JOHN GRISHAM AND I HAVE A "LUNCH DATE"

John Grisham’s first novel, A TIME TO KILL, took three years to write and was soundly rejected by scores of publishers. At last, in 1989, Wynwood Press “took a chance” and agreed to print 5000 copies. To speed sales, Grisham tapped into his paltry law clerk salary and purchased 1000 copies. He then sold them from the trunk of his car.

Today, the 66-year-old has authored 40 novels that are published in 56 languages “And we signed up for Arabic last week,” he says. Many of his books, such as THE FIRM and THE RAINMAKER, became blockbuster movies. He adds, “People in Germany, France, Spain and Italy like to actually meet and hear authors discuss their books, so I frequently get invited to go there, and that’s fun.”

Our “lunch date” happened because Kennebunkport has an amazing librarian named Mary-Lou Boucouvalas who conjures up more ideas in an hour than a convention of inventors can in a week. (Before the Covid quarantine, she staged once-a-month movie nights at the library, and served complimentary martinis and popcorn. Oh yeah!)

Mary-Lou also enjoys a friendship with summer resident Billy Shore who happens to be a  long-time Grisham pal. A month ago, Shore mentioned to the savvy librarian that Grisham was doing zoom interviews at selected venues across the country to promote his new book, THE JUDGE’S LIST. “That could be a good fund raiser,” he suggested. 

Within hours, Mary-Lou had spread the word across southern Maine, not only because every cent of the $50 ticket would go directly to keep the lights on at the Louis T. Graves Memorial Public Library either. She added, “Having an author of his renown is a huge happening for our little town.” 

As I sat upstairs in the library’s “VIP Lounge,” (aka: the lecture room), munching on a chicken salad sandwich and looking at Grisham on a large screen, it felt as if we were meeting face to face. He’s Hollywood handsome with an engaging smile and rosy cheeks. His dark hair is now streaked with gray and he has noticeable facial wrinkles. The photo on his first novel flyleaf captured the law student he’d been. Today he could pass for a successful investment banker. Dressed in a dashing blue and white check shirt, he spoke simply, with no posturing or highfalutin four-syllable words. 

While watching, I also realized that I’d grown up — and old — with  Grisham. (I have gray hair and wrinkles too.)  His early legal thrillers —especially THE FIRM — reverberate in my memory as escapist page-turners during a tumultuous reorganization of my then 50-year-old life.

Billy Shore conducted the interview, focusing primarily on Grisham’s writing process. The author admits he always starts with an outline — beginning, middle, end, crime solved. Every January he begins writing a new book and shows his wife Renee (“who’s a tougher critic than my agent”) early drafts but doesn’t crumble when her “big magic marker” sends him back to the first paragraph.

On a typical day, he writes 1000 words in his Charlottesville, Virginia office, a refurbished “summer kitchen” behind the main house of a centuries-old plantation. He arrives at his desk every morning at 7, writes until 11, with no phone or fax to disturb him, then walks 30 feet back to the big house and makes his own lunch.  

“It’s rare I start with a title,” Grisham said. “But these days pre-orders are huge so there’s early pressure now to come up with a title.” His research is more geographic than legal. “I have a good background as a lawyer, but I might not be as knowledgable about, say, Savannah. So we go there, spend a week or two, dine and tour, have a good time, and I come away with a sense of the city that I can use in my novel."

“I grew up with no television,” Grisham says. “Our family moved a lot, so we judged the new town by two things: did it have a Baptist church and was there a library that would let me take out as many books as I wanted?” His favorite authors today include Scott Turow, John Le Carre and Larry McMurtry.

Grisham’s goal with each novel is “to entertain. I’m not writing great literature. I write for a popular audience, and I’ve been very lucky.” Especially, he adds, during the early 1990s, when THE FIRM, PELICAN BRIEF and THE CLIENT all topped the best-seller lists and were made into movies. He recalls, “We visited the sets, met the cast, it was fun. And then we drove back to the farm!”

At the end of our hour-long lunch, Shore had one final question for his friend:  John, do you miss practicing law?  “NO!”

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BEYOND THE BESTSELLERS

In his opening remarks, interviewer Billy Shore (who in 1984 founded Share Our Strength, a national organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger and poverty), stated that John Grisham is a “humanitarian, an advocate for justice, an author and a man who needs no introduction.” 

On the contrary.  I was introduced to a side of this best-selling author I didn’t know.

Shore said, “John and I met five years ago when we were both involved in a hunger drive. Since then, he and his wife Renee have been generous supporters of the No Kid Hungry campaign for Save Our Strength which helps fund school breakfast programs throughout Maine and every other state.”

Grisham added, “The problem really struck a note when my daughter began teaching fifth grade at a charter school. It was her first job so Renee and I went to help decorate her classroom the week before school started. She was so excited. Then, a month later, she called, very upset, and told us that several of her students were coming to school hungry. My wife and I immediately bought groceries and delivered them to her classroom. My wife is still involved in supplying food there. It’s a problem that can and should be solved.”

Shore also noted Grisham’s involvement with the Innocence Project, a 501 nonprofit legal organization founded two decades ago that’s committed to exonerating wrongly convicted individuals through DNA testing.  “We look for cases that have merit and we try to help prove the innocence of someone who’s locked away for someone else’s crime,” Grisham says. “It’s often easy to put an innocent person in prison, but very tough to get him out.”

All this and 40 novels too. Damn nice guy.