Chris Lynch

BIO

Chris Lynch is the Printz Honor-winning author of FREEWILL and other highly acclaimed young adult novels, including GOLD DUST, ICEMAN, GYPSY DAVEY, and SHADOW BOXER, all ALA Best Books for Young Adults. He is also the author of Extreme Elvin, Whitechurch, and All the Old Haunts. Lynch holds an M.A. degree from the writing program at Emerson College. He lives in Scotland, and continues to work on new literary projects.

INTERVIEW

TBR: Your BLUE-EYED SON series includes three novels (MICK, BLOOD RELATIONS, and DOG EAT DOG), and covers several eventful and violent months in the life of a 15-year-old Irish-American named Mick. Did you originally plan to write a trilogy, or just one book about Mick? Why did you decide to stick with the character over several books?

CL: No, BLUE-EYED SON was not planned as three books. It was planned as four. Three and four got surgically altered into DOG EAT DOG. The reason I decided to go with the same characters over several books was that I wanted to take a shot at doing series, but nothing I saw in the series world appealed to me much. I personally love the serial idea, building some tension and revisiting our players in stages over time. I just think the form provides a wonderful playground for a writer to go exploring with his people, and for a reader to get invested. I still feel strongly about the concept, and would like to do it again some time.

TBR: Your characters have difficult --- and sometimes downright terrible --- home lives. For instance, the title character of GYPSY DAVEY is cared for by his older sister, not his mother, then winds up caring for another neglected child; BLUE-EYED SON Mick is beaten by his older brother and ignored by his alcoholic parents; and even Gordie of the more light-hearted POLITICAL TIMBER is the grandson of a crooked politician who has gone to jail.  Because of their troubled lives, your characters exhibit distinct violent streaks. Are these angry, often brutish heroes typical of American boys?

CL: I don't try to examine the why's too closely before I write something, because I don't want to risk setting myself an agenda. I want to tell realistic stories, which I think come with their own messages built into them without my having to preach. Specifically the issue of substance abuse --- like violence, or racism --- is a fact of our lives, and the only way I can contribute anything is merely to chronicle the facts of lives as I see them. I do believe the fallout of lives riddled with intoxication is overwhelmingly ugly and painful. So I believe if you read the story you may very well see that. If you do, great. If you see something else, I'm very interested to learn what that is, but I'm not about to tell you that you should see it otherwise. In a nutshell, I think a brutal story tells itself, and there are some brutal stories within my stories. My characters tend to do more damage to themselves than to anyone else.

TBR: In each of your novels, a young man finds the need to be physically tough against his violent peers. They often witness or commit extreme brutality against humans and animals, as when ICEMAN'S Eric kills mice or BLOOD RELATIONS most evil character sics his dog on a small goat. Do you think your characters are extremes, or are they typically confrontational? Is there any way for a boy to "avoid" fighting?

CL: I wouldn't say that angry, brutish heroes are typical of American youth. But I would say the same violent elements that visit my characters' lives are not uncommon to my readers' lives. And all the stories are different. Mick, for instance, is a product of an overtly violent upbringing, of a belief system in which fear and insularity ferment into mindless violence. The whole story grows out of the fact that Mick's capacity for growth outstrips the strength of the forces that would keep him backward and ignorant. Eric, in ICEMAN, on the other hand, is a basically reserved kid, who has these antisocial explosions out of an inability to express his emotions properly. He has not been coached in violence the way Mick has, but he has been taught how to bottle up and burn inside. And that can be equally dangerous. If there is a shared vision they both glimpse, it is the notion that "There is a better way than this, boys."

TBR: Speaking of violence, your heroes tend to release their pent-up anger by playing football, working out at a gym, or running. Do you see sports more as a way of staying in shape or as a way to "safely" express hostility?

CL: I have a very complicated relationship with sports. As Duane says in ICEMAN, "As soon as an athlete starts thinking about the meaning of sports, he becomes useless as an athlete." I think a lot of nonsense has become attached to sports in the era of the 100 million dollar contract and the concept of being a winner because of endorsements, rather than because you've won something. Having said that, though I believe participatory sports are spectacularly beneficial for young people. I think it's a healthy outlet for--- not violence --- but energy. There actually are some fairly useful life lessons to be gained from  competition and teamwork, in addition to the priceless physical and  psychological benefits that come from running around, jumping, falling, banging into things, getting exhausted. I wish the highest-profile athletes would spend more time talking about the joy of doing what they do, rather than the burdens of superstardom.  
      
TBR: How do you think teens today can avoid violence?  

CL: There are loads of ways to avoid violence. Unfortunately, to be an adolescent male in America in this era, it probably doesn't always look that way. I think there is a big piece of young men that wants to be bigger and stronger and harder than everybody else and that, if so, there will no longer be any problems in life. I don't think this is because all these guys want to kill each other. I think it's simply because they all want the security of knowing that nobody's going to mess with them. There's just no simple solution like that. All you have to do to know that the He-man theory of survival doesn't fly is, look at Mike Tyson. He may very well be "the baddest man on the planet." Yet there are not one, but TWO people out there in the world who knocked him out. There's always somebody. So we'd do a lot better to work out our getting-along skills. RESPECT, is a good start.

TBR: Since 1993, you've published eight books. Many of these stories are set among Irish-Americans in your home town, Boston. Are the novels semi-autobiographical? Or do you simply prefer to write about the streets and schools of the city you know best?

CL: All my books probably have some element of autobiography, even if it's nearly invisible to the naked eye. Because I believe writers do their most penetrating work when they are writing about the people they know most intimately. So my characters --- while they are all jumbles of lots of different folks --- tend to have fragments in them of myself or people I've known very well. As for the settings, I do feel confident using Boston --- or more likely a Boston-like fictional city --- as a backdrop. I feel I know my way around. As I spend more and more of my life away from Boston, my settings will likely broaden.

TBR: You always use a first-person point-of-view in your novels; GYPSY DAVEY (1994) is your only experiment in alternating between a first-and third-person point of view. Do you find that readers would rather hear a personal account from an "I" narrator than an impersonal account about" a character?  
      
CL: I do experiment with other approaches, especially in short stories, but for the most part when I start a book I lean toward a voice that moves me, that I feel strongly about. As this happens most with a first person narrator, I am inclined to conclude that what is speaking to me powerfully will also speak to a reader that way. Intimacy, I think is the thing we get from a first person narrator, and I think, yes, intimacy is a thing I very much want to achieve. Especially if the surface action is very physical, or chaotic, I want the internal life of the character to make sense to the reader.

TBR: Girls don't play major roles in your novels, except as your heroes' mothers or girlfriends. Why do you focus on such a male-dominated high-school and adult world? Is there any chance that you would write about sports from a female point-of-view?

CL: I find myself writing more and more about the female characters in my books, to the point where it is possible a female will be the lead character eventually. However, this coincides with my writing less about sports, so while it is possible I would write a book set in the world of women's athletics, it's more likely that I'd write a female protagonist who had other primary interests.

TBR: Your characters are reminiscent of other male heroes of film and literature. As I read MICK, I thought of Holden Caulfield in A CATCHER IN THE RYE, and when ICEMAN'S Eric takes an interest in funeral directing, I thought of the movie "Harold and Maude". What authors and artists do you emulate or admire?

CL: I know almost nobody who has not been influenced by Salinger. So let's get that one out of the way. Yup. Also, F. Scott Fitzgerald is for me a haunting writer, very emotional and accessible underneath the glitz. Richard Ford is my favorite contemporary writer. He just speaks to me like nobody else. Joan Didion, Sherwood Anderson, Arthur Miller, Tennesee Williams.

TBR: What are you reading now?

CL: I was reading THE DRAGON CAN'T DANCE, by Earl Lovelace, and loving it --- until I left the book on an airplane. I am very upset about it because I was just getting into it, and I had to order the book from the States over the Internet. Now I have to do it all over again. So now I've switched to COMMON GROUND by J. Anthony Lucas. It's nonfiction, about the turmoil in Boston over school desegregation in the 70s. I find I read a great deal of nonfiction, especially biographies, as they really have all the great story elements that make reading fascinating, while they are small history lessons at the same time.

TBR: What are you working on now?

CL: I finished two books over the last several months, EXTREME ELVIN --- which is the sequel to SLOT MACHINE, and WHITECHURCH --- which is a new novel-in-stories that is written in a WINESBURG, OHIO style, but very contemporary. Starting Monday I'll be working on my new novel which I cannot quite describe at this early stage. My books don't take on recognizable shape until later on in the process.

ARTICLE

If you haven't heard of Chris Lynch yet, listen up --- Chris Lynch is a YA writer with an edge. His books are primarily about teenage boys who deal with all kinds of heavy stuff, from tough home lives to racism. Their lives are not easy, and Lynch says, neither are many of yours. Our writer, Nathalie op de Beeck, interviewed Lynch and found out more about him and the characters he writes about. You'll meet fifteen-year-old Mick from the BLUE-EYED SON series, and Eric from ICEMAN. Lynch also explains how he thinks teens can avoid violence, the benefits of sports, possibly writing a book with a female main character, and how much he was influenced by J. D. Salinger.

© Copyright 1997-2008, Teenreads.com. All rights reserved.

Back to top.