Andy Martin - Reacher Said Nothing

1 Cover

2 Front Matter Reacher Said Nothing Lee Child and the Making of Make Me Andy Martin polity

3 Author’s Note AUTHOR’S NOTE 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.

4 Foreword FOREWORD 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. At first I found it irksome – writers are usually solitary, and the act of creation is intensely insecure and personal, and I didn’t like the idea of him seeing imperfect or half-finished sentences. But I got used to it, and eventually – Stockholm Syndrome, probably – I came to enjoy it. I felt that together we were placing something in the record. Not just about me, I hoped, but my peers and colleagues collectively. My genre is packed with talent and invention, and people in it work really hard, with passion and ferocious intelligence – as opposed to the lazy trope that we ‘churn it out’, as if mechanically or formulaically. I hope this account makes that point. I’m one of many working writers, and we all do it differently, but really we all do it the same – we start with a blank page, we fill it with words, then hundreds of pages more, and they have to be the right words in the right order. This is the story of some of those words. I don’t remember exactly how many there were, but I bet Andy does. Lee Child New York 2019

5 E-Face

6 1 The End

7 2 Chapter One

8 3 That John Lennon Moment

9 4 Chapter One (Continued)

10 5 Finally, Chapter One

11 6 Exit Keever

12 7 Enter Reacher

13 8 Fuck You, Lee Child!

14 9 The Song of Reacher

15 10 The Launch (Barnes and Noble, Union Square, September 3)

16 11 Then Reacher Stepped off the Train

17 12 Mother’s Rest

18 13 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (lunch with Lee and Joel)

19 14 On The Money

20 15 The Quixotic Matador

21 16 An Objective Report Concerning the Relative Standing of Dr Lee Child and Dr Andy Martin

22 17 A Child is Born

23 18 The Story of the Blind Woman

24 19 Long Beach

25 20 Underworld

26 21 The Stony Limit

27 22 No X, No Y

28 23 At Last, the whole Point of Reacher

29 24 The Great Coffee Contest

30 25 One Thousand Words

31 26 Christmas Goodwill

32 27 Lee Child’s New Year Resolution

33 28 Half a Bottle of Bourbon

34 29 The Stitch-Up

35 30 Never Go Back

36 31 My Life of Crime

37 32 Shane: A Footnote

38 33 The Thaw

39 34 Only a Matter of Time

40 35 Reacher in Translation

41 36 A Theory of Everything

42 37 Morpheus

43 38 Biographeme

44 39 Metamorphosis

45 40 The Big Reveal

46 41 The Naming of Names

47 42 The Quiller Memorandum

48 43 On the Couch

49 44 On the Couch (Continued)

50 45 Why the works of Lee Child are really quite useful

51 46 A Deal’s a Deal

52 47 End of the Third Movement

53 48 Quoth He

54 49 The Old Cemetery

55 50 Home Invasion

56 51 Knowledge by Description

57 52 They Think it’s all Over

58 53 Also Sprach Lee Child

59 54 Two for the price of One

60 55 Allegory

61 56 Reacher Visits a Bookstore

62 57 Thursday, March 26, 2015

63 58 Has Lee Child done his Research?

64 59 Maigret Et Moi

65 60 Napoleonic

66 61 Gardening Tips

67 62 Wittgenstein on Sixth Avenue

68 63 The Proposal of a Romantic Novelist

69 64 Where is the Pipe?

70 65 Stairway to Heaven

71 66 Risen Again

72 67 The Baldacci Program

73 68 On the Sofa

74 69 The End is Nigh

75 70 What’s it all about, Then?

76 71 No Exit

77 72 The Opposite of the Cern Large Hadron Collider Approach

78 73 Time-Lapse Photography of the Penultimate Chapter

79 74 Bombshell

80 75 Cliffhanger

81 E-Log

82 The Last Word

83 About The Author

84 End User License Agreement

1 Cover

2 Table of Contents

3 Begin Reading

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