Robert Lamb, Writer

Q. What led you to writing as a career?
A. When I was about 10 years old, I saw a movie, “Gentleman’s Agreement,” about a magazine writer exposing antisemitism in America. I went home and wrote my first serious article. I’ve been writing ever since. But why the movie affected me in that way is anybody’s guess.

Q. Who do you see as the typical reader of your novels?
A. That’s a tough one. In Atlanta Blues, the typical reader might want to know what it’s really like to work day in and day out in the trenches of urban life. Most of us see sanitized or romanticized versions, on TV and in newspaper stories, of what it’s like to be, say, a coroner, a medic, a news reporter, a homicide detective. Atlanta Blues is a great opportunity to see all that, vicariously at least, rendered realistically. In Striking Out, the typical reader could be anybody who grew up in the 1950s or any youngster who feels that he or she doesn’t belong or doesn’t fit in the surroundings they were born into. Lots of people in different parts of the country have contacted me to say, “It was exactly like that where I grew up!”

Q. Who’s your favorite author?
A. There are too many to pick just one favorite. Some of my preferences include Ernest Hemingway, for his prose style; Somerset Maugham, for his sheer story-telling ability; Sherwood Anderson, for his uncanny ability to write about life’s ineffable emotions and thoughts; Jane Austen, for her endearing intelligence; Willa Cather and Stephen Crane, for their magical descriptive powers; Margaret Mitchell, for writing what is truly the Great American Novel. But, all in all, my favorite novelist is Thomas Hardy.

Q. What prompted you to write Atlanta Blues?
A. When I was a reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I did a lot of “street stories” — stories about urban down-and-out people, the misbegotten, the disenfranchised, the thrown-away, the abandoned, the forgotten, the criminal. These are the people who come out only, or mainly, at night — cabbies, cops, gamblers, burglars, prowlers, night-clubbers, prostitutes and pimps (of both sexes), drifters, runaways, the homeless, night-lifers of all stripes. I knew back then that it would be good material for a novel about a city’s mean streets. You can get lost in plain view, lost in more ways than one, in downtown America. Lots of the lost are out there tonight.

Q. Are any of your characters based on real people you’ve known?
A. I pick and choose characteristics from those who have crossed my path in life. As a rule, the story I have in mind calls for certain kinds of characters — so I start reflecting on people I’ve known from whom I might fashion a composite character.

Q. What advice can you pass along to aspiring writers?
A. Apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair and write. Start today and don’t quit until you’ve finished what you set out to do.

Q. You taught both creative writing and journalism. What’s the difference between the two kinds of writing?
A. There’s not as much difference as one might think, which is one reason so many novelists come from a newspaper background. And the two forms are moving even closer together. Over the years, journalism has adopted all the techniques of fiction except making up the story — and, alas, sometimes even that happens. Nevertheless, some of the best writing I see appears in newspapers and magazines. But to answer your question directly, journalism is formula writing, and creative writing isn’t.

Q. With you, how does a novel begin? A character? An idea? How?
A. All of my novels, stories, too, seem to have begun with a scene that urged me somehow to write it and expand on it. Oddly, sometimes the scene turned out to be relatively unimportant to the story.

Q. Why do you write?
A. I believe the serious writer writes mainly to try to make sense of life’s experiences. Something in each of us wants desperately for things to matter.

Q. Some critics of creative writing courses say it’s not possible to teach creativity. How would you answer them.
A. I’d use the same words I said to my students: I can’t teach talent, but I can teach the talented. I’d add that I believe we’re all creative in some way, but that talent isn’t nearly as important as hard work in creating anything. I also repeated the words of Henry Ford to each class on the first meeting: “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right!” Put another way, believe in yourself and you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish.

Q. While at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution you found yourself covering stories similar to those covered by Ben Blake in Atlanta Blues. What story of that period stands out the most? Did that event change your view of society?
A. No one story changed my view, but work in journalism in general changed it. I still believe that reporting is the world’s best job. I loved it, and, I still can’t believe they paid me to do that job.

Q. Each major character in Atlanta Blues, for instance, makes changes in his/her life at the end of the book. Do you hope that the reader will experience a similar change of some sort?
A. I hope only that the reader feels enriched in some measure for having read Atlanta Blues. It’s part of the magic of story that we as readers can learn, through stories, about other sensibilities, other places, other lives.

 Q. How many novels have you written?
A. I’ve completed six and published four. The first is buried in a closet somewhere. The sixth is next in line to be published.

Q. Striking Out was your first, Atlanta Blues your second. What was the third and what was it about?
A. Titled A Majority of One, it’s about a teacher in a rural south Georgia town who gets into trouble by resisting the ministerial association’s efforts to ban certain American classic novels from the high school classroom.

Q. Sounds controversial.
A. A friend of mine – at least, I think he’s a friend – said it’s the kind of novel that’s likely to get its author hanged.

Q. Which of your novels is your favorite?
A. That would be like saying which of my children is my favorite. I can’t do that — not because it wouldn’t be proper to single one out, but because I like them all equally.

Q. How do you decide what a novel will be about?
A. I don’t decide that. I just go where the story takes me. Mainly, I write to see what the story is about. I repeat that storytelling has magical qualities. I’ve often thought a scene or story would go one way, only to find that it went another, very unexpected way. But that’s part of what keeps me writing.

(Copyright 2015 *  Robert Lamb  *  All Rights Reserved)