{"id":1318629,"date":"2020-03-08T22:44:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-09T04:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/following-the-outsider-finale-dennis-lehane-comes-to-aspen-winter-words\/"},"modified":"2020-03-08T22:44:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-09T04:44:00","slug":"following-the-outsider-finale-dennis-lehane-comes-to-aspen-winter-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/following-the-outsider-finale-dennis-lehane-comes-to-aspen-winter-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Following \u2018The Outsider\u2019 finale, Dennis Lehane comes to Aspen Winter Words"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Novelist and screenwriter Dennis Lehane will speak Tuesday at the Winter Words author series.<\/strong>
Gaby Gerster\/Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Novelist Dennis Lehane also has been a bard of the prestige TV era, from its beginnings on \u201cThe Wire\u201d to its latest entry, \u201cThe Outsider,\u201d which had its finale Sunday night on HBO.<\/p>\n

A master of the literary thriller, Lehane \u2014 who will give a talk on his life and work at the Winter Word author series Tuesday \u2014 is one of a handful of crime writers who ushered in the Peak TV era. Alongside authors like Richard Price and George Pelecanos, he\u2019s been the bridge between the period when novels remained at the center of the popular culture and the prestige television era, when America\u2019s proverbial watercooler conversation shifted from the bestseller list to premium cable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I was seeing \u2018Breaking Bad\u2019 when I was 20, would I say, \u2018Oh, I gotta move to LA?\u2019 Probably,\u201d he said in a recent phone interview from his home in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

But Lehane, 54, who first broke out with Boston-based whonunits in the 1990s, still believes in the novel. He\u2019s writing one now, alongside his screenwriting work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book I\u2019m writing now is different than anything I\u2019ve written before,\u201d he said. \u201cThough it exists in the world I usually stay in with the Irish political machine in a parochial neighborhood and the very tribal world of cops. So it has enough of the DNA, but it\u2019s going very slowly, and I\u2019m actually enjoying it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He estimates he\u2019s writing about a page per week \u2014 while also working on several television projects for HBO, unsure of which will make it into production next.<\/p>\n

Lehane broke out in the 1990s with his Kenzie-Gennaro private-eye series \u2014 the best-known of which is \u201cGone Baby Gone,\u201d also the first of many to be adapted into a film \u2014 about a streetwise couple working cases in his native Boston. <\/p>\n

His first five books poured out of him effortlessly, he recalled. But the next five were \u201ctorturous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI found writing novels grew increasingly more difficult as I did it, not less,\u201d he explained. \u201cI started thinking, \u2018Oh my god, I may have a finite number in me.\u2019 \u2026 It\u2019s still the best job in the world. It still beats the hell out of selling shoes, but it was getting progressively harder to do for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pace of prose slowed as he finished his initial burst of Kenzie-Gennaro novels from 1994 to 1999, and coincided with the early days of the prestige TV era.<\/p>\n

David Simon and Edward Burns recruited Lehane to join the writing team for \u201cThe Wire.\u201d His contributions would include writing the death episode of fan-favorite street tough Omar.<\/p>\n

Following the Kenzie-Gennaro mysteries, he began playing with genre in his novels \u2014 subverting and exploiting the reader\u2019s expectations of a given form. He turned to tragedy for \u201cMystic River,\u201d to gothic horror for \u201cShutter Island.\u201d He played with the Doctorow-styled historical epic in a trilogy that concluded with 2015\u2019s \u201cWorld Gone By.\u201d And, most recently, he tried his hand at Hitchcockian thriller for 2017\u2019s \u201cSince We Fell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSince We Fell\u201d does ramp up into the twisty and violent territory readers expect from Lehane, but the first 100 pages or so are mostly a character study of Rachel Childs, a woman rising in the ranks of Boston TV news while also searching for the father she never knew.<\/p>\n

Between the novels, he\u2019s worked on TV shows like \u201cBoardwalk Empire,\u201d \u201cMr. Mercedes\u201d and \u201cThe Outsider,\u201d and wrote the screenplay for \u201cThe Drop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI leaned into writing for television a little more than I might have if (novels) were still coming out easily,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Working in television writers\u2019 rooms, he believes, has led him to tighter plotting in his novels.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlot is the last thing I bring to the party when I\u2019m writing a book,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m always just wandering around with characters. Writing for television is the exact opposite. You are constantly trying to advance the story, which is in service of the character.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his novels have never been about the empty thrills of a well-plotted page-turner. His characters, from the imperfect couple at the heart of the Kenzie-Gennaro books to the tortured agoraphobic in \u201cSince We Fell,\u201d are complex humans facing awful moral quandaries and bad options. The books are full of dirty cops and children in peril and adults in crisis, but his true subject throughout has been morality. The first of his two \u201cOutsider\u201d episodes \u2014 working with Richard Price to adapt a novel by Stephen King \u2014 includes a classic Lehane scene: a long, tense and talky car ride where a morally conflicted bad guy and a morally conflicted detective subtly work out what each of them must do to save or destroy the other.<\/p>\n

His subjects are unerringly dark and grim, but leavened frequently with welcome splashes of wit and humor. It is no wonder that the film adaptations have drawn some of the best actors of our time and led to some of the most indelible performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Casey Affleck and James Gandolfini.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s taken a hands-off approach to the film adaptations of his novels, staying away from the sets and letting directors, screenwriters and actors do their work. But he has committed to only work with the best. It\u2019s been an astounding run, seeing his books adapted for the screen by Academy Award winners Clint Eastwood (\u201cMystic River\u201d), Ben Affleck (\u201cGone Baby Gone\u201d and \u201cLive By Night\u201d) and Martin Scorsese (\u201cShutter Island\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not luck,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely by design. \u2026 I only work for premium cable and I work in prestige TV, and when I work in film I work with really good people.\u201d <\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Novelist and screenwriter Dennis Lehane will speak Tuesday at the Winter Words author series.Gaby Gerster\/Courtesy photo Novelist Dennis Lehane also has been a bard of the prestige TV era, from its beginnings on \u201cThe Wire\u201d to its latest entry, \u201cThe Outsider,\u201d which had its finale Sunday night on HBO. A master of the literary thriller, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1318629","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 14:24:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1318629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1318629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1318629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1318629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}