Bestselling author Lehane credits urban roots for success

LYNN – Dennis Lehane didn?t want to talk about his new book, “Live by Night” at the Lynn Public Library – he wanted to talk about the working-class, Irish-American upbringing in Boston that he said made him a writer.The author of hit Boston-based crime novel-turned-films “Gone Baby Gone,” “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island” began his talk at the podium to the room full of 200 fans Thursday night by joking about his suspicions of the North Shore as a native from Dorchester. “I figured people on the North Shore were all Italian ? I felt like a spy on the North Shore. I would go back to the South Shore and tell my friends, ?They got pizza!?” he said. “We vacationed on the Cape, you went to Marblehead – but we?re all Bostonians.Lehane continued, “I?m not going to read my book – I assume you know how to read. Even if you are from the North Shore.”Lehane said the “reasons he became a writer” began with number one, his library card. “For a kid on the wrong said of the tracks, it said ?I matter.?” he said. “It?s just as much a right to you as the kid who pulled up in a Jag.”Lehane said his Irish-American family telling stories in homes and bars that were “tweaked” on a two-month rotation made him “really good at making stuff up,” and where he learned that “it?s the lie that tells the truth – when you tell a story, you are after an emotional truth about the human condition.”Growing up in a working-class neighborhood help Lehane create three laws for his stories: they had to be funny, they had to be true and they would probably be sad. “The punch line of every story would be sad because the outline of every working-class story is ?I got screwed, but I keyed his car.?”Lehane said his background gave him a “different intensity” because he knew he had to work hard to be good. “I love what I write about. I love to write about cities, particularly this city (of Boston). I love old things and I love minor corruption because it drives cities.”As his final reason for being a writer, Lehane said, “Boston is a unique place. Look around – we?re all just a little nuts. People say to me in other places, ?Why are you mad?? and I say ?I?m not mad, I?m from Boston.?”Radio personality Michele McPhee, who introduced Lehane at the event, said Lynn was exactly the kind of city where one would expect to see some of Lehane?s gritty characters, but when asked by a reporter if he would ever write a book based in the city of Lynn, Lehane said no. “I would never write a story about the North Shore,” he replied as the last of his fans left, autographed books in hand.?I don?t know Lynn – I?d be like a tourist. I?m a south-side city guy. I write about the working-class city of Boston. Lynn is a good old, working-class city. I don?t need to write about Lynn. Writing about Dorchester is the same thing.”Lehane?s latest, “Live by Night,” a story about Boston during the Prohibition, will be his fourth novel turned into film now that actor-director Ben Affleck signed on to direct the production.Kait Taylor can be reached at [email protected].