by Lawrence Perlman

pensiero

The following remarks were made prior to a reading by Lawrence Perlman at Open Book October 6, 2010, from his novel The Last Layer.

Thank you all so very much for coming. Before I read a few passages from The Last Layer, I thought I would address the question that is more or less on all of your minds: “How did this guy, who spent his life in the real world—as a lawyer, law professor, and CEO—come to write a novel?”

But first let me thank my daughter, Sara Barrow, and my assistant, Sue Seals, for organizing this event. Sara’s persistence overcame my resistance, and Sue implemented with her usual efficiency. And then there is Linda, who I am sure could affirm the truth of the bromide that behind most men who write a book, there is an astonished partner. In this case, a supportive, encouraging and lovely woman.

I have had a long interest in writing and as anyone who has worked with me knows, I have always advocated for clear, concise writing. Words do count, although until I faced an editor I never had to count words!

When I taught legal writing many years ago, one of the exercises I put law students through was to write a memo without adverbs and adjectives. In the process of writing fiction, I have enjoyed becoming reacquainted with these indispensable parts of speech, but I have had to remind myself often of the pithy advice of Messrs. Strunk and White in their classic little book, The Elements of Style:

Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.

There is no such thing as writing, there is just rewriting. The goal of rewriting was captured by Professor Strunk in a memorable paragraph:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

E. B. White refers to this paragraph as 63 words that could change the world.

On the other hand, as much as I wanted to write well, I was writing a novel and it had to reflect my creative impulses. So I chose not to be bound by the conventions of crime novels, which generally consist of:

a central mysterious crime;

a closed circle of suspects, each with means, motive, and opportunity for the crime; and

a detective—either amateur or professional—who solves the

mystery.

I struggled with my editor over questions like point of view and I took some comfort in my struggles when I read E. M. Forster’s superb book Aspects of the Novel. Forster said:

So next time you read a novel do look out for the “point of view”­—that is to say, the relation of the narrator to the story. Is he telling the story and describing the characters from the outside, or does he identify himself with one of the characters? Does he pretend that he knows and foresees everything? Or does he go in for being surprised? Does he shift his point of view—like Dickens in the first three chapters of Bleak House? And if he does, do you mind? I don’t.

So there, editor. Of course, Charles Dickens or Leo Tolstoy, who also shifted points of view, can do whatever he pleases. The Larry Perlmans of the world have to tread lightly on conventions.

My first sustained effort at writing began several years ago when Linda and I spent a month in Italy. Two weeks of that trip was spent in a small villa on the Umbria-Tuscany border. Sitting at a table under an arbor overlooking the beautiful Umbria hills, ruined castles on the surrounding peaks, how could one not be moved to reflection? I began to write a memoir that I finished about a year later. I wrote about growing up in Saint Paul and about my parents and grandparents and extended family in Saint Paul. The audience was my children, grandchildren, and, perhaps, my yet-to-be-born descendants.

It was about a year after completing the memoir that I started to write a novel. I couldn’t begin that effort until I knew that all my wonderful, but tough, English professors at Carleton had in fact passed on to that great literary salon in heaven. Owen Jenkins, or Whitey, as we called him, but not in class, was a particularly tough taskmaster. He wasn’t mean; he was just direct and we all learned under the sting of his friendly lash.

As I wrote I had occasional flashbacks to teachers who I learned from or should have learned from. The archives of our memories are always there, and they do not necessarily wait for us to take the initiative in consulting them.

It was at another place of beauty and solitude that I decided to become a novelist. Linda and I spent ten Januaries on the island of St. Barts. I became fascinated with this tiny island, where so many people of means from all over the world come to vacation and some to live. It seemed that every other store in Gustavia, the only town on the island, was a jewelry store. I began to imagine the stories that the visitors and locals had to tell. And what was the ecostructure that supported so many jewelry stores? I have always been an observer. When I was a business executive, I exhorted the people I worked with to observe and evaluate the people around them—employees, customers, suppliers, investors. If you only do business with people you like, you will go broke. But observing everyone around you will help you to understand them and it will increase your effectiveness—at least that is what I preached.

So, on St. Barts I observed and I imagined. And I started to write.

I quickly concluded that if I was to learn how to write fiction at age 70, I had better learn how to read fiction at age 70. I have always enjoyed fiction, but now I read or reread a number of authors—Hemingway, Graham Greene, even Henry James—trying to understand how readers enter into the world of the author—how we as readers join our imagination with that of the author. How great writers use words and images to enable the reader to create his or her own mental picture. To understand the craft of writing.

I didn’t fret much over whether I was writing a novel or a detective story—it is both. Nor did I start with a precisely outlined plot—start to finish. What I tried to do through dialogue, description, and narration was to create interesting characters, put them in a complex situation, then see what happened, and then try to capture it on paper. The observer as author.

Reviewers have commented favorably on the characters in The Last Layer as well as my descriptions of places—St. Barts, of course, Cuba, Paris, Italy—all places that I have been. Settings are important to The Last Layer, and I wanted the reader to see these places through the eyes of the characters in the book. Incidentally, if you want to read contemporary authors who describe settings brilliantly, you could do worse than read Ian Rankin’s novels set in Edinburgh and Glasgow or Martin Cruz Smith’s books set in Moscow.

I also didn’t fret much over every author’s worry about getting published. Even though my old friend, David Lebedoff, an accomplished writer of a number of excellent books, warned me about what a jungle the publishing world was. Was he right! My naive self-confidence was shaken when a publisher I hoped to work with announced that they were not going to do any first-time authors and emphasized their point by laying off my would-be editor.

So, I wrote and rewrote. I imagined. I observed. And finally publisher number two yanked the book out of my procrastinating and risk-averse hands and sent it into the world of critics, book signings, and public exposure.

And there is risk in writing a book. A bestselling author told me that if you can’t take the critics, uneven sales, and book signings where no one shows up, don’t write. My first editor suggested that I publish the book under a pseudonym. When I asked him why, he said, “Well, if it’s a flop, no one will know who wrote it and you can try again.” I don’t know if he had read my book before he made that suggestion. I said, “Why would I do that? I am 70 years old. I am doing this to stretch myself, to try something new and to take a risk. What kind of risk am I taking if I write under a pseudonym?”

Well, I have tried to answer the question I posed a few minutes ago: how did he do it?

I will only touch on the related question of why he did it? Suffice it to say that I believe retirement is an opportunity to try new things, to challenge yourself, and not a time to repeat yourself.

For me, the defining moment was when a business book publisher approached me to write a book on corporate social responsibility—the arguments for and against corporate philanthropy and the like. I agreed and started to do research, including reviewing speeches and articles I had written on the topic. Soon, I found myself struggling to stay engaged in the project. I was repeating old speeches and articles of mine. Did I really want to join the overpopulated legion of retired CEOs who wrote business books? Did I really have that much to say, or was I mostly rehashing old arguments? If I did have something to say, wouldn’t it be more effective if I wrote an article and left the history to others?

So, I decided not to write the business book. And I started to write a novel. To inhabit the world of imagination is both an exhilarating and a solitary experience. Writing is hard work, but it can also be fun and satisfying. And for me the fun is in trying to tell a story that readers will enjoy—and then want to read the next novel I am working on.

Now, I will read a few passages from The Last Layer. The book is a mystery. And I don’t want to give away the plot, or you won’t buy the book. So, what I will do is give you a flavor of some of the characters and some of the settings.

Then we can have some wine.

Lawrence Perlman is the retired chairman and CEO of Control Data/Ceridian and the former chairman of Seagate Technology and Arbitron. He has served on the boards of over two dozen public and private corporations and has been actively involved in the civic life of Minnesota for over 40 years, having served among other positions as a regent of the University of Minnesota, a trustee of Carleton College and a board member of a wide range of organizations including the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Orchestra and the Minnesota Business Partnership. Earlier in his career, he practiced law in Minneapolis and for several years he was an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. A national leader in the area of workforce development,  in 1999 and 2000 he served as chair of the 21st Century Workforce Commission, created by Congress to address the shortage of skilled workers in the United States.