Communiques to Mr. Lee Child by Yi Shun Lai
January, 2011
Dear Mr. Child,
I was stuck in the White Plains airport, victim of yet another US Airways flight delay, when it occurred to me that I had nothing to read.
I love airport novels. I love them for their speed, their pithy plotlines, the gems you sometimes discover in the cheap wire racks. Usually I look for Dick Francis—who knew that the British horse-racing world was filled with such crush-worthy heroes?
So I went down to the ONE rotating rack they have in the little café-cum-newsstand, and I spotted something called The Persuader on the very bottom. By you, of course. Starring a guy named Jack Reacher.
Mr. Child, I am no professor of character. But I think I am not alone when I say that Jack Reacher is probably the best fictional persona to cross my desk in a long time. And not in a washed-up detective kind of way, but more in a, “I’m a little bit broken but I like myself this way” way.
The part where he gets his front teeth knocked loose? Where he gets angry because he’s always had his teeth, and doesn’t want to get new ones? What a winner.
Thanks for a satisfying read.
Sincerely,
Yi Shun Lai
February, 2011
Dear Mr. Child,
I’m reading Die Trying. I like that you’ve made the female protagonist an able FBI agent. And I like that you’ve set part of this book in a city I know fairly well, Chicago. I also appreciate that you haven’t made any idiotic street-mistakes, like other authors have made. Come to think of it, movie directors make this mistake, too—I once watched a character bolting from 79th Street in Manhattan to Soho on foot in three minutes, and we all know that’s not happening.
I’m having an argument with a friend of mine. She’s British and she likes to read, although she’s narrower in her tastes than I am. She was very quick to peg Die Trying as a fluffy read. I don’t mind that, except that she then followed it up by saying, “I can tell by its cover,” which made me go all tingly in an angry kind of way, because, Hell-o! Don’t judge a book by its cover!
What I’m trying to get at here is, I like your covers. They’re shiny and attractive and I like the fact that you have a bullseye theme going. But I couldn’t help thinking: Does this make less of my literary skills, to read fluff?
I went looking for help. To the New York Times, specifically. I wanted to know what their reviewers thought of your books. They called them “pure escapist gold.” I’m okay with that. Books ought to help you escape, don’t you think? And Reacher is as fine a companion as any. Heck, I always know that even in a fight against six men, he’s going to find some way to head-butt at least two of them, and that he’ll always walk away with minimal damage. If reading you means I get to hang out in a world where the good guy always wins, I’ll take it.
Sincerely,
Yi Shun Lai
March, 2011
Dear Mr. Child,
I introduced my husband to Reacher. He won’t stop reading. I think this has much to do with Reacher’s propensity to lonely places in the desert/mountains/spaces-in-between. I also think this has to do with the fact that Reacher is, in his heart of hearts, a not-very-confrontational man. And it might have something to do with his penchant for righting wrongs done to innocent folks.
Anyway. Today, I went to buy Jim a Reacher book,and I discovered something: AN AUTHOR PHOTO! Of you, I mean.
Reacher looks a lot like you, I think. Did you mean for that to happen? He’s tall, you’re tall. He’s blond, you’re blond. Neither you nor Reacher looks or sounds like you’d be considered traditionally handsome. I don’t think you have a 50-inch chest, though.
I went looking for some biographical information about you after. I wondered if you were an MP, too. If you had served in the army. It says you’re British, which is interesting: How do you know so much about the US Army?
It says you never served. I’m kind of disappointed, because in 61 Hours, there’s a lot of detailed information about how to spot a suicide bomber. How does someone who never served know all that? I’ll keep on reading. You are still getting the details about my favorite cities right—I know the places in New York you’ve written about, the rare times Reacher goes there, and that goes a long way with this reader.
I can’t stop my husband now, anyway. Whenever we’re in the bookstore he asks if we’ve read this Reacher, or that Reacher…
Sincerely,
Yi Shun
May, 2011
Dear Mr. Child,
Fascinating! Although all the books tell the stories as Reacher sees them happening, the one I’m reading now is in the first person. I had to root around in my memory for a while before I realized that the first book I read by you, The Persuader, is also in the first person.
This is what I think has happened: When I read The Persuader I was just meeting Jack Reacher, so I wasn’t really invested in the fact that he was telling it from his point of view. Now, four or five books later, I’ve gotten to know him pretty well—the thing with the folding toothbrush is pretty funny, and the tree-hugger part of me cannot believe that he just throws out clothing after he’s worn it four or five days—so I’m more attuned to what he thinks, how he feels.
Cracking a book and seeing it told from the first person—from inside Reacher’s head—feels a lot like seeing an iconic work of art that you’ve only seen in photographs, in real life. Like you know, you’re visiting Berlin, and you go around the corner, and then suddenly, pow! There’s the bust of Queen Nefertiti, bright and solid and snooty-nosed, just like you’ve seen in social studies books.
Nefertiti’s bust is a lot smaller than you’d expect, by the way. You’d think it’d be just huge, after all those years of knowing it’s an icon.
Not so with Reacher. Reacher is exactly like I thought he’d be inside his head, except a lot funnier.
I think it’s really cool that you’ve chosen to switch back and forth. I think I’ll stick with the first-person ones for a bit. I like getting to know Reacher this way.
Cheers,
Yi Shun
July, 2011
Dear Mr. Child,
Really? Tom Cruise? You okayed Tom Cruise to play Reacher, after all these years of struggling to get the Reacher books made into movies?
Let’s review:
Reacher: Blond
Tom Cruise: Dark hair
Reacher: 6’ 5”
Tom Cruise: 5’ 6”
Reacher: Doesn’t know who Oprah is and couldn’t give a flying fuck, although he wouldn’t say it that way.
Tom Cruise: friend of Oprah; knows her well enough to jump on her couch. (This is something else Reacher would never do, not even if he’s high on a kite in love, like he was in 61 Hours.)
Reacher: Almost never looks in the mirror
Tom Cruise: Pretty; probably uses a lot of hair gel
Reacher: Serial two-night-stander
Tom Cruise: Serial monogamist
Both Jim and I are sorely disappointed. We probably won’t go to see the movie.
Yi Shun
August, 2011
Dear Mr. Child,
Has anyone ever told you you have a way with words? I know, that sounds so stupid, since you’ve written 15 bestsellers and, when The Affair comes out, probably 16. But I don’t just mean that you can string them together.
What I mean is that when you describe something, your readers experience it.
I’m not talking about the love scenes. There are only so many times a reader can be impressed by Reacher’s dexterity with multiple buttons and zippers, or be moved by the light behind a clean white shirt showing a fit woman’s silhouette.
I’m talking about the ordinary stuff. Reacher butts papers into neat stacks; he doesn’t just tap them back into a stack. Slow-moving security vehicles snuffle in one direction or another; they don’t troll or crawl like they do in other books. Motors pop and burble as they’re cooling down; they don’t just tick.
Do you think this is because Reacher likes to read? I don’t know where I got that information, exactly. He gives off that impression, that he’s a guy who would really consider the right words to say before committing to them.
Sincerely,
Yi Shun Lai
September, 2011
Dear Mr. Child,
Thank you so much for writing The Affair. Getting to know more about Reacher’s days in the MP feels like a missing piece materialized, even if I never knew it existed. You do wonder about a guy like that, don’t you?
Sometimes, I marvel over the idea that so many people must know Reacher as least as well as I do. It’s like Reacher’s one of those guys that has a million Facebook friends (except Reacher would never Facebook). And then I think that maybe what you’re doing yourself is getting to know Reacher book by book, as he’s presented with different situations.
And, as a fictional character, Reacher doesn’t have too much of a fleshed-out past beyond the broad strokes you’ve created for him in previous books, so writing these books that center around his past must be gratifying for you, too—you’re getting to know a whole new person, much as you’d get to know a new friend, as they choose to reveal themselves to you.
It’s as much about the way he says things, isn’t it, what he chooses to reveal to the reader, and what he chooses to hold back for another day, or maybe never.
When you first meet someone, the first thing you might notice about them, after their looks, is the way they talk. You get to know them pretty well, just by listening.
Listening to Reacher as he gets older and more experienced over the years has been like watching someone grow. Reading The Affair, seeing what he was like back then, when he was a part of something, is like understanding him better because you know what he came from.
Cheers,
Yi Shun Lai
October, 2011
Dear Mr. Child,
In the movie, you’ll have to write in fighting moves for Tom Cruise that involve pinching. He looks like that’s what he’d do best.
Yi Shun
October, 2011
Dear Mr. Child,
You’ve written sixteen Reacher books, and I’ve read 15 of them. I’m about to crack open my last Reacher, and then I will have to wait until you write another. But do you know what? I’m wondering if you’ll write someone else, another character, sometime soon.
I’ll be looking forward to seeing what you come up with next. Part of me hopes it’ll be another Reacher, and part of me hopes to get to know someone new.
Thanks for a terrific sixteen reads.
Cheers—
Your reader, Yi Shun
Yi Shun Lai is Fiction Editor of The Los Angeles Review.