I don't think I would've wanted to write him in first person because he's not self-reflective at all. Palace is quite self-reflective, and he almost is constantly criticizing himself and wishing for things, trying to make himself work harder. But Jay, I think is just he's just like a force of nature. So it's going. So it's almost interesting to observe him from the outside.
[00:28:21] Matty: Yep. And you've paired him with a quiet boy, Ruben, his adopted son. What made you make the decision to have Ruben be adopted?
[00:28:31] Ben: Oh, I don't know. It's funny. That was one of the earliest decisions I made with this book, and I couldn't even tell you why exactly. I think ultimately the work that it does in the book, it makes the character from the very beginning, Ruben is concerned with identity and with the question of who he is and what his place is in the world, which isn't to say that is endemic to people who are adopted. I think there are probably plenty or most people who are adopted feel very comfortable with their identity and their place in the world and their family.
[00:29:03] But Ruben is Asian. He's also Jewish cause his father is Jewish. His mother was Jewish. But he's adopted so he's Asian. So when he looks in the mirror, he doesn't necessarily see what he might expect to see. And he's teased for it. From the beginning is he has a colleague who calls him the Rabbi because she finds it so funny that he's both Jewish and Vietnamese. So it became part of his struggle, part of his struggle with himself and who he is and who he wants to be which like part of the journey of the book is for Ruben, anyways, toward a stronger sense of self and self-competence and all that good stuff.
[00:29:39] So yeah, I don't know. I'm interested and I guess also too, the book really is about family and the question of family. And as we talked about with Wesley, once he's sick, is he still the same person that is their son? What is he now? And then, so for Ruben, the question of the nature of his family relationship to Jay, who is such a difficult father anyway, the fact that he's adopted, it helps to make the question complicated is the best way I can put it. There's a moment where he's, I'm not even, I'm not even related to this guy anyway. Why do I have to, once again, he is punishing me. He is dragging me into BS. Like, why am I putting up with this? There's no claim of blood in me.
[00:30:21] But there is, though. There's a pull. Family is different than just blood. And I think that's important, whether it's in adopted families or stepfamilies or even just strong friendships, family is a supernatural force. And I think that's part of Ruben's journey in the book too, is understanding that.
[00:30:38] Matty: I really liked the fact that in a lot of the scenes with Ruben and Jay, it's doesn't feel like a father / son relationship, it feels more like a caretaker, caretaker-ee, with Jay in a sense, being the person being taken care of.
[00:30:54] Ben: One of the things I'm most proud of in this book, which we haven't talked about yet, but it has two timelines. It's in the past and it's in the present. And in the first part, the first story, not in the book, but chronologically, Jay is middle-aged, and Ruben is 12, no, Ruben is 14. And in the present Jay is, I guess he's what's after middle-aged, before old. He's in his late middle age. She's probably in his fifties, late fifties, and Ruben is 24.
[00:31:22] And in the past, Jay is this force of nature. Very ebullient. Nonstop, affable character. And Ruben is this shy young man, teenager. And in the present, Jay is a wreck. He's fallen apart and Ruben has to rise to take care of him, to help him. And so those two portraits, father and son in past and present, I found very compelling and really interesting to think about. Like, how do you write the same person 10 years later?
[00:31:54] And also, I didn't want to give away what has happened to them, because basically the events at the end of the novel affect them both in a way that is still echoing through them. So anyway, it was just fun to think about to set them up and to see how their relationship has changed. Even though the love is still there. It's a very different kind.
[00:32:14] Matty: The last thing I wanted to ask you is a complement to both-ness and that's otherness. So you had mentioned about how Ruben is in this odd sort of out of sync with the rest of the world, being the adopted Asian Jewish boy. And I think that one of the most dramatic examples of characters who are in conflict with their surroundings is Victor in UNDERGROUND AIRLINES. So can you describe briefly Victor for listeners?
[00:32:42] Ben: Sure. It takes a moment just because UNDERGROUND AIRLINES, the premise of that book, the very dark and dystopian premise, is that we're in America, it's the present day, but in this version of America, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on his way to be inaugurated. The Civil War was never fought, and slavery is still legal in four states. So it's still legal under the constitution and still in practice. And so the novel is really, it's two things. It's a sort of very grim, dark portrait of the way that slavery might function sort of late capitalist society as we have now. And it's also a comment on the reality of America today, where the sort of echoes of slavery are still with us in so many ways. So it's that.
[00:33:23] Victor, the protagonist of that novel is himself a former slave who has escaped and been recaptured and is now working as an undercover agent on behalf of the federal government as a slave catcher. So he's a deeply corrupted individual who is doing this terrible work, betraying his humanity. And so the journey of the book is toward humanity for him, toward discovering that, his true self and a good self.
[00:33:53] But so yeah, he is at a remove from other African-Americans, from other people in the book and from his own past. He basically has to turn his back on who he is and who he was in order to do this, to stay alive. He's made this devil's bargain. So it was a tricky character to write for a lot of reasons.
[00:34:13] First, of all, because I'm white and I have nothing in my own life to compare to the experiences that he has had, although thank God no one does exactly. Although black people in this country now have experienced different things than I have, obviously. But also just because of the nature of the character is such that he's turned off his mind and his conscience and he's functioning in the world almost as an automaton, again, like a golem, doing what he has to do to live. That's at the beginning. And by the end of the book, I don't think it's a spoiler to say he has become a better person. And so a more fully realized person, which I try to show in the way that he interacts with others. And yeah, so it was a journey to write and a journey to for the character, I hope
[00:34:59] Matty: It's an interesting comparison to Jay Shenk because I was rooting for Victor before I understood in the story what his background was. And I had to keep reminding myself that he was doing a terrible thing, because at that point I was like on his side. I wanted him to succeed, even though succeeding was going to be horrible. Whereas Jay I disliked to begin with, and then I liked him more and more as I understood more that he was coming from a good place, as you had said before,
[00:35:30] Ben: It takes us back to Patricia Highsmith where like you root for Ripley. From the beginning she hooks you, cause he's on the run when somebody is chasing him and you don't know what he's done, something. But like you want him to succeed when the cops get close to him in Italy, after he's killed that guy with the oar, it's you're like, oh no, he's going to get caught. But he's just a murderer. He's just a creep.
[00:35:50] But that is one of the magic tricks that a good author can pull. It's a kind of dark magic of, tricking is the wrong word, but seducing you into rooting for a character who is doing something that is not right, because the power of good writing is such that like you're on that side. You're on that team.
[00:36:13] And then the real magic underneath that is to then take you on the journey with the character to hopefully, which is either usually a journey of redemption or of getting their just desserts. Although Ripley doesn't. He's totally successful. But Victor in my novel UNDERGROUND AIRLINES, he does turn back toward the light. And at that point, you've watched him, you've been along with him on his darker adventures. So you're ready to grow with them to change with them. And with Jay, he has his sort of his comeuppance, although it's all very murky and complicated until the end.
[00:36:48] Matty: Ben I can't think of a nicer way to end a conversation about the duality in both types of characters than with that summary. So thank you again for agreeing to be a guest on The Indy Author Podcast, and please let listeners know where they can find out more about you and your work online.
[00:37:02] Ben: Oh, I'm around. I'm on Facebook at Ben H. Winters. Oh, you know what it is. It's BenHWintersisawriter. That's my thing on Facebook. But then also I'm on Twitter. Ben H Winters. I do have a website, but I never really do anything on it. That's BenHWinters.com. And I'm yeah, you can get my books that I like to have to send people to bookshop.org which a great alternative to Amazon, or your local indie bookstore. And if they don't have the books, just ask for them. And be like, please order THE QUIET BOY. That's the best thing that you can do. Just go to a bookstore, you're like, I want this book, to be like, oh, we don't have it. Or we sold that and be like, oh, can you order me one? Because then they usually get a couple and then it's great.
[00:37:39] Or go to the library. People are always like, I'm sorry, I got your book at the library. I don't care. Get it at the library. That's great. Because then they buy it. The library buys it and then someone else will discover it who might not have otherwise discovered it. So any of those routes are available.
[00:37:51] Matty: Ben, thank you so much again. This has been so interesting and so helpful.
[00:37:54] Ben: It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
Links
From personal update:
Galley Chat with Matty and Dale - Staging the Background as Host and Guest - Here you can see the background that I use when I'm the guest rather than the host of a video. Here's the background when I'm the host.
From interview:
What did you think of this episode? Leave a comment and let us know!
