For author John Grisham, there are always new stories to tell
clarionledger.com
By Billy Watkins
Nov. 11, 2011 -- It has been a happy fall season for John Grisham. His 23rd legal thriller, The Litigators, is atop The New York Times' bestseller fiction list. And on Oct. 28 the St. Louis Cardinals - a team he was taught to love by his father and grandfather - won their 11th World Series.
"Hey, how about this?" he says with the enthusiasm of a kid. "I'm in St. Louis the last week of September. The Cardinals lose a terrible game to the (Chicago) Cubs, and now they're three games behind (the Atlanta Braves) with five to play.
"I go out to dinner with (Cardinals manager) Tony LaRussa after the game. It's about 11 o'clock at night. Any other time I would've been in bed two hours. But we go to a great Italian restaurant downtown. Tony is devastated. The season, for all practical purposes, is over. I mean, mathematically they can still make the playoffs ... but they just lost to the Cubs, for crying out loud.
"So Tony shows no optimism whatsoever. But we start talking baseball trivia, and it turns into a pretty good evening. Next thing you know, the Cardinals get hot, the Braves lose out, and a month later the Cardinals are world champions.
"The book published on Oct. 25 and I had a trip to New York that sort of messed things up, so I wasn't able to make it to the Series - and I felt terrible not being there. But what an amazing ride for those guys."
The same can be said for the 56-year-old Grisham, a former Mississippi legislator. Since becoming one of the world's top-selling authors in 1991 with the novel The Firm, he continues churning out one book a year, sometimes more.
And his readers remain devoted.
Linda Cater, 61, of Meadville recently drove 200 miles round trip to buy 30 copies of The Litigators at Lemuria Books "because they have autographed copies."
"I've been doing that just about from the start of (Grisham's) career," she says. "My daughter (Natasha Temple) got me hooked on his books. Then people around town found out I always went to Jackson to get a signed copy, and they started asking me to pick one up for them. I'm still the go-to person around here for that."
"I can assure you of this," says John Evans, owner of Lemuria Books in Jackson. "At my store, when it comes to authors, John Grisham is still head honcho."
When The Firm began showing promise and Hollywood swooped in to discuss film rights, Grisham once said that he and wife Renee "just hoped we could make enough to pay off our credit cards and have a little left over."
They are now multi-millionaires who have always sought to give back. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Grishams led the Rebuild the Coast Campaign. They raised $8.8 million - $5 million coming from their own checkbook - and awarded the money to 635 individuals whose lives were devastated by the storm.
But just as he did when he wrote his first novel, A Time to Kill, in 1989 and sold it out of the trunk of his car, Grisham still rises at 5 a.m. and most mornings writes two or three pages of a new book. He repeatedly has been asked "why?" and the answer is always the same: He enjoys writing and delivering a good story.
Grisham already has completed another novel: Calico Joe, a baseball story that will publish in April 2012.
"Thinking back to high school and college, I was always comfortable writing," Grisham says from his office in Charlottesville, Va. "It never bothered me when the teacher asked us to write a four-page paper.
"I think writing is part of my DNA. I can't sing, can't play an instrument. I'm terrible in science and math, couldn't stand it in school and don't understand it now. Algebra II terrifies me. But writing has always been different. God gives all of us a certain gift. I've spent a lot of time around lawyers, seen a lot of courtroom drama. A lot of fascinating stories happen there. There is always new material to write about, new stories to tell.
"I've been able to take those stories, feed them through a hyperactive imagination, and come up with a clear beginning and middle, and a dramatic ending. And I can't really explain how I do it. It just happens."
The basis for The Litigators has been in his head for a decade or more. It is about two sad-sack lawyers, Oscar Finley and Wally Figg, who stumble upon a high-dollar case and a hot-shot young attorney who needs a job and a break from the pressures of a major firm. A longer title might have been The Two Stooges and a Harvard Graduate. Antics abound.
"It is intended to be the funniest legal thriller I've written," Grisham says. "And I believe there are some laugh-out-loud moments in it."
He originally planned to turn it into a TV sitcom. "I wrote two episodes, showed it to a few folks, got some interest from TV people. But the story began evolving into a novel. And I learned a long time ago, write the novel first, get paid for it, then negotiate the TV or film rights."
While his affection and approach to writing have not changed over 20-plus years, how his books are promoted and read certainly have.
Grisham is asked if he helped put together the trailer for The Litigators on YouTube.
"What trailer?" he responds.
The clicking of computer keys are heard over the phone, and he soon is watching the trailer for the first time.
"When you need a lawyer, you want the best," the narrator says over clips of what are presumed to be well-dressed attorneys in high-rise offices. "Consummate professionals with fancy diplomas and impeccable resumes, carrying butter-soft leather briefcases. When you need a top-notch litigator ... DON'T hire Finley & Figg!"
Grisham laughs. "That was done by Doubleday. They did a good job."
The numbers from his 2010 legal thriller, The Confession, are in: Half of the people who bought the book did so digitally. "Who knows what those numbers will be in another three to five years," he says. "Seems like everywhere you go, people are reading on a Kindle or an iPad."
Another notable change has occurred since 1990, when he and Renee built what they considered their dream home on a hill just west of Oxford off Mississippi 6. "There wasn't a tree on the whole place," he says.
Fans carrying armloads of books they wanted signed would show up at his front door unannounced. The lack of privacy eventually chased John and Renee, along with their two children, to Charlottesville where people don't bother them much.
But now, at least when leaves still adorn the trees, the house in Oxford isn't visible from the highway. And there is a gate at the entrance to the property, just in case.
It has allowed the couple to quietly return to Mississippi "probably 10 times a year now."
The kids are grown. Ty is a practicing attorney in Charlottesville, and daughter Shea teaches school in Raleigh, N.C.
Grisham seems more than content in this stage of his life.
And he always has one more baseball story to share: "I became friends with LaRussa when he read A Painted House (in 2001). He's a huge reader. Anyway, he invited me to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day in 2002 or 2003, I can't remember which. But there was a mix-up ... and I wound up catching the first pitch from (former Mississippi State star) Will Clark."
Grisham took his dad, John Sr., with him to St. Louis that day. They watched the game from the owner's suite.
"I sat with (former Cardinal stars) Lou Brock and Bob Gibson," he recalls, "and my dad sat with (Hall of Famer) Stan Musial the whole game. I don't know if I've ever seen him any happier. He told me on the way home, 'I'm ready now. They can come and take me to The Promised Land. I just spent three hours talking baseball with Stan Musial.' " |
