Reacher Said Nothing. Andy Martin

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Название Reacher Said Nothing
Автор произведения Andy Martin
Жанр Языкознание
Серия
Издательство Языкознание
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781509540860



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      Andy Martin (left) with Child Photograph by Jessica Lehrman

      To all those loyal readers of Lee Child who may have bought this book by mistake

      Samuel Johnson

      quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson

      I think I read in at least two ways. First, by following, breathlessly, the events and the characters without stopping to notice the details, the quickening pace of reading sometimes hurtling the story beyond the last page – as when I read Rider Haggard, the Odyssey, Conan Doyle and the German author of Wild West stories, Karl May. Secondly, by careful exploration, scrutinizing the text to understand its ravelled meaning, finding pleasure merely in the sound of the words or in the clues which the words did not wish to reveal, or in what I suspected was hidden deep in the story itself, something too terrible or too marvellous to be looked at.

      Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

      All the conversations in this book are real. Some of them got compressed. The names are real too (unless they are actually fictional). In the interests of authenticity, any modifications are minimal. The timeline is as faithful as I can make it. The quotations from Make Me are as I originally heard them or read them – they don’t always correspond exactly to the text as it finally appeared. But they have an archaeological value.

      Some authors don’t read their reviews, but I do. I like to get a sense of how my books are being received, and I like to map out the reviewer landscape, in terms of who responds to what, or doesn’t, and who is generous and who is mean … above all, I suppose, I like to see who gets it, and who doesn’t.

      Years ago I was reviewed in the UK newspaper the Independent, by a guy named Andy Martin. It seemed to me he got it. He called Reacher ‘a liberal intellectual with arms the size of Popeye’s’, which delighted me. He reviewed another book, and then the Independent sent him to New York to do a feature interview with me. He turned out to be a fun guy, into Sartre, Camus, Bardot, surfing, and a dozen other things. The interview came out well, and we remained friends.

      That’s the good news. Then I got a message from him – it’s right here in the prologue – proposing a harebrained scheme, whereby he would write a book about me writing a book. Which would involve him physically watching me write it, for months and months, and discussing it as I went along. Normally (although this had never been done before, so really there was no ‘normally’) such a venture would be considered ahead of time and possibly agreed, in which case it might be booked in a year or so in advance.

      But I got the message only days before I was due to start writing that year’s instalment. So I didn’t get time to mull it over. If I had, I might have said no. Instead I said, OK, but you better get here before Monday. And he did, and what you’re about to read is what came of it.

      Lee Child

      New York

      2019

From: andymartinink
Sent: 22 August 2014
To: Lee Child
Subject: Wild Idea
From: Lee Child
Sent: 23 August 2014
To: andymartinink
Subject: Wild Idea

      Very interesting idea. Much to discuss. Detailed answer Tuesday from New York. Lee