Does it Take a Twisted Mind to Write Twisted Stories? | from Better In Person

0:00David Foster Wallace: This episode is brought to you by the National Education Association. A new school year always feels like a fresh start. New teachers, new classmates, new opportunities. As students head back to the classroom, parents and teachers are teaming up with the same goal, to have a safe and supportive school year. Every child deserves a bright future, and together, parents and teachers can make it happen. Help your family get back to school ready at nea.org slash backtoschool. Today's episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach?

0:42David Foster Wallace: Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover things like the smartest way to book flights without planning your trip around the cheapest days to fly, or the quick math for knowing when to pay with points or just swipe your card. It's like having a travel-savvy tour guide right in your pocket to let you in on all the little known tips and tricks to avoid all the hassle and extra costs that make travel so much harder than it has to be. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, I want to share an episode today of a show that I think you're going to really enjoy.

1:19David Foster Wallace: It's from the mind of Stephen Dubner, who you probably know as the host of Freakonomics Radio. And Stephen is trying something new. It's a video talk show called Better in Person. If Freakonomics Radio is about how things work, Better in Person is about how people work. Every episode, Stephen invites really smart, accomplished, fascinating people into his living room, literally, to talk about their work, their drive, and the things that light them up. This episode that we're about to share with you is with the best-selling author Harlan Coben. Coben has a knack for turning his thrillers into hit Netflix series, and as you will hear in this conversation, that comes with a lot of hard work.

1:54David Foster Wallace: Stephen produced this special audio version of Better in Person so you can listen. But if you'd like to watch the show, just check out the Freakonomics YouTube channel. Hope you like it.

2:07Harlan Coben: I always love this question. If you weren't a writer, what would you be? And one of my friends says, a U.S. senator. I'm like, oh, please. I'd be a duvet cover, dude. I got like no other marketable skills.

2:23Harlan Coben: This is Better in Person with Stephen Dubner and Harlan Coben.

2:27David Foster Wallace: If you rate books for living, even if they turn out to be very successful, which is unlikely, it's even more unlikely that you will have enough leverage to turn your own books into films and TV shows. But Harlan Coben has done that. He has produced 12 series on Netflix. His books have sold 90 million copies. And he still seems to be at the peak of his powers. You know, I've known you a little bit for a while. And I like you a great deal. I mean, I'm just wanting to say that. Thank you. I like you a great deal. I appreciate that.

2:58Harlan Coben: Can everybody turn the cameras off for a minute? We're done. Feels very intimate here.

3:05David Foster Wallace: But. Yes. But. Wow. I love it. But. I'm a little bit edgy. And I'm edgy because I've been reading a lot of Harlan Coben. Uh-oh. Wow. You got your hooks in me because there are all these characters where they're placid on the surface, but very turbulent inside where you think something is one thing and it turns out to be another where there's some fear, unknown quantity lurking. And it has me in a state of deep, I'm not going to say anxiety. I don't feel bad. I just feel, like I said, on edge. But I want to know how you feel about making people feel that way.

3:45Harlan Coben: It's interesting. That's a different response than I usually, you know, because at the end, usually the world comes back together.

3:52David Foster Wallace: It does, to be fair.

3:53Harlan Coben: And it may not be—

3:54David Foster Wallace: At the end of each book, we're saying, yes.

3:56Harlan Coben: Yes, and I may not have happy endings. In fact, quite frequently, I like to have devastating endings. My favorite endings usually I see have their Runaway. Runaway is one of my most devastating endings. But the world's sort of put back together. and I think of it more as escapism and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. So I'm actually kind of happy about that. I do want things to linger in your head. It sounds so corny, but I still want this to be the book that you go to bed at 11 o 'clock and say, I'm just going to read for 10 minutes. Next thing you know, it's four in the morning and you're a little delirious and you're kind of happy.

4:28Harlan Coben: And it was, I call it the novel of immersion. That book you take on vacation, but you don't want to leave your hotel room because you have to know what happened. And I love as a reader, having that feeling. And the idea that as a writer, I can give that feeling to somebody makes me happy. And I hope what makes the books work and what makes the difference is it's easy to stir the mind, it's easy to stir the pulse, but it has to stir the heart. And so I have to make you care about these people in order to work. I have no interest in action movies or action things. I'm not big on violence or gore.

4:58Harlan Coben: I never have them in my books. That sort of seems always very internal from the viewpoint of the person involved in the action sequence. What do you mean by that? So in other words, it's what you are thinking. It's like as though I had just punched you in the face. It's not like his hand. It's what you are thinking. Oh, my God, this fist is flying at me. What am I going to do? That fucking hurt. That's sort of a thing. So I try to make any of the action sequence internal. When you film, it has to be complete opposite. It's external. That doesn't really interest me. When we're filming those scenes, I'm not really all that much engaged.

5:31David Foster Wallace: Has your writing changed, though, as you've been filming more and more? Do you write a little bit more cinematically now, do you think? I actually think of anything less, but definitely not more. Less cinematically.

5:40Harlan Coben: Yes. In the sense of, I just finished writing a book with Reese Witherspoon that just came out called Gone Before Goodbye.

5:45David Foster Wallace: This is your first collaboration, yes? My first collaboration. Yeah. Why did you choose now? Why did you choose her?

5:50Harlan Coben: Reese sort of chose me. So Reese came to me. By the way, usually I like to have this conversation with Reese here so Reese can say this part. Because it always sounds a braggy. So one day Reese Witherspoon called me on the phone, but that's what actually happened. Do you want to bring someone back to be Reese? Yeah, could somebody play Reese for me?

6:04David Foster Wallace: Does anybody want to be Reese? Could somebody be Reese?

6:06Harlan Coben: So Reese did. She called me. We've known each other for a few years.

6:08David Foster Wallace: Had she been in anything of yours?

6:10Harlan Coben: No, we never worked together. We're just, we fangirl and fanboy over each other and we're friends. Okay. And she said, I had this idea I want to talk to you about. And I was reluctant. I shouldn't exactly say it was going to be for a novel, but I was sort of very wary. I don't do that. I'm not that guy. There are people who are that guy. I'm not that guy. Jim Patterson is that guy. Right. He's he's he's certainly done it. But there's a lot of people who do that, love that. I'm just not that way. And I keep always saying this in my career. And you probably do the same. I go, I'll never do this.

6:36Harlan Coben: And I end up doing it. So I always thought I would never. But then again, I waited 36 or 37 or 38 books. So it's not like I was selling out early or whatever. But so Reese came and I was sort of like, how do I nicely tell Reese Witherspoon? I'm sure it's a great idea, but it's not for me. And then she tells me the idea. I'm like, oh, dang, I could do something with that. I kind of like it. And I take out a pad and we start going back and forth. And at the end of the whole thing, Reese kind of goes, are you going to do it with me? I'm like, yeah, let's give it a shot. I called my publisher. They were super excited about the idea.

7:08Harlan Coben: And, you know, the other thing with creativity we can talk about is it's always good to push yourself. It's always good to do new things. I don't care how many years you've done the same thing. I'm always looking for new challenges.

7:18David Foster Wallace: Do you ever get bored with yourself?

7:19Harlan Coben: I don't get bored, but I just like new challenges. It keeps me fresh for everything else. And I know Reese is the same way. And, you know, Reese was taking a bigger chance in a sense than I was. But both of us knew. And I said to her day one, like, okay, this can't be done like one of those celebrity books. The only hands touching this are ours. No one else is allowed in a room. No one else is allowed to see it. This has to be a priority. And to get back to your original question, we can't think about this being adapted into a movie or TV series. It may be. But I write without thinking of that.

7:49Harlan Coben: It's the kiss of death, quite frankly, I think, to write a book thinking, ooh, this is going to make a really good adaptation. But will it? A book is a book. Yeah, it would. Most of my stuff does. But if I aim for it, it doesn't work. The caveat to that is I'm willing to change everything. I don't believe in staying devoted, slavishly devoted to the text. I believe that you have to make the changes. I think the worst adaptations are the ones that want to reproduce the book. What the hell is the point of that? You want the experience of the book? Read the goddamn book. So I just worry about what's going to make a good TV series or a good movie or a good book.

8:23Harlan Coben: and I don't worry about fidelity to the material.

8:27David Foster Wallace: All right. So you and I both know a lot of writers. Just when you're a writer, many of your friends are writers. And most writers that I know of, I don't know about you, if they have the good fortune to write something that then intersects with film or TV, what happens at the end is usually heartbreak and tears and misery, usually. And then there's, you know, there's been films and Barton Fink, there are many, many stories of great writers going to Hollywood and just getting the crap beat out of them. You have had a different outcome. So let's hear about that. Let's start with the fact that I had that part.

8:57Harlan Coben: So when I wrote Tell No One, there was a huge bidding war in Hollywood. What year is this? The year was 2000, I believe. The book came out in 2001, so I would say it was 2000. And you're a name then, but not— I'm not a name. Not at all. It was Tell No One was my breakout book. I had had seven Myron Bolotar books before that. So within the community, I was a name. I was a decent seller. You were winning some awards. I had won awards. I'd won everything in the mystery awards.

9:22David Foster Wallace: And the awards in the mystery and thriller world are serious awards. They're serious awards. I don't know if people know that.

9:26Harlan Coben: The Edgar, it's like. Yes, it was a big deal, but it wasn't in terms of sales or in terms of that sort of thing. I had never hit the New York Times bestseller list. Oh, is that right? Never within sniffing distance, I don't think.

9:36David Foster Wallace: Can I ask, how did you keep getting contracts for new books if you were a mid-list author, what we call it, right? Would you have been able to stick around seven books if you were starting out now?

9:46Harlan Coben: I don't know. I doubt it. So people believed in me. So to give you an idea, my first Myron Bolotar book was a paperback original with Dell. So I got paid$5 ,000 for it. I don't want to brag. But by the fourth book in the series, I was up to$6 ,000. Overnight success. Congratulations. Tremendous. So probably part of it was that I was such a pimple on the butt of publishing. $6 ,000. And I remember, this is a true story. So my first book was a contract for those Myrons. Two books,$10 ,000,$5 ,000,$5 ,000. The second book contract, my agent says to me, I negotiated it up because they're giving you$11 ,000.

10:29Harlan Coben: They wanted to make it$5 ,500,$5 ,500. But I got them to make it$5 ,000,$6 ,000. And I go, what is the difference besides it seems like it's a later payment? He goes, it shows growth. And I'm like, if that's the idea of what growth you think I want, it was time to leave that agent.

10:46David Foster Wallace: Okay, so as you're making a whopping$5 ,000 for a book that takes you several months or a year to write, what's your family situation at this point? Your wife is a pediatrician. Yes.

10:55Harlan Coben: Was she in medical school then? No, she was already working as a pediatrician up at what was then called Columbia Presbyterian. Making big, big, big bucks as a pediatrician. No, not making big, big bucks. I had a full-time job. I had a full-time job. Oh, what's your job then? I was at a company called Club ABC Tours, which was a family travel agency that I was running, helping my grandfather run. I ran. Here's the other thing I believe. I don't believe you need to be a full-time writer. I think that that's sort of a fallacy that we have all kind of bought into. So for a long time, I worked the first eight years out of college, and I wrote at the same time.

11:30Harlan Coben: And then eventually, what I lost the job.

11:32David Foster Wallace: What are you doing for the travel agency?

11:33Harlan Coben: My grandfather was sort of aging up. My mother was there too. I was sort of, I was traveling a lot, setting up tours overseas. So this company actually was second biggest to Italy behind Perillo Tours, which I'm sure you've all seen on TV. So I would go to Italy. I would go to Rome and Florence and Venice and negotiate with hotels in my grandfather or my mother's name.

11:51David Foster Wallace: And would you write while you're traveling on these trips?

11:53Harlan Coben: I would write while I was traveling. I'd be writing at night. I'd be writing during lunchtime. This is the kick-ass portion of the program. I don't accept excuses. You don't have time to write. My favorite example is Mary Higgins Clark, who's a legendary mystery writer. So when Mary, I think she was 37 years old, had five kids. her husband died. And very next day, her, I believe it was her mother-in-law died. She's left with five children, no husband, no real financial support. She had a full-time job. She woke up and wrote from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m., then got the kids up. So don't tell me no time to write.

12:28Harlan Coben: That's nonsense. It means your life is filled with things that are more important to you than writing, in which case you're not a writer. That's fine. Move on with your life. So you can always find, in my view, you can always find time to write. It may take you 14 months instead of 12 months, but you can always write.

12:43David Foster Wallace: Did you study writing at any point?

12:45Harlan Coben: No, never. I mean, I was a political science major at Amherst College, which I took because it was all writing. It was never any test taking. So I could always write a B plus paper quickly if I needed to. So I didn't have to study for tests.

12:59David Foster Wallace: Turns out you weren't the only writer at Amherst during that time, yes?

13:02Harlan Coben: No, there was quite a few of us actually. So my freshman year, I lived next door to David Foster Wallace. Lived next door to me freshman year. What was that like? Well, it's funny because at the time, none of us sort of knew we were going to be writers. Amherst College is a fairly intimidating place back there. It was only 400 and 420 students a grade. Everybody seemed quite brilliant. It was the small Ivies, but I had gotten in because of my basketball. I was a good high school basketball player, and that's how I got in. My grades were fine. My SATs were fine, but they weren't Amherst college alone.

13:31Harlan Coben: So I was a little bit intimidated coming from a public New Jersey high school into Amherst. And I took an introduction to political science and David Foster Wallace was in my class. Dave Wallace back then. And I wrote my first paper and it got like a B or a B minus on it. I'm walking back to the dorm with David. I'm like, David, what'd you get in the paper? And he goes, yeah, I got an A. I'm like, can I just read that because I'm curious what an A paper looks like? And I read this and go, oh my God, how did I not fail? I'm going to fail out of this place so fast because I didn't realize at the time, David was the smartest human being I've ever met.

14:03Harlan Coben: And I say that in terms of, he was that kid in class that when he spoke, everybody sort of sat up and listened.

14:08David Foster Wallace: Did you see what he would later write?

14:10Harlan Coben: Did you see all of that in him then? I wouldn't say all of it, but it didn't, if you were saying to me which kid that I knew freshman year would become sort of a genius sort of writer and see things in a skewed way, it was David. He was a strange guy.

14:24David Foster Wallace: You also had Dan Brown in your frat or something?

14:27Harlan Coben: Dan Brown was also there at the same time. Was he a writer? No, none of us were really, you know, we weren't really writing back then. In fact, Dan, I think at the time was more interested in music. And we were friendly, but we didn't know each other super well. We were in the same fraternity. But we knew each other. And I remember a couple of years later, after I had already had a little bit of success, and Dan had came to me with the manuscript for Da Vinci Code. And he asked me, he said, when we're having this published, can you read it? And I was the first person to actually blurb that book way back when.

14:57Harlan Coben: And you liked it? I did. And I actually read, it was based, a lot of the theory was on a nonfiction book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which I had read. And I kind of loved that theory. I thought that book was really cool. And I thought, what a genius idea to kind of take that theory and make it into fiction.

15:11David Foster Wallace: I think for a lot of people who read your books, which are many, or people who watch your TV shows and films based on the books, you're, you know, you're a brand name. Also, your name is pretty, it's a good, Harlan Coben. It feels fake to me. It does.

15:24Harlan Coben: I know it's not. And it's also misspelled all the time. So it's not a great name. It's Harlan with an E-N or Cohen or Coben or Harlem. So I get misspelled a lot.

15:32David Foster Wallace: Other than all those problems, I like the name. So when I read your books, the wife character in Runaway is named Ingrid, but seems to be patterned to some degree on your actual wife, Anne, correct? Yeah. So I feel like Myron is the character that the average reader could easily think is a little bit like a Harlan Coben, right? We agree. Basketball, sports agent. And many of the names, maybe just because I know you a little bit and because we live in New York, many of the names have a familiarity or I feel like there's a wink in them. The names are pretty strong signals often, kind of class-wise or whatever.

16:09David Foster Wallace: So how much do you think about that? And I assume you're naming people after people you know now and again, yeah?

16:15Harlan Coben: Sometimes. First of all, I do this charity thing where if you donate, I think it's$5 ,000 now, to charities of my choosing, I'll use your or loved one's name in a book. Now, I don't take requests. Usually it's a neighbor who's mentioned once, but you could be a killer. You could be a dead body. Read my books first before you decide to do this. You know what I mean? If you're sweet old. I get these letters like, I'm buying this for my mom. She's 85 years old and likes to play croquet. okay, I'm like, she's going to be like, you know, on crack living in an alley in my book. So that's one way I sometimes come up.

16:51Harlan Coben: But sometimes it's just a feel thing. You know, it's just, you know, he's a Ken. Like I wrote one book. I don't remember. I think it's The Innocent. And I named the lead character Jeff. And somewhere along the way, it's like he's not a Jeff, he's a Will or something like that or a Matt. And I just will change. Like some people are that name. The other technique, if you will, is I have to make the names different enough so when you're reading fast, They won't have, like, if I have a Steve, I won't have a Stan. Because you're reading fast, you'll confuse them. I usually have someone who just goes by their initials.

17:23Harlan Coben: In the book I just wrote with Reese, one of the lead characters' name is Porkchop. That's a name you're not going to forget. That's a name you're not going to skim over and think of somebody else. It's also a great nickname. And he's a biker, dude. So you get right away Porkchop.

17:36David Foster Wallace: So, honestly, reading a bunch of you the last several weeks reminded me of a writer that, I don't know if you think about yourself and Tom Wolfe. So Tom was a great New York writer. Sure. I think of you as a great New York writer. They're not all New York, but there's a lot of New York in what you write. But also, he was writing these novels that were almost nonfiction books, but novelistic. But one thing that I think we all like about reading Tom Wolfe fiction was that they had the reporter's eye for detail and observation because he'd been a reporter for a long time. So when I'm reading you and I'm reading, let's say, Runaway, and there's a scene early on, something happens at Strawberry Fields in Central Park.

18:13David Foster Wallace: And the protagonist, Simon, the father of the Runaway, learns about the schedule of these singers, these kind of panhandling singers. It's just one of those moments that when you're reading, it's not the plot itself, but it's such a delicious little thing to know now. And I wonder how it works with you.

18:33Harlan Coben: Well, that one's kind of interesting. If you go right now, we walked over to Central Park, to Strawberry Fields, and we went in there. The guy's name is Davey. And he'll talk to you, by the way. Anybody who's called Davey in the book. Yeah, he kept his name. Because I was noticing when I was there that they changed on the hour. It used to be chaos. Guys would be singing over each other and fighting. And somewhere along the line, they all kind of came together and say, hey, for all of our sakes, we could all make some money off this. We have to have a schedule. And Davey still is the guy who schedules it.

19:02Harlan Coben: So the guys will come to him, and he'll text out what time they're going to be playing. And they all play watch for one hour. Now they're much more sophisticated. They all have microphones. They all have QR codes to give them donations and things like that. And so I asked one of the guys, like, how do you decide who's here? And he goes, Davey. So I went over and talked to Davey for a while. Got it. And I got all that information from Davey. What do you say to Davey? Do you say I'm a novelist? I say, yeah, I'm right. I'm a book. I notice the guy. Everyone's always willing to talk about what they do.

19:30Harlan Coben: People love to talk about what they do. And I don't know how many years ago now, I remember I met Davey over 10 years ago. And every morning when I walked my dog, I still say hi to Davey. He's there all the time, man. So say hi to him. He's a great dude. I'm one of the only writers who will tell you this. I'm a very lazy researcher. I do not believe in research for a book. If you're trying to write a book, the advice I give you is don't do any research. Do as little as possible. Fiction book, I'm hoping you're talking about. Nobles, yes. And I defend the position. Because no other writer, you know, oh, we've got to do that.

20:02Harlan Coben: You got to know that. And I do know it. But here's the reason I say that. Just two reasons. One is, you will find any excuse not to write. It's like, I'm going to write, but first, how about if I would panel in my basement? You'll do anything to avoid that moment you have to sit down and write. So research is much more fun than writing. Oh, I'm going to write a scene on Park Avenue in New York. First, I got to go to Park Avenue. I got to smell the hot dog stands. I got to watch the women walk. No, no, you've been there. You know it. You have an imagination. You have Google Earth. Write the damn scene now.

20:30Harlan Coben: Then you can go to it and look at it. Don't use it as an excuse not to write. The second thing is we've all read that fiction book, the novel, where the writer has done a lot of research and he gets lost in it. So he keeps slowing down the pace because he wants to give you the factoids. Not a problem with me because I don't know anything. You see, so that's why I recommend it. What I do try to find is the one moment that brings it all to life, like this detail you just mentioned. So I'll tell you one quick story that I think illustrates it. I used to be a member of a group called the Adams Roundtable.

21:01Harlan Coben: And Mary Higgins Clark was one of the founding members. It's been around for many, many years. When I first joined, I was the youngest member by like 80 years. But anyway, they had a conversation one time. All these mystery writers. And Lee Child was a member for a while. Nelson DeMille. Peter Straub. So it was a lot of top writers. Susan Isaacs. And the question came up of what is the scariest noise in the world? Is it a mother screaming? A baby crying? A man being tortured? Whatever. And one of the members says, no, no, no. You're all alone in the woods. In a cabin in the woods. You know you're all alone.

21:31Harlan Coben: You're all alone in the woods. All alone. You know you're all alone in the house. I'm already miserable. And from upstairs, and from upstairs, you hear the toilet flush. Right? That's the moment you look for as a writer.

21:42David Foster Wallace: I would not vote that for the scariest sound ever. Come on. Just because a toilet flushing is kind of comical. But you're there alone in a house. I know, but I'm thinking somebody really had to go. Like, you know. But no one else is at your house. I know. Could have been a squirrel. I know. You're not going to. You scare me all the time. but for some reason, a toilet gives me comfort. A scary toilet may be more of a Harlan Coben thing than a me thing, but it did make me curious. So we came up with a little game to see how his mind works. We gave him a grab bag of everyday objects to see how he might use them in a novel.

22:16David Foster Wallace: What's that?

22:17Harlan Coben: What the heck is this? Cool mint nicotine pouches. Well, okay, my guess is that it's really not a nicotine pouch. It's probably some sort of heavy dose THC cannabis. or I would find this in somebody's room who I know never smokes. Why would it be in the baby's room, for example? Or would something be in here that's not supposed to be in here? I'll tell you another example. I was once taking these kids around for Halloween with a mom. Your kids? My kids. And I was with another mom who was taking her kids and she had the, I'm looking over there, Poland Springs water bottle with her. And one of the kids spilled stuff on him so we grabbed like the water bottle to do it and she's like, you can't, it's vodka.

22:57Harlan Coben: I have him. Outed! Outed! There's a novel right there.

23:04David Foster Wallace: I knew Harlan would be good at that. Okay, back now to a slightly more serious part of our conversation. I want to talk to you about writing. I really want to know how much feedback you solicit and get and who you get notes from.

23:20Harlan Coben: Nowadays, very, very little and very, very few. So by contract, I don't think it's by contract, but I sent to my publisher at about the 100-page mark, mostly to calm them down and make sure they know I'm doing it, it's okay, it's good. I really don't want to hear any criticism at that stage, and everybody knows that because, you know, I am fragile in the sense that if you criticize me early, I'm going to freak out. Let me finish, and then you can tell me what you think might be wrong with it. But if you tell me in the middle, I'm like, oh, my God, the whole thing doesn't work. Like, you know, being a writer, still to this day, a lot of insecurity, a lot of self-loathing.

23:58Harlan Coben: Do you get stuck ever?

23:59David Foster Wallace: No.

23:59Harlan Coben: I get stuck all the time. But I learn it's part of the process. And I use it, I try making it as a challenge. What do you do when you get stuck? I just sit there and I stare until my ears start to bleed. I mean, the thing you can't do is say, oh, I'm stuck today. I'll go shopping, you know, or I'll go watch what's on TV. You have to keep staring at it. You have to figure out ways and challenges or take a walk or do whatever it's going to be. Something that will stimulate you out of that. But a lot of it also is, you know, it's like not going to the gym. You have to make yourself go to the gym.

24:30Harlan Coben: And so a lot of times writer's block is just, I just don't want to go to the gym that day. But if I don't write, I'm not a writer. So what the hell am I? I'm nothing. You know, I beat myself up a lot. I think you have to. You have to have that sort of insecurity. You have to still care. Only bad writers think they're good. We all have imposter syndrome. We all suffer through all those things. Stephen King still suffers from it. Like, he sent me a book at one point early, because this is very flattering, but he was using me as a character in the book. And he asked permission. Like, I'm going to say no to Stephen King.

25:03Harlan Coben: Like, it wasn't the most flattering thing in the entire world. But he sent me the book to read. He goes, I want to send you the book. Make sure you read it and like it. And I'm like, I could tell he's nervous, my reaction. I'm like, Steve, are you actually nervous? Like, he goes, yeah. I go, damn, so this shit never goes away? He goes, no, it never goes away. So if Stephen King still has it, I felt much better that I could still have that fear. And I think that's what keeps you, when you stop having that fear, maybe you're starting to be that writer who phones it in. I still worry every book. I'm in a panic every book, every TV show.

25:35Harlan Coben: I'm like, they're going to hate it. I'm done. I'm going to be discovered as the imposter syndrome thing comes in. And I think in my case, that fuels you. You have to let those things fuel you, not paralyze you. That's the key to writing. Any of those sort of fears, for most people, it will paralyze them. For me, it fuels me.

25:55David Foster Wallace: So this is fascinating to me because I think anybody who's ever tried to not just write a book but make anything could identify with that. I remember the best writing advice I ever got. I was going to do my first book, and a guy who'd written several books said, there will come at least one or two points in the next few months where you are convinced that you don't have a book here and that you should stop and do something 100 % convinced. That you suck. And then when I got that moment, if he hadn't told me that, I probably would have stopped. But your advice, as much as I like it and identify with it, I think sounds alien to a lot of people in the world now where so much advice is about how to life hack your way to better execution.

26:36I think that people don't want to embrace any lack of confidence.

26:41David Foster Wallace: I think people don't want to have any self-doubt. They just want to march on to the positive result. Do you have any advice for people how to embrace your inner anxiety or inner stress? Because psychologists talk about positive stress and negative stress. It sounds to me like you maximize the positive stress and make it work for you. But people don't seem to be comfortable with that in general.

27:01Harlan Coben: First of all, I think people should stop listening to any of that advice. I'm online sometimes. I can't believe the shitty advice that's all over social media and I'm publishing oh my god I could lose my I could I could go crazy all the bad advice so first of all turn off a goddamn computer I hate to not because I'm sure you'll have these people on and people are gonna be listening So I'm gonna get a lot of shit about this. I can't stand the term self-care None of us are not being selfish enough in our life. You're not thinking of you first. Yes, you are In fact, you're thinking of you so much that you keep looking in social media to find things to tell you that you're not thinking about you enough That's how much you think about you all the time.

27:35Harlan Coben: Stop it. Just get to work. Do what has to be done. I treat this job like I'm a plumber. Plumber can't one day wake up and go, oh, my God, I can't do pipes today. I just like. And every artist, I hate that term too. I like to prefer the creator or whatever else. But every person I know who produces pages, be they your most literary writer or your most commercial romance writer, they treat it like a job. They treat it as something that has to be done. And so I stopped. Just stopped listening to that advice. And how come every person I see online who talks about dating has only dated narcissists?

28:14Harlan Coben: They're never the narcissist. You never go, you know what? The problem with this relationship, I was a narcissist. No, I have dated 47 straight narcissists. Maybe it's you, honey. Maybe it's you, sir. So, you know, we just, we love these blind spots. And this is actually how I develop character as well. watching these things online and getting pissed off the way I'm at ranting at you, this can trigger something that can be a kuma book.

28:37David Foster Wallace: That was very helpful.

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31:16David Foster Wallace: A few people that we spoke with beforehand who we told we were going to speak with you, including some family members and so on, they often mentioned your wandering mind, as it's called, as a tool, essentially. And I'm curious to hear, first of all, do you agree with that? And how does it serve you well?

31:35Harlan Coben: I assume by wandering mind, they mean that I get easily distracted. And sometimes my kids will be like, oh, dad's off. So I'm always looking for what can I use? How can I use this in a story? How can I turn this around? How can I make this a writer's prompt? And ideas come to me at strange times and I have to sort of follow them out. So I can be rude company at times. I'm not the most focused, laser focused on you sometimes. And so the people who know me are sort of used to that. That's probably, I assume, what they're referring to.

32:05David Foster Wallace: But when I like, I think all of us, we try to figure out how we got to where we got, whether it's a good place or a bad place, whether we like the result or not. I try to isolate whatever the variables are, because most of us as humans, I'd like to think are pretty similar, right? We all want to be loved. We want to eat food that tastes good. We want to be protected and all that kind of stuff. But then there are these, you know, variables that really range a lot from person to person. So for me, I think as a writer, the things that I thought made me be able to do it were that I'm a trier. I'm just, you know, know, I'm going to try hard.

32:38David Foster Wallace: I may not have the most natural ability, but I'm going to try. And the other is that I'm a noticer. And I think that comes from being the youngest in a big family where I wasn't talking. When you think about you, what drives the ability to write what you do and to make the books that you write into things that millions and millions and millions of people really love? And not just because it's twisty and not just because it puts you on edge, but because it connects with them somehow. What's that?

33:07Harlan Coben: I think probably my parents and their early deaths. I mean, both of them were dead by the time they were my age. Both of them were extraordinarily bright. I think both felt frustrated by their relative station in life, decidedly middle class, seeing people. They weren't bitter, but seeing people who were, they felt probably not as smart or talented as they were being their bosses or hedge. One of the last things, my father lost his job when he was 57 and died of a heart attack at 59. And I remember him saying to me, try never to work for somebody else. Try to be your own boss. What kind of work did he do?

33:46Harlan Coben: He was trained as a lawyer, but at that time he had been like an executive, sort of in-house legal counsel for a company that did laundry services. So like when restaurants every night, somebody goes and picks up the dirty linens and the dirty sheets and things like that. I thought that was just the mafia. It might have been. Well, also my family, not my father, my mother, my grandfather, were definitely mobbed up and connected. My whole town was mobbed up. What town? Livingston, New Jersey. Livingston, oh. Oh, yeah. So part of it was that. Part of it, they were sort of ambitious. And I think all of my brothers and I think all are ambitious.

34:21Harlan Coben: I always have what I call incremental ambition. So like when I was first wanting to be a writer, I was like, I just want one day to have a book published by a real publisher. I just want to one day walk past the bookstore and see my book. Okay, two books. Just to show it wasn't a fluke. Just two books. Okay, if I could scratch out an embarrassing living, just enough so I could say, that would be great. Okay, if I could one day for just an hour skim the last slot on the New York Times, like number 15. If I could be top 10, top 5, 1.

34:51David Foster Wallace: Dayenu, dayenu, dayenu.

34:52Harlan Coben: So yeah, I kept going like that. And back in those days, the one advantage that I had was there was no internet. So like we were talking earlier about the shitty money I was making for paperback originals. I didn't know how low level I was. I thought I was the cat's ass. I had a book published by a major publishing house. I had no idea I'd be ranked number 1 ,347 ,000 today on Amazon. There was no Amazon. I thought I was pretty hot shit. You know what I'm saying? So I also had reason to just keep going on. And I was damn ambitious about the fact that I was going, and I believed that I had the talent that I was going to make it as a writer.

35:27Harlan Coben: My parents' early tragic deaths, which I've written about in essays, I think in the end, and this is not a silver lining, and I know I don't believe you have to suffer for your art, but there's no question they make me a better writer. There's no question the hard thing that we were talking about before comes from the grief that I've suffered. that in many ways, most of my books deal with parent-child relationships and that bond and what it's like to lose somebody in all these books. And I don't think it's a coincidence that I always have missing people because with missing people, there's always that hope.

36:00Harlan Coben: There's always the hope that maybe they can come back and you can be made whole.

36:04David Foster Wallace: Often not just missing, but we're pretty sure they're dead. There are dead people who aren't dead in your books.

36:09Harlan Coben: Exactly. And what greater hope? I mean, I have my recurring dream with my father is that he's alive. And there's always in that dream, like he has some issue with bills or whatever else. I'm trying to tell him not to worry about that anymore. I have money and all that. There's always a moment in these dreams. I'm so happy he's alive and he just sort of accepted. And then there's that moment in the dream when you realize it's probably a dream and you're going to wake up and he's still going to be dead. And I'm actually trying to grab onto him, like to bring him with me. And still to this day, my father died in 1988.

36:46Harlan Coben: I still have that sort of thing with my parents. In my 20s and early 30s, I did seven eulogies by the time I was 32 years old. I think I've only done one since. So that period of time was probably very informative on what I write.

37:02David Foster Wallace: So Stephen King likes to talk about how if he didn't have writing, he'd have been dead a long time ago, that it was a way for him to kind of process a lot of emotion. When I think about you, you seem so solid as a human, you know, but then when I read you, I feel a fragility in the stories and the characters and the emotions, and that's what makes it compelling. So what about you? If you didn't have this, is the writing what helps you turn of fragility into personal solidity or vice versa? Or is that all your imagination?

37:39Harlan Coben: It's a really good question. I don't know if I would go as far as Steve does. And he's had abuse, drug problems and things like that that he's been very open and honest about. And I don't know if I'd be losing my mind. But that said, I know that if I'm not writing well, my life is not in balance. So what do you need to balance in your life? Well, eating well, exercising, your relationship with your partner, your relationship with your kids, your friends, your social life, all of those things. All of those things can be great and balanced, but if my writing is not in balance, that's all going to tilt and fall over.

38:12David Foster Wallace: You also just answered a question that my daughter sent in when I told her I was talking to you today. She said, does it take a twisted mind to write twisted stories?

38:21Harlan Coben: I think it's no. I think there's one of my favorite quotes that I use is from Flabert, who says, to be regular and orderly in your real life so you can be violent and original in your work. I love that. I'm also a big guy on opposites. You can't have a left without a right. You can't have an up without a down. You can't have the darkness without that light. Most of my books take place in like suburbia or placid pools, where even one stone can make a ripple. if I'm writing that book in a churning ocean, I could throw as many rocks as I can into that ocean. You're not going to even see them hit.

38:55Harlan Coben: So you need the placid pool in order to make those ripples.

38:59David Foster Wallace: You told me that Netflix, I guess, discovered that a suburban house on a movie poster is the scariest thing around, yeah?

39:05Harlan Coben: Not scariest, but for my books, for my stuff, they draw the most eyeballs. What were the other options? Well, we have dozens. I mean, so this is a little, I'm giving you guys some Netflix inside info, I guess. Hope Netflix isn't mad. But Netflix normally has, I'd say, between 15 and 20 posters for every TV show. And you may notice this, right? You go on to the show, and one day, let's say my show's safe, it'll have a picture of Michael C. Hall. And the next day, it'll have two women. And the next day, it'll have a suburban street, a cop, whatever it is. They change it up to try to figure out, I think, your personal algorithm.

39:39Harlan Coben: And also just to see what hits you. And then they love to play this kind of game with me where they'll say, okay, guess which poster did the best. And to me, it's always a poster that has no appeal whatsoever. But it's always a house. It's always a suburban scene. Or like a gate in front of a house. Those are the things that I guess signal to people something's going to get disturbed in suburbia. And that's the appeal of my shows.

40:04David Foster Wallace: I know you're always telling your family that I'm really going to stop soon. But at least that's what we've been told. Do you really tell them that?

40:11Harlan Coben: I'm 63 years old and I'm working harder, doing more stuff than I've ever done before. I never had a month like this past month, never. But I feel lucky about that right now. I'm not ready to give that stuff up. But every year I kind of think like when I was just a writer before I had TV, I always joked I didn't really have a real job because you just make up your own hours. Now I do have meetings and things I have to do.

40:36David Foster Wallace: Do you like collaborating generally?

40:39Harlan Coben: because you seem like you like alone time i like both i mean i'm a you know i'm a i'm a right i spent most of my life alone in a room and i don't regret one day of that how many people can say that i am an introvert but i am a pretty good introvert i can fool you into not right into

40:55David Foster Wallace: not being you can get yourself up for the uh exactly then i'll go back and then you feel

40:58Harlan Coben: depleted yeah i will i do i feel depleted afterwards yeah do you think most writers

41:03David Foster Wallace: are introverts?

41:05Harlan Coben: I don't know if most are, but the ones I know, yeah. We're pretty social with each other, and they're actually fairly normal, but we do need our alone time, and we do need that time. And it works for me because, so I'm alone in a room and I'm writing, and then there is a little inkling like I'd like to be on set or be whatever, and then I go to set for two or three days. I'm like, oh my God, get me alone in a room again. So it actually feeds off each other in terms of the writing, rather than depletes me in one way or the other. Should we talk about Netflix a little bit more? How is it good for you, the Netflix deal?

41:39Harlan Coben: It's fantastic because, you know, listen, I'm a commercial writer and I say that with no embarrassment. I want to sell a lot of books.

41:46David Foster Wallace: Did you ever want to be a literary figure? Not that you're not, you are a literary figure.

41:52Harlan Coben: Every writer who's ever sat with you or you've ever talked to wants two things, more sales and more critical acclaim right i don't care who you are every writer who denies that's a liar oh i don't care about sales i only care bullshit bullshit i only care i don't care if all the reviews are crappy i sell some books bullshit everybody it's human nature so let's stop pretending with that bullshit i am the berkeley tree in the woods if a tree falls and nobody hears this make a sound if i read a book and no one hears it you know that's when When people say to me, I want to write but only for myself, that's like saying I only talk to only myself.

42:26Harlan Coben: It's fucking nonsense. That's therapy. That's not writing. How does it relate to Netflix? Netflix is in 190 countries. I didn't even know there's that many countries. I think there's only 195. Not in like three, like North Korea and two other places like that. 190 countries. Over 300 million families subscribe to it.

42:45David Foster Wallace: You led Netflix in minutes watched. That's correct.

42:47Harlan Coben: Like, Fool Me Once was the number one show in terms of viewership that they had. Number one. I'm very proud to say that. Congratulations. Thank you. It's remarkable. But that's like 100 million families watched it, all eight episodes in the first 90 days.

43:01David Foster Wallace: Do you ever try to picture what they look like in mass? No.

43:05Harlan Coben: I don't have that kind of imagination.

43:06David Foster Wallace: Do you think much about what the effect is? Not the effect necessarily that you're having, but just what the effect is of that mass of an audience? Because honestly, there aren't that many things in the world that unite that many people.

43:19Harlan Coben: No, but I'm happy for it. I'm grateful for it. It's such an honor and privilege, just the other side of this thing. And I don't want to sound Pollyanna. But what you do and what I do, that people will listen to you and choose that out of the zillions of podcasts. They counted as zillions of books. You walk into a bookstore. There's thousands of books that you pick mine or you go on Netflix and you pick my show. That's a responsibility. I take very seriously. If you're disappointed, I'm upset. with myself. I'm not happy.

43:46David Foster Wallace: I really want to try your wandering mind again. I think we've got you in a nicely agitated state. Oh, geez, here we go. This time, Harlan pulls out a baby monitor in the form of a sock. He is a good sport, but I sense he is starting to hate

44:00Harlan Coben: this game. Part of the problem with this is you're kind of making it seem like something that's magical or that I snap like this. It's sitting around staring at the wall for hours on end. Take your time. Sit and stare at that. What is that? What the fuck is a dream sock? Am I allowed to curse on this? FDA cleared smart baby monitor. Okay, so this, see, this I would think about how I could make this, like, be tracking somebody or it would match up to somebody else or imagine you put the sock on your child in the middle of the night and then when you wake up, the pulse is going, but it's not on your kid's sock anymore.

44:36Harlan Coben: See, there you go. Right there, we have some kind of story. It's like the baby monitor. Like, I always think, What if I heard something weird over the baby monitor that I wasn't supposed to hear?

44:45David Foster Wallace: So wait, who's the sock on if not my kid now? I don't know.

44:48Harlan Coben: That's going to be the mystery. Come on. You've got to read 350 pages before you kind of find out where that is or why someone's messing with you.

44:56David Foster Wallace: That was fantastic. All right, last question. You're writing a play?

45:00Harlan Coben: I am. I'm trying to write a play. I've been commissioned by a group in London on the West End. And their pitch to me sort of was interesting. Mousetrap has been playing for 73 years. we need a new thriller or a new mystery. And at first it was one of those where I had no idea, no thoughts, no nothing. And then I had the first scene. This is something that works.

45:20David Foster Wallace: Give us something.

45:21Harlan Coben: I'm not going to give you that. But I gave them the first scene and they were like, ooh, that's good. And I go, that's all I got. And then I went home that night. I like literally had the rest of it by the next morning. That's happened to me twice in my life. Lazarus too.

45:32David Foster Wallace: I don't understand how a mind like that works. I'd like to have a mind like that.

45:37Harlan Coben: I think, right? But it's all I do. Like other people wake up and they have to do their jobs and go about their business. No, this is all I do.

45:44David Foster Wallace: I got nothing else.

45:45Harlan Coben: That's it. So this is why you're good at it.

45:47David Foster Wallace: I have nothing else. I don't know, but I don't come up with like a play in the morning and it's done by the evening. I've never done that. Well, the idea is.

45:52Harlan Coben: Now the hard part, I got to do it. The hard part is writing. Ideas are not that hard. But the hard part is, as you know, is the actual. You've written enough books to know. You gather all the information. That's kind of fun. And you're trying to organize it. That's kind of fun. But only writing counts as writing. everything else is flotsam and jetsam.

46:09David Foster Wallace: Can I just say, I'm very happy for you. Thank you, man. Happy for you. I think it's obviously a great career, but I also think you're kind of an inspiration. Thank you. But also, I just don't sniff a bit of cynicism in you. And I really appreciate that because I think when you're successful at something, you can start to take for granted. Like, well, of course I was going to be because everybody else sucks. And I don't sense that in you. So thanks. Thanks, pal. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.

46:33Harlan Coben: Thanks. Thanks, everybody.

46:35David Foster Wallace: Arlington.

46:39David Foster Wallace: I hope you enjoyed this audio edition of Better in Person with Harlan Coben. But remember, this is a video show. And if you're only listening, you are missing out. You can watch this episode of Better in Person on the Freakonomics YouTube channel or on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback is always welcome. Our email is radio at Freakonomics.com. We will be back soon right here with more Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself. and if you can, someone else too.

47:09Harlan Coben: It's hard to capture my raw animal magnetism in photography. Good luck, guys. You have your jobs really cut out for you today.

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