“Words matter.”
We hear that quite a bit these days—usually, in a negative connotation.
When I was a child growing up in abject poverty and often homeless, words mattered to me more than I could ever adequately explain.
Words offered my then-battered mind a much-needed escape from the endless dysfunction that was my childhood and surely helped to keep me sane.
At eight years of age, I read my first “big” book, The Wizard of Oz. We were existing in a car at that time and the book thankfully took me from that car to Oz and beyond.
From that moment on, I knew words would be my salvation and read everything I could get my hands on.
Recently, while in the middle of a move—happily voluntary, this time—I came across a box of old papers. Buried down at the bottom of that box were four spiral-bound notebooks. I had not seen them for years, but knew instantly what they were and more importantly, what they represented.
Within the pages of those notebooks were forty thousand or so words that comprised a novel I wrote at the age of 17.
It was meant to be a “comic-crime” novel and my teenage homage to the author who by then, had managed to give my young mind page after page after page of the most clever and escapist fun I had ever experienced.
At 12 years of age, I had discovered an author by the name of Donald E. Westlake. I was at our local library at the time—they didn’t stay local for long as we were evicted thirty-four times by the time I was seventeen—and on a table, was a book titled The Fugitive Pigeon.
The title itself made me smile. So I sat down and read the first page. I was still reading the book when they started to shut off the lights and kick me out of the place.
Many people today know Mr. Westlake because of the fifteen or so films they made out of his books—Point Blank, The Hot Rock, Cops and Robbers, The Outfit and Payback just being a few—from academy award nominated screenplays like The Grifters, or because of his never-got-up-on-the-right-side-of-the bed anti-hero “Parker,” written under the pseudonym “Richard Stark.”
But for me back then, I knew and loved the work of Mr. Westlake because his heart-of-gold sort of criminal common men who, if they didn’t have bad luck, would have no luck. The writing was not only exceptional, but to this day, the most laugh-out loud hilarious prose I have ever read.
My young mind needed a break in the worst way, and I found it in spades with Westlake’s seemingly endless collection of ne’er-do-wells trying to beat life just around the edges and finding even that low-bar goal much tougher than anyone with even a hint of luck could expect.
From The Fugitive Pigeon, I rolled right into The Busy Body, God Save the Mark, Who Stole Sassi Manoon, Somebody Owes Me Money, and then the entire “Dortmunder” series starting with The Hot Rock.
From twelve to seventeen years of age, I had read hundreds of thousands of words written by Donald E. Westlake and smiled, laughed, and winced with and in sympathy for the characters with each and every word.
At 17, I may not have known much, but I did know enough to realize that thanks to immense talent of Westlake and the power of his words, I had been given the then priceless gift of what amounted to an “eight count” in boxing. His words gave me just enough time to gather my senses on the mat before jumping up for the next round of hay-makers life was about to land on my chin.
I guess it was during one of those mini-vacations on the mat that I wondered, “What if I could give that gift to someone else? What if, thanks to my own words, I could relieve someone of their mental or physical pain for a few hours or a few days?”
With that thought and aspiration planted firmly in my seventeen year-old mind, I walked to a local store, bought four cheap notebooks and proceeded to handwrite my own “comic-criminal” novel.
I titled it Caper, and as I lived in and around Boston at the time, the basic plot of the book had four college students—two boys and their very reluctant girlfriends—trying to steal a precious impressionist painting from the Museum of Fine Arts and escape via a helium balloon from the roof.
Because of a bit more dysfunction yet to come, my little homage to Donald E. Westlake never saw the light of day. But I did manage to finish it. Not realizing then that to even do that showed I might have a natural inclination to write.
Over the years since, I’ve managed to get a few books published—both non-fiction and fiction, and sold a few copies. My total sales for all my books may not equal Mr. Westlake’s worst-selling book, but the number is more than I ever dreamed possible.
When I did discover those long-lost notebooks in our move, it really did hit me that “words matter.”
For me, the words of Donald E. Westlake mattered.
They mattered more than just about anything else at the time.
Seeing those old notebooks—which are now on a shelf in my home office—reminded me that not only was Mr. Westlake the best ever in this genre, but that I will forever be in his debt.
Douglas MacKinnon is the author of The Forty Days – A Vision of Christ’s Lost Weeks.
