An Interview With Klavan: Crime Novels, Writing Habits, And Why Reading Dostoevsky ‘Was Like A Map Of My Psyche’

Conservative News DailyOctober 28, 2022

Ask Andrew Klavan about his work at The Daily Wire, and he wastes no time, “You’ve got to be excellent all the time, and I couldn’t be four times a week. But once a week is manageable.”

Klavan’s sharp wit is what keeps his audience laughing.

By Wednesday of each week, Klavan is working on his opening satirical monologue for “The Andrew Klavan Show” podcast which publishes every Friday. He writes and rewrites, he says, up to broadcast time.

Keeping up with political figures is a big part of his fourteen-hour workday. He consults RealClear Politics, the Wall Street Journal, Instapundit, the Daily Beacon, which in turn offer hyperlinks to other stories.

“I’m always looking for the cultural angle,” he explains.

He pores over Op/Eds from liberals and conservatives alike, which forces him to take a stroll down ‘Knucklehead Row,’ Klavan’s moniker for the Op/Ed writers at The New York Times — a publication he now calls ‘a former newspaper.’

He listens to Ben Shapiro, Victor Davis Hanson, and watches Brett Baer on Fox News. And of course he devours books, lots of books.

“The Daily Wire has been unlike any experience I’ve ever had.”

After podcasting for several years, Klavan spoke at a conservative conference. “I was mobbed — like a rockstar.”

That certainly doesn’t happen when he sends off another manuscript to his publisher.

Great Literary Writers

As an English major at UC Berkeley, Klavan dutifully bought every book his professors assigned. And kept them. What he didn’t do was read them.

He had no interest in pretentious, long-winded, ‘literary’ fiction. He did, however, enjoy reading hard-boiled detective stories, crime novels.

That all changed the day he read a William Faulkner novel. He knew he was wrong. Faulkner, and the other great writers from history he had snubbed, wrote superb books. In fact, he became so enamored with Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Dostoevsky, he began to look down on his coveted crime novels.

He even tried his own hand at literary fiction, but something didn’t quite fit. Looking back on this period of his life, Klavan says, “When I was young, I wanted to be Raymond Chandler, but during my dark period I wanted to be Shakespeare.”

An Edgar Award

As he recounts his writing journey in his memoir, The Great Good Thing, when he abandoned thoughts of writing literary fiction, he was reminded of an old Victorian era crime novel by Wilkie Collins: “The Woman in White.” He realized he could write about serious subjects through mysteries and suspense.

Out of desperation he quickly wrote his first crime novel titled “Mrs. White,” calling on his younger brother for help. When they finished, Klavan, embarrassed by writing something he still considered beneath him, decided to use the pseudonym Margaret Tracy.

And then, “Mrs. White” won the 1984 Edgar Award — the most prestigious award for crime writers — for Best Paperback Original. To win the first time out is no mean feat.

Once Klavan understood the work he was born to do was worth doing, he stopped using pseudonyms and began writing in his own name. And work he did. To date, he’s written thirty novels.

Klavan’s average workday lasts fourteen hours. Rising around 5:20am, he begins writing around 6:30am and writes for a solid four hours.

“I write and rewrite again and again. At least three ‘page-one’ drafts, but often more or more in parts. I’m a slow writer because I’m always rewriting. If I get 1,500 words of fiction or 1,000 of nonfiction, I’m happy.”

Every Story Starts With A Question

Klavan approaches each new novel with a question: What if?

For instance, for “Don’t Say a Word,” the ‘what if?’ is: What if my child were kidnapped?

Or, in “The Identity Man,” the ‘what if’ is: What if a man were offered the opportunity to change everything about his physical identity — from his face, to his fingerprints to his DNA? What would he do with such a second chance?

These are not the sorts of questions writers of suspense or crime or YA novels often wrestle with. But Wilkie Collins did, Donna Tartt does, and so does Klavan.

Dostoevsky: ‘A Map Of My Psyche’

If Collins showed him the possibilities that thrillers offer, Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” altered his view of the power of fiction altogether.

“It changed my life, and I know how,” says Klavan. “I first read it in college when I was around nineteen.

I was immersed in relativism — Foucault, Derrida. When I finished “Crime and Punishment” I remember burying my face in my hands and thinking they [the moral relativists] were wrong. Without my knowing it, Dostoevsky turned me toward God, turned the ship in a different direction.”

“When I read it again after my conversion, it was like a map of my psyche. Only after my baptism could I understand it. Now when I reread it, I can see how incredibly deep it is, but before my baptism I couldn’t