Block in the Telegraph

My tendency to scrutinize author interviews has, naturally, gone into hyperdrive since I started interviewing them myself. So my inclination, upon reading William Leith’s interview of Lawrence Block in the Telegraph, is to shrug my shoulders and move on. There’s a lot of the same old–the early biographical info, the impetus for Bernie Rhodenbarr–but then along comes something I didn’t know. Should I slap my forehead and cry, “well duh!” or has this never been brought up in print, or at least not in a very long time?

People often think that Matt Scudder, an ex-cop and the hero of 15 of Block’s novels, is an autobiographical character. After all, both Scudder and Block were 35 when Scudder made his first appearance, in The Sins of the Fathers. When Block stopped drinking, several years later, Scudder stopped drinking too. One of the most interesting things about Scudder is that he has nothing – no authority, no status, no gun, no proper home. It’s not so much that he fights crime as that he “does favours” for people. His main talent is his power of observation.

“Scudder’s changed and aged over the time I’ve written about him. I had no idea that would happen. I thought he would stay the same. That just didn’t happen. The most dramatic change is when Scudder stops drinking.”

Block says he renounced the bottle “a bit before Scudder did. I don’t really talk about that.” Still, if you want an eloquent, painful depiction of a man trying not to drink, read Eight Million Ways to Die. “The urge to drink went away after a few minutes,” he writes, as Scudder. “Then it came back and then it went away again. It came and went for the next hour, winking on and off like a neon sign. I stayed where I was and watched the rain.”

I dunno, I just figured he was a good writer and had enough friends and sources to talk to and that’s why Scudder’s battle with alcoholism is believable. Learn something new after all…