Why John Boyne revived Gore Vidal
Dublin author John Boyne is no stranger to the literary-award circuit. But when he started out 20 years ago, the writing world was not as saturated with prizes as it is today. There was no social media for promoting your wins and authors were considered almost mythological creatures. “I felt quite shy about that whole world. I didn’t feel as if I really belonged in it,” he says.
Flash-forward two decades, and Boyne’s prolific career writing for adult and young readers has earned him an impressive stack of international prizes and bestsellers. His 2006 kids’ book, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, was made into a feature film. By most people’s measures, he is a successful author. Boyne though, remains quite modest: “I’ve been around the block a few times.”
Boyne’s experiences give his new literary thriller, A Ladder to the Sky, a fun insider’s perspective. Some people romanticize that major literary prizes are a golden path to glamorous champagne receptions and first-class travel. The reality is that most writers are happiest outside of the limelight, holed up with their computers and notebooks and storylines. Unless of course you’re Maurice Swift, Boyne’s murderously ambitious protagonist.
In A Ladder to the Sky, we are first introduced to Erich Ackermann, a well-respected German author invited to all the A-list events. In 1988, he meets Maurice, a handsome waiter and aspiring writer. Erich is lonely. Maurice is charming and ambitious. Soon, the two are travelling together, with Maurice employed as Erich’s assistant. But the only time that Maurice pays attention to the elder man is when Erich begins opening up about his early life in Nazi Germany and how his romantic feelings toward a young male friend led to a treacherous secret he’s carried around for 40 years. As Maurice continues to probe Erich for details, his methodical plotting is apparent to readers but not to poor Erich. And so when Maurice publishes a novel based on Erich’s story — ruining the older writer’s own career to kick-start his own — it comes as a surprise to only one person.
“The trick with Maurice was to see how far I could take him. You want him credible; you don’t want to make him a complete cartoon character,” says Boyne, who is a big fan of another fictional sociopath: Patricia Highsmith’s iconic anti-hero Tom Ripley. Despite the fact that Ripley is a status-obsessed cold-blooded killer, there’s something intangible that still keeps readers rooting for him more than 60 years after the series was first published. “I was thinking about that kind of person, where the reader is appalled by the actions of the protagonist, but is still encouraging them on,” Boyne says.
A Ladder to the Sky is told through several voices, recounting significant episodes in Maurice’s career. As he gains more fame, the more obsessed he becomes with winning prizes and accolades. The problem, it seems, is that our talented Mr. Swift is better at creating personas and stealing other writers’ ideas than coming up with his own. Boyne knew he wanted Maurice to encounter one realworld person and he needed a character who would not be taken in by his cunning protagonist’s charms. Boyne found those traits intertwined in the late American author Gore Vi- dal. The witty intellectual famously advocated for sexual freedom and was never shy about revealing his own promiscuities but refused until his death in 2012 to be labelled as gay. Given the subtext involved with Maurice’s own sexual identity, Vidal was the ideal writer to fictionalize.
“I think I worked harder on getting his voice right more than anything else because with somebody like that, you want every line that comes out of his mouth to be sharp and witty and erudite,” Boyne says. “Even though he’s not here to read it, I would hope that he would recognize himself in there somewhere.”
Boyne has been repeatedly asked whether Maurice’s character is inspired by any real writers, but he says no, he was driven more by his emotional exploration. “We all know what it’s like to be young and ambitious.”