Baldacci under scrutiny

I read and re-read this Sydney Morning Herald interview of David Baldacci and damned if I don’t  keep arriving at the conclusion that Daphne Guinness, the interviewer in question, doesn’t really care for the author very much. Maybe it’s exchanges like this:

At this point, if he were a character in _Hour

Game_, he’d be obscenely sliced and gutted by a hooded killer,

and his alter ego Sean King, ex FBI, with his partner Michelle

Maxwell, ex FBI, (and alter ego of Baldacci’s wife, Michelle) would

be hot on the trail of whodunit.

So yes, Sean King is Baldacci, and Maxwell is Michelle. What an

interesting marriage that must be, although in the book they are

simply “becoming” romantic. Baldacci laughs.

As for the vivid sex scenes, he says he’s been married 14 years,

he has kids, but “I’ve certainly had relations in the past and I

know the nuts and bolts of it, if you will”. More laughter.

He is so upbeat you could kill him. Of course with sales of 40

million books worldwide, the improbability of not being successful

is enough to make anybody heave with merriment.

Or others like this:

Baldacci is a chatterbox. Imagine him at a dinner party, guests

drooling over his words, the coq au vin congealing, his hostess

getting madder, his wife sending signals to shut up and he still

tick-tocks over Hour Game‘s autopsied bodies (“Never passed

out at the sight of one but I passed out at my wedding”). Or the

wildly long SUV car chase (“I was on pure adrenalin writing that”).

Or the pole-dancing (“I researched that giving a speech in a strip

club”).

Suddenly our interview becomes a writing class. He holds them

from time to time. Dialogue, he says, is the hardest thing to do.

“It’s not connected dot style, not A-B-C-D-E-F-G, it’s A-TO-D-

BACK-TO-C-OVER-TO-F, that’s how people talk.”

And: “Staring at a blank screen for hours is not productive. Go

out play tennis, do some gardening, because real writers think

about it regardless.”

And keep chapters short. “You control the reader more.” Whoa! Is

he a control freak? “You need to be sometimes. My wife controls

some things because she is better at them than I am.”

Hard to say, but it seems she’s got a problem with his endlessly cheerful personality or something. Very, very strange.