When James Patterson was 18 he read James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Henry James and other literary greats while working shifts at a mental hospital near Boston. He remembers being a "literary snoot" at the time, but today still dreams of winning the Nobel prize for literature. Then reality bites as
Last week, James Patterson said white male writers were victims of 'racism'. He's changed his mind
By Sarah Baxter
The Times·
9 mins to read
Dolly Parton and James Patterson discuss their new book Run, Rose, Run at SXSW in Austin, Texas on March 18, 2022. Photo / Getty Images
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His grandmother had a saying: "Hungry dogs run faster." It propelled him to the top of the advertising business in his thirties as the youngest creative director and chief executive of J Walter Thompson in New York. The Mad Men era was drawing to a close when he joined, although women were still barred from the executive dining room. Patterson brought a young swagger and rock'n'roll sensibility to the business (he was at Woodstock in 1969 and was an usher at the Fillmore East, where Jimi Hendrix played).
It was in advertising that Patterson also developed the spirit of collaboration that has helped him to create a billion-dollar thriller-writing word factory. He cites Lennon and McCartney and Simon and Garfunkel as examples of the creative power of working together. Having begun writing on his own, he now composes detailed 60 to 80-page outlines of novels and invites others to flesh out the story and characters. More recently he has taken to partnering famous people.
In Parton he recognised the same drive he had as a child to overcome hardship. The country star has written a song for him, New Old Friends, and will star in the film version of their novel. Could it be the movie triumph he has been longing for? "Just once," he writes, "I'd like to stand up and cheer for one of my books on the silver screen."
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There have been many adaptations of his thrillers, including two Alex Cross films with the great Morgan Freeman, but they never quite delivered. In these censorious times it is astounding to think that his success as a young white author was founded on the character of a black detective.
"I just wanted to create a character who happened to be black," he says. "I would not have tried to write a serious saga about a black family. It's different in a detective story because plot is so important." Patterson has not had much push-back. "I get it," he adds. "How could we run through that period, especially in Hollywood, where there was all this talent and nobody got hired?" Today, though, he worries that it is hard for white men to get writing gigs in film, theatre, TV or publishing.
The problem is "just another form of racism. What's that all about?" he muses. "Can you get a job? Yes. Is it harder? Yes. It's even harder for older writers. You don't meet many 52-year-old white males."
(Since this article was first published, Patterson has walked back these comments. "I apologise for saying white male writers having trouble finding work is a form of racism," Patterson wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. "I absolutely do not believe that racism is practiced against white writers. Please know that I strongly support a diversity of voices being heard — in literature, in Hollywood, everywhere.")
Patterson disapproves of actors and public figures spouting off ignorantly about subjects they have gleaned off the internet, but says, "I'm almost always on the side of free speech." He was appalled when staff at his publisher, Little, Brown, staged a walkout over the publication of Woody Allen's memoir. "I hated that," he says. "He has the right to tell his own story."
"Do I know what went on between Allen and the Farrows?" he asks in his memoir. "Nope. And neither do you." I am surprised when he tells me he is diving into the celebrity cesspool with a book on Princess Diana, Prince William and Prince Harry co-written with the journalist Chris Mooney. The blurb suggests it could be quite syrupy ("Even after she's gone, her sons follow their mother's lead — and her heart").
"I would never have done a book about Diana as a princess," Patterson says. "This is about her as a mother and the effect of the Crown on her sons." He is fascinated by the clash of freedom and duty.
"Harry has said at a certain point, 'I can't do this thing,' and William has said, 'I can do this thing.' For these two men there's all sorts of pressure to act in a certain way. Being a second son it is probably a little easier for Harry to say no."
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He was drawn to the subject because of his son, Jack, now a banker in his twenties, whose reluctance to read inspired Patterson to write young adult fiction. "Being a son of anybody famous is hard, but you can walk away from it and find your own path. For William and Harry it's really tough."
On the day we meet, Patterson is about to see the new Downton Abbey film with his wife. Anna and Mr Bates are his favourite characters, perhaps because their storyline involves murder and rape. Patterson's thrillers usually open with a gory crime scene — "I start with a bang and keep banging," he says — but no, he enjoys Downton as "high-class soap".
He says of his wife, "Sue is more of a guy than I am. I'm more of the girl in the relationship." Next up is Top Gun: Maverick at the weekend. He is starstruck by Tom Cruise and has carried the actor's hand-scribbled phone number in his wallet for nearly 20 years (they met to discuss film projects: "He had me at hello"), but says that Sue is the bigger Top Gun fan. "I like women and women characters. I find men to be a little too monochromatic. They talk about money, sports and cars."
The most moving scenes in his memoir relate to Jane Blanchard, his first love, who died from a brain tumour at 39. They were together for eight years while he was fighting "the battle of the burger" advertising wars on behalf of Burger King, climbing the corporate ladder and finding success on the side as a novelist. He was with her when she died. "I was wildly in love with this woman who had to use a walker and had clumps of hair sprouting all over her head," he writes.
Like in Sleepless in Seattle, 1500 women wrote to Patterson when they learnt he was single, but it took him a decade to find love again with Sue, a former art director at J Walter Thompson. They fall asleep holding hands every night. "If Sue ever leaves me, I'm going with her," he writes. Is he an incurable romantic? He is sentimental about his friends Bill and Hillary Clinton, who live down the road in Chappaqua. "You know, I like them a lot," he says. Bill signs off every phone call to Hillary with "I love you" and holds hands with her under the table at restaurants.
Patterson is plotting a new project — a movie or TV series — about the CIA with the former president. Long before the rest of the world was interested, in 2016 he wrote a damning book about the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Filthy Rich. A touch defensively, Patterson says that most of the famous friends Epstein had in his Rolodex — including Clinton — would not have known about the billionaire's antics.
"I know they didn't know," he says. "Why would Epstein tell people? Is it possible there were a dozen friends who knew? Yes, it is likely. I'm not saying Prince Andrew per se was one, but he may have been. Is it possible somebody said, 'We are not going to have this guy [Epstein] around to testify? Yes, but it is just as possible that he killed himself."
Patterson has a ready-made title for a sequel about Ghislaine Maxwell, "Filthy Bitch". It's uncharacteristically caustic for him, although he also lays into an unnamed British writer of a similar vintage to himself known to be "horrible" on US book tours. "You can guess who," he says correctly.
Yet he has no interest in tackling Maxwell's story. With millions of books sold, the only projects that interest Patterson are ones where he can say at the end, "I'm glad I've done that."
• James Patterson by James Patterson is published by Century
Written by:
Written by: Sarah Baxter
© The Times of London
© The Times of London
