Jesse Kellerman

Dialogue with Tom Blair

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A WRITER SINCE THE AGE OF 2, when he began dictating short stories to his father, Jesse Kellerman, at 29, is now a full-blown best-selling novelist. His third published book, The Genius, was released this spring and won wide critical acclaim. Although his primary interest has been theater——one of his two produced plays won the 2003 Princess Grace Award——the book business is in his blood. His parents, authors Faye and Jonathan Kellerman, together and separately, have sold millions of books. A native of Los Angeles, Jesse Kellerman went east to attend Harvard (B.A. in psychology) and Brandeis (MFA, playwriting) before returning to Southern California. A recent La Jolla transplant, Kellerman is working on a new novel with a San Diego backdrop and collaborating on a play project for the Lyceum Theatre. His physician wife Gabriella is an intern at UCSD Medical Center.

TOM BLAIR: I’m just beginning to dive into your new novel, The Genius. I’m hooked. And I’m impressed——not just by your style but by your research. How long did it take you to prepare yourself to speak in the voice of an art gallery owner?

JESSE KELLERMAN: I’d say the research took about six months. When I’m researching a book, I obviously read a great deal. But my primary source of information is in conversations with individuals in the field——I’ll do 20 to 30 hours’ worth of interviews. In the art business, I had friends of friends. I’m lucky to have a very diverse group of friends who, in turn, have a very diverse group of friends.

TB: How did you come up with the plot for The Genius?

JK: I was inspired by a trip my wife and I made to the Museum of Outsider Art in Lausanne, Switzerland. Specifically, the work of a man named Henry Darger, who was a reclusive Chicago janitor. After he died, his apartment was opened by his landlord, and he discovered thousands of pages of writing and drawings. And even though Henry Darger himself died in abject poverty, his work has gone on to become extremely collectible and extremely valuable in the outsider-art world. The character of Victor Crake, who’s the artist in the book, at least in the beginning leans very close to Darger’s profile. Later, it diverges considerably.

TB: You began your writing career as a playwright, and then switched to novels. And already, at 29, you’re working on your fourth published novel. Where did you write your first play, in the bassinet?

JK: Well, in fact, I started dictating stories to my dad at around 2 years old——and that was before he or my mother begun publishing, so I guess there is some component of this that’s inborn. But I was obviously raised in a household where storytelling was the primary means of communication and encouraged. And so I had the opportunity growing up to cultivate that impulse.

TB: Yes, I’ve heard a rumor——and you can maybe verify this for me: Is it true your parents are thinking of following you into the world of novel writing?

JK: Yeah, exactly——good running gag. It’s funny, because when I started out, the bulk of my fan mail came from people who had come to my books because they had read my parents’ books. So I got a lot of e-mails that said, ‘I only picked up this book because I’ve read your parents’, but I really enjoyed it,’ et cetera. Every so often now, the opposite will happen. It’s extremely rare; it probably happens at a ratio of 300 to one——but I’m glad they brought me a large chunk of my fan base.

TB: So you started by dictating stories to your dad. What kind of books were these?

JK: The first novel I ever wrote was Apple of Danger. And I followed it up with Orange of Danger and Pear of Danger. I’m not sure how many books were in this series, but I guess at that early age I showed a keen perception of what the market wants, which is crime series. Then, as soon as I could write, I wrote short stories and submitted my first story for publication, I believe, when I was 11.

TB: How many rejection slips?

JK: Oh, so many you couldn’t count. You know, people perceive me as having succeeded at a very young age, but I’d been failing so long that by the time I sold my first novel, I’d already been getting rejected continually for about 13 years.

TB: But before you had your first successful novel, you were a successful playwright.

JK: I guess I was successful in the sense that any playwright in the contemporary United States could be called successful. I had productions, and I won awards, which I guess is a good measure of success for a second- or third-tier playwright. I had people who believed in my work. I didn’t have anybody willing to pay me for my work. I had to think a little longer term, which is why I turned, probably and practically, to fiction.

TB: I understand your next novel is based in San Diego. What can you tell me about it?

JK: I can’t tell you much——not because I’m not willing, but because I’m not able. I have a good chunk of an outline done, but I’m reluctant to divulge any details because I’ll probably end up changing it significantly once I start writing. I can tell you in the broadest sense that it’s going to be about class conflict in San Diego.

TB: Could it have been based anywhere, or is San Diego important to the plot?

JK: San Diego’s absolutely integral. You can have class conflict anywhere, but I’m interested in exploring how it would play out specifically here. San Diego’s an interesting place because, to my somewhat inexperienced eye, it’s a place of lots of little individual communities——pockets geographically separated. Unlike New York, where everybody’s living on top of one another, here you have to drive to get to someplace where people are different from you.

TB: We’re diverse, but we’re not exactly a melting plot.

JK: No, it’s not like some places in the Midwest where the population is largely homogeneous. It’s not homogeneous here, it’s separated, and I think that has potential to make for an interesting story.

TB: And then, I understand, you’re planning to do a comic novel. What’s that all about?

JK: It’s going to be a comedy——or caper novel. I wanted to write something that didn’t force me to stick to the kitchen-sink realism of my first few novels. I want to do something slightly heightened and surreal, because in theater that’s the kind of thing I wrote——absurdist and surreal. The idea was inspired by a trip my wife and I took to Burma——on our honeymoon we spent a week and a half there. And I’ve never been able to get that experience out of my head, because it was such a strange place to travel. Obviously, Burma——or Myanmar——has been in the news recently, which makes the whole thing seem more important and more immediate to write about. Very few Americans have been there. When I got back, almost no one I talked to had any idea what was going on there.

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