The Great Good Thing (25 page)

B
efore I began this memoir, I would have said, if asked, that my work was my life. Having finished, it now seems to me that, in fact, my life was my work: a work assigned to the author by his Author, the work of journeying to a true faith. As I wrote the scenes of my biography, I was startled—stunned sometimes—to discover how often God had been openly present in those scenes and yet invisible to the man he was beckoning, guiding, and guarding. It was a story I didn't know I was telling until I told it. I was grateful to God before. I'm doubly grateful now.

There was another aspect of the story I did understand from the beginning. If this memoir sometimes reads like a love letter to my wife, Ellen, it's because it is. For nearly forty years, she has been my muse, my song, my soul, my only-ever love. I could not have survived the troubles detailed here, nor have experienced the joys, without her.

And I could not have written this book. The first draft was a sloppy monster, twice as long as this. I'd never attempted
a long-form non-fiction work before, and I guess I threw in everything I could think of. My wife, always my first reader and editor, went through it and told me, “Half of this is the best book you've ever written.” She then took nearly two weeks out of her busy life to show me, page by page, how to cut it down to its present size. In doing this, she made the book half as long and twice as good. And yes, I noticed she didn't cut out any of the encomia to herself, but what would have been the point? I only would have put them back again.

My thanks to her, as always.

My thanks also to Webster Younce, my editor at HarperCollins, who patiently talked the book through with me before I began writing, helped me as I worked along the way, and then edited the final version. I should also thank HarperCollins Christian Fiction publisher Daisy Hutton, who listened to my story over dinner one evening and said, “You should tell that story to Webster.” I'm glad I did.

Thank you, too, to Don Fehr, my non-fiction agent at Trident Media, for taking on a stranger from the fiction department and representing him so well.

Thank you to my son, Spencer, for reading a draft, discussing some of the ideas with me, and guiding me on matters of Greek translation and culture.

And finally to my friend Father Douglas Ousley, rector of the Church of the Incarnation in Manhattan: thank you for some timely enlightenment on Christian doctrine. And for the baptism.

Chapter 2: Addicted to Dreams

1
. Bizarrely enough, the house eventually attracted a real-life horror. About ten years after I left town, a family of child molesters moved in, the subject of a famous documentary film entitled
Capturing the Friedmans
.

Chapter 4: A Christmas Carol

1
. Comedian Jon Lovitz would later create a similar character with the same name on the TV show
Saturday Night Live
, but my dad beat him to it by about a quarter of a century.

Chapter 5: Tough Guys

1
. Some articles say
Vertigo
was never aired. I think they're wrong. But my father sometimes brought home movies and showed them on a projector in our basement. It's possible I saw it that way. In any case, I saw the film when I was young.

2
. Raymond Chandler,
The Big Sleep
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939).

3
. Raymond Chandler,
The Simple Art of Murder
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1950).

4
.
Raymond Chandler Speaking
, ed. by Dorothy Gardiner and Kathrine Sorley Walker (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962).

Chapter 7: Experience

1
. In developing this technique, I was ahead of my time. I suspect many university English professors and newspaper literary critics are using it today.

Chapter 10: Going Crazy

1
. M. H. Abrams,
Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature
(New York: Norton, 1971).

Chapter 11: Five Epiphanies

1
. John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” poets.org. This poem is in the public domain.

2
. Marquis de Sade,
Philosophy in the Bedroom
(New York: Grove Press, 1971).

A
ndrew Klavan is the author of internationally bestselling crime novels such as
True Crime
, filmed by Clint Eastwood,
Don't Say a Word
, filmed starring Michael Douglas, and
Empire of Lies
. He has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award five times and has won twice. He has also won the Thumping Good Read Award from WH Smith and been nominated twice for the Bouchercon's Anthonys. His Young Adult novels include the bestselling Homelanders series. His books have been translated around the world. As a screenwriter, Andrew wrote the screenplays for
Shock to the System
, starring Michael Caine;
One Missed Call
, starring Ed Burns; and the award-winning movie-in-an-app
Haunting Melissa
. He is a contributing editor to
City Journal
, and his essays have appeared in the
Wall Street Journal
, the
New York Times
, the
LA Times
, and elsewhere. He also writes and appears in several popular series of satirical online videos, including
Klavan on the Culture
and
The Revolting Truth
. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Ellen.