TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.
My guest, James Patterson, has sold over 400 million copies of his many books. Those books include the "Alex Cross" detective series, the "Women's Murder Club" series, and "Maximum Ride." "Alex Cross" was spun off into three films, two starring Morgan Freeman and another starring Tyler Perry. An Amazon Prime video series called "Cross" has been renewed for a second season. Patterson has co-authored books with Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton. His second collaboration with Clinton will be published this summer.
GROSS: Patterson's also written nonfiction books about the Kennedys, John Lennon, Muhammad Ali and Jeffrey Epstein, as well as books for children and young adults. His new book, "The #1 Dad Book," is addressed to new fathers who need some advice. Back when Patterson was starting to write, he took a job as a junior copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. He rose to the top, becoming CEO and then head of the agency's North America division. If you're wondering how he's managed to do all this, he typically works with collaborators. Patterson writes an elaborate outline of the story. The collaborators write the sentences. He describes this in more detail in his 2022 memoir called "James Patterson By James Patterson."
I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention that he's now collaborating on a thriller with the star YouTuber and influencer known as MrBeast. As you can guess, Patterson is pretty rich. He's also a generous philanthropist, donating over $7 million to schools and classroom libraries around the country, establishing over 400 teacher and writer education scholarships at 21 colleges and universities, and giving over $2 million to independent bookstores. In recognition of his work, on May 14, James Patterson received the Lifelong Learning Award from WHYY, the public radio and TV station where FRESH AIR is produced. That was the occasion for our interview, which we recorded in front of an audience.
(APPLAUSE)
JAMES PATTERSON: Hi, I'm Stephen King.
(LAUGHTER)
PATTERSON: I'm here to honor James. I love the guy. What can I tell you?
GROSS: First of all, congratulations, and...
PATTERSON: Thank you.
GROSS: ...Thank you for doing this interview.
PATTERSON: I am not worthy. I am not worthy.
GROSS: (Laughter) So in your memoir, you describe how you hear voices in your head, basically telling you stories. I'd really like to know what that feels like, what that experience is like.
PATTERSON: No, you don't. You think you do.
GROSS: No, I do.
PATTERSON: Until the voices won't stop and they keep you up at night. You know, it's an interesting thing. You talk about voice. All these books have a different voice. The father book has a voice. The autobiography has a voice. Alex Cross is a different kind of voice. The kids' books - different voices. I've learned not to, like, get up in the middle of the night anymore.
GROSS: And start writing?
PATTERSON: I just - yeah, pretty much. Sometimes I do write, too.
GROSS: So another thing that I learned from your memoir, which I found really fascinating because it's so different from the work that you do and from the stories that keep coming to you in your head. When you were young, before you became a writer, when you first became really interested in reading, you read a lot of Thomas Merton, who - wasn't he, like, the now-famous Trappist monk...
PATTERSON: Yeah.
GROSS: ...Who wrote the bestseller "Seven Storey Mountain," which was kind of required reading for a lot of people in college, like in the '60s and '70s. But anyway, you actually went to the...
PATTERSON: Gethsemani.
GROSS: ...Monastery...
PATTERSON: Yes.
GROSS: Yeah.
PATTERSON: In Kentucky, yes.
GROSS: ...That he lived in for many years. And I think you seriously considered becoming a Trappist monk.
PATTERSON: No, I didn't do that, but I was in graduate school. I was at Vanderbilt. And I was kind of wandering around thinking about what I - it was during Vietnam, so it was a scary time for anybody in school or not in school. And I decided to go up there to - and I just kind of showed up. It's kind of interesting because the Trappist monks, you know, they don't - they're not supposed to really talk. But they have one...
GROSS: Yeah, they don't talk. It's silence
PATTERSON: ...They have one priest or brother...
GROSS: ...And work and prayer.
PATTERSON: ...Who will greet people that come in. And (laughter) I remember I talked to - he said, well, why are you here? And I said, well, you know, I'm doing a little too many drugs and, you know, whatever. And I just need to kind of straighten my life out a little bit. And he said, James, you know, life is like a football - a game of football. And you run down the field, but if you step out of bounds, you know, the score doesn't count. And at that point, I just wished that he had maintained the silence rather than giving that.
GROSS: (Laughter) Yeah.
PATTERSON: But they did let me stay. They let me stay for about 10 days. And I left there saying, OK, if I want to be a writer, I have to do certain things, and I'm going to do this somehow. I'm going to try to do it. But I needed that 10 days to really sort of think it through and focus on it. And focusing is a big thing. You mentioned the autobiography. And especially at my age, I think it's semi-interest - interesting to me, anyway. And I wrote it during COVID. But I became a better writer writing that autobiography. I concentrated on the sentences more than I had in a while, which is really important for me.
GROSS: One of the things I find interesting about spending 10 days in the Trappist...
PATTERSON: Yeah
GROSS: ...Monastery is because they practice silence, and because you're always hearing stories and voices in your head.
PATTERSON: Yeah.
GROSS: And both the silence and the need to, like, write, to always have, like, more words and more stories, seems so kind of opposite from, like, the attention to silence in the monastery. So it seemed so different from what your nature is.
PATTERSON: I just wanted to think - and I mean, they're not totally in totally - I mean, they sing. It's a fascinating life. I mean, they go to bed at, like, 7:30. They get up at 3 or so. They have a mass or whatever, and they sing a lot. And they're all very healthy. At least they were in those days. And then they go out in the fields, and they - and then they come back and have these very Spartan meals. And I just found it was a time to really put my mind at peace and ease, and think things through. Yeah.
GROSS: You mentioned you were doing too many drugs.
PATTERSON: Yeah.
GROSS: How did being an usher at the Fillmore East figure into that (laughter)? And for anyone who doesn't know the Fillmore East, that was the East Coast equivalent of the Fillmore West, which is where they had all of the, like, psychedelic concerts, you know, whether it was the Grateful Dead or the Jefferson Airplane.
PATTERSON: Right.
GROSS: I think they were there.
PATTERSON: And Jimi Hendrix. The Doors. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
GROSS: Yeah, and The Doors.
PATTERSON: Yeah.
GROSS: Yeah.
PATTERSON: No, I - well, no, my job there was not to take drugs (laughter). And it wasn't that I was a massive drug user, and I pretty much always had things in control. But it just seemed to me that if I really - and my grades were always good, but I needed to just focus more, was the main thing. But at the Fillmore East - I also was at Woodstock. Now, everybody I know my age says they were there, but they weren't 'cause I looked around and...
(LAUGHTER)
PATTERSON: But the Fillmore East, I did that for a couple of years. And actually, Robert Mapplethorpe was one of the ushers.
GROSS: You're kidding. Really?
PATTERSON: Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew him a little bit back then. And actually, one of the stories in the book, which was so great, after The Doors - after one of their shows. And they were all sitting in the front. I think there was two shows that night, and they were sitting there with Graham, who ran Fillmore East and Fillmore West. And a bunch of the ushers, we were sitting behind them a few rows. And Jim Morrison, he looked - it was a three-story theater. And he looked up, and all these lights were hanging over the seats in the front. He said, Bill, that's really dangerous. Those lights would come down and kill people. And Graham's going, Jim, just relax. The lights are not coming down. You know, it's - we're going to be fine. And then Morrison just stormed off. And about 10 minutes later, we hear this voice, and somebody screaming. You look up there - and this is a true story - and Morrison is hanging from the lights. He goes, you're right, Bill. It's OK. These lights are all good (ph) (laughter).
GROSS: So people are always wondering, like, how do you do it? How do you write so many books?
PATTERSON: Yeah.
GROSS: And the answer is you collaborate.
PATTERSON: Well, that's part of the answer.
GROSS: It's part of the answer, yeah.
PATTERSON: And part of it is you love to do it. I - somebody said you're lucky if you find something you like to do, and then it's a miracle if somebody will pay you to do it. But even before people were paying me to do it, I just loved - and actually, it was working at McLean, the hospital, which is when I started writing. I would go into Cambridge and buy. I went to a Catholic high school, and they just gave us a lot of books that none of us liked. But when I moved up there, I started reading a lot of stuff, the kind of stuff I hadn't read before. And I was loving - a lot of plays, short stories, you know, and a lot of novels. And then I started scribbling, and I loved it. I just loved telling stories. And I grew up in the woods. And I used to - as a little kid, I would go out in the woods and tell myself stories, story after story after story after story. And I think that - and I remember actually, when I used to go down to Vanderbilt, I would drive down there from Massachusetts. It would take, like, 26 hours or whatever. And they used to write Broadway musicals in my head driving down, you know, and sing the songs. It was crazy. But, you know, you might notice a pattern here.
GROSS: The music and lyrics?
PATTERSON: Well, yeah. I mean, sort of the music, yes. Yeah, yeah, I would always put a tune to it, whatever I was, you know - and the storyline, whatever the heck it was. And I would just, you know, I don't know. But it was fun. I liked it.
GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with the prolific and bestselling author James Patterson. We spoke onstage at WHYY, where FRESH AIR is produced. There's more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE HADEN AND ROSANNE CASH SONG, "WILDWOOD FLOWER")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded May 14 with James Patterson, who sold more than 400 million books. They include the Alex Cross detective series, the Women's Murder Club series and "Maximum Ride." He's coauthored bestsellers with Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton and is now collaborating with YouTube star MrBeast. We spoke onstage at WHYY.
At what point in your writing career did you think that it would be helpful or a good idea or more productive or whatever to work with collaborators? And then maybe you can explain your process for doing that.
PATTERSON: Yeah, you know, I don't know why people find it so extraordinary. First of all, in advertising, which I hate to go back to that prison, but in my mind, it's very collaborative. And generally, you work with an art director and maybe a producer. And two or three of you will sit in a room, and you create these little stories - little films, usually. And that is collaborative. You know, the Sistine Chapel, all these, you know, some famous, doing this thing on, you know, 5, 10, whatever number - collaborative. My own theory is if we're going to save the world, we'll have to somehow figure out how to be collaborative or AI will probably figure it out for us.
(LAUGHTER)
PATTERSON: And either save us or destroy us depending on, you know, the mood that day. It just seemed a natural thing to me. And the first one actually was a little golf book, and it's a guy that I knew from the advertising days. And after we played golf, we just started chatting about a story that I had. And we said, well, let's just try this. And we wrote "Miracle On The 17th Green." And then after that I just said, you know, I can do this. This will be an interesting thing. And I don't remember the first one. It might've been Women's Murder Club where I collaborated, the second or the third book - Andy Gross, wonderful guy who just died. It was so tragic.
GROSS: Yeah, I read the obit.
PATTERSON: Oh, my God. You know, and such a healthy-looking man, you know, and a wonderful person. At any rate, that was very sad for us, and obviously it's tragic for his family.
GROSS: You describe yourself as being like the storyteller, but you enjoy telling the stories.
PATTERSON: Yeah.
GROSS: You know, coming up with the stories...
PATTERSON: Yeah.
GROSS: ...Doing, like, a very elaborate 30-, 50- or 60-page...
PATTERSON: Thirty-, 40-, 50-page, yeah, outlines. Yeah.
GROSS: ...Outline and then doing several drafts.
PATTERSON: No, I mean, on this tour, I'm working on three outlines.
GROSS: Yeah.
PATTERSON: Oh, man.
GROSS: But then you leave the actual sentences in the book...
PATTERSON: Wait till you see what happens to Alex Cross, I got to tell you.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: But you leave the sentences in the book to the person you're collaborating with. At what point did you think that you'd stick to the stories and leave the sentences to someone else? Correct me if I'm getting that wrong.
PATTERSON: Well, no. Yeah, no, I didn't. I mean, a lot of times, especially in the beginning...
GROSS: Am I compartmentalizing too much?
PATTERSON: No, I would go in and do two or three drafts in the beginning. Not as much now because most of the people I'm working with, they kind of know the - but I'll still come in and rewrite. I mean, the most insane thing was when I did the BookShots, which were novellas, which I still think was a very valuable thing to do. So the stores would have these - you could read these books in a couple of hours, like a movie. They're only novellas, a hundred pages, 100-whatever the heck. And I think it's a useful thing. The publishers were afraid of it because, oh, my God, people are going to buy these $7 books, and they won't buy - well, they will buy longer books. But you're just going to have more people, and some of them, that's all they have time for.
They have a couple of hours, and they want to, you know - it's like a movie, you know? But the year I did that, I wrote 2,400 pages of outlines in addition to two full books. And that's one of the things that people are looking at, you know, what I do, and they go like, well - and they always project their own situation. You know, people are sort of funny that way. Like, with the dad book, how to be, you know, a better dad in one hour, I'll talk to these various, you know, people who interview you. And they say, what's the one idea? And I go, there isn't one idea. The whole idea of this book is there's so many things dads can work on, and they just need to figure out the things that pertain to them. And the reason it's one hour is because most dads will not read the 400-page book.
(LAUGHTER)
PATTERSON: So what I did is just try to - and that's not a joke, but it's serious. I mean, because I wanted to be pragmatic about it. And what I've heard - and I've never had this experience before, but especially women who read the book, and they say, I'm giving this quite seriously to my husband, quite seriously to my dad, and quite seriously to my two goofy brothers who are dads and really need help. And guys do. Guys need help right now.
GROSS: Are these things that your father did or did not do for you?
PATTERSON: My dad, the only time - and this isn't totally true, but my only hug I ever got from my dad was on his deathbed. And he apologized and he cried, which he never did, never died.
GROSS: He apologized for not hugging you or for something else?
PATTERSON: He apologized for just not being as close as he thought he should've been. And I just said you're a great dad, you're a great dad.
GROSS: Was he?
PATTERSON: Look, he grew up in the Newburgh poorhouse. It was called a pogey. His mother was a charwoman there. His father had disappeared. He never knew his father, and he didn't have the experience to be a dad, you know? So, you know, that's fine. And I did therapy for one year, and I got in touch with - and I just don't blame him. It was fine. He did the best he could. I have a friend. His whole thing is doing the best you can religion. You're doing the best you can? OK, that's good. God bless you. You're doing the best you can, OK.
GROSS: What did your father end up doing to make a living?
PATTERSON: Well, the last thing he did after he retired - he retired at 60, 61 - he actually wrote a novel. It didn't get published, but it was pretty good, it was pretty good. And that's what he wanted to do. He went to Hamilton, which is - to go from where he was, the poorhouse, and to get into Hamilton, leap, unbelievable leap.
GROSS: Sure.
PATTERSON: He was a bright guy. He didn't have a lot of confidence. You know, he just didn't think he could. He sold insurance, and then he actually did well. He worked for Prudential. He did well in the insurance stuff, but he didn't have the confidence. And he didn't instill confidence in myself and my sisters either, which was unfortunate. But my grandmother (laughter), she was the one. She said, listen, going to be real about this stuff. You're not going to play in the NBA, so forget about that.
(LAUGHTER)
PATTERSON: You don't go to your left very well. You're good. I could dunk in high school. Here's a little white guy that could dunk. But you're not going to make it. So - but you are going to be able to do stuff. And she had one of the lines, which I use it in - on Substack - is, hungry dogs run faster. That was one of her things. And the other thing was, just go out and chop wood. Do it. Do it. Don't - you know, stop talking about writing your book. Go write the damn book. Seriously.
GROSS: So I want to ask you about your "Alex Cross" series, which is, like, your longest-running series of books.
PATTERSON: Yeah.
GROSS: Did you know that you'd be capable of writing mysteries and thrillers?
PATTERSON: No. And I - somewhere in there - I think it was when I were at Vanderbilt - I read - and I didn't read a lot of commercial novels at that point, but I read "Day Of The Jackal" and "The Exorcist," and I went, oh, these are cool. I like these. And maybe I could write something like that. The novel that had knocked me out - "Hundred Years Of Solitude" - and I said, I'm not capable of that. I thought I could write a literary - you know, an OK - you know. But I said, I don't want to do that. I don't want to write for those people, honestly. I'm not interested in those kinds of stories. But I said, well, I could - maybe I could do something like "Day Of The Jackal," maybe. But I can't do a "Hundred Years Of Solitude." I don't have it in me. And that's what I'd like to do, but I - you know, it's like, you know you're not gonna play in the NBA.
GROSS: (Laughter).
PATTERSON: Sorry.
GROSS: Yeah.
PATTERSON: I didn't have the confidence, you know? And that's a big deal. That's - and fortunately, down there, there was a professor, and I took one writing course, and he said, you have it. You have that. And he was a real conservative, Southern guy. And I was the hippie with the long hair and the whole whatever. I wish I had the long hair now, but you know - and that was a big confidence builder. That was huge for me - huge - to have a professor, to have a published novelist say, you have - Peter Taylor was another one. Peter Taylor - he read some of my stuff, that - you have it. A really good short story writer who was at the University of Virginia.
GROSS: So another question about religion - you know, we talked a little about the Trappist monastery...
PATTERSON: Yeah, yeah.
GROSS: ...That you spent 10 days in and how it helped you decide to be a writer.
PATTERSON: Yeah.
GROSS: Do you maintain any form of religion in your life? - if that's not too personal to ask.
PATTERSON: Yeah, no, you know, yeah, something, something, some connection that, you know - certainly the idea that things are bigger than me, which, I think - that isn't necessarily religious, but I think - it's - I think it probably has its basis back in growing up Catholic. And there are things more important than you, you know? And whether that's a society or whatever the heck it is or your family - so I've always had that.
GROSS: You were an altar boy.
PATTERSON: I was. I served mass every day for, like, two -years in a row. This is when - I don't know how old I was - 9, 10 years old. Yeah.
GROSS: What did it mean to you?
PATTERSON: Well, I think in those days - and I think, like, a lot of kids, I - you know, I thought about, maybe I'll be a priest. That might be an interesting thing to do. I certainly respected the priests and the brothers and the nuns. And my mother taught in the school. We had, you know, priests and brothers in our house all the time. They wrecked two of our cars (laughter).
GROSS: Oh, really?
PATTERSON: A little too much wine, whatever. I don't know.
(LAUGHTER)
PATTERSON: No, yeah, honestly, you know? Oh, he hit a fire hydrant. OK, that's OK, Father. No problem.
(LAUGHTER)
PATTERSON: And we didn't have money, either. I mean, that was the other - like, oh, no. And my father was not Catholic, so he was especially not keen on that.
GROSS: So, you know, I just really appreciate, like, I think so many, many, many people do, all the philanthropy you've done - the support of literacy, the support of independent bookstores, scholarships...
PATTERSON: Yeah.
GROSS: ...Funding school libraries. One thing I find especially endearing which you've done is giving bonuses to independent booksellers. And...
PATTERSON: And librarians a little bit, too, yeah. Yeah.
GROSS: Yeah, that's such a nice touch because I'm sure they're all not paid very well. And it's such a personal thing to do. It's like acknowledging not just the institution or an abstract thing like loving reading. It's honoring the individuals who do the work.
PATTERSON: Yeah, and...
GROSS: How did you come up with that?
PATTERSON: I don't know. But you know, the - but the other piece of it, which just to your point - no, no, no - to your point is, I get the nicest notes from people. Of all the things I do, they'll send these notes. And they'll - yeah, and some of them, you know, like, for the first time in three years, I gave my parents presents this year because - or I went to the dentist because of the - you know what I mean? And it's real, and it's honest, and they're so appreciative. And so that's a nice thing.
GROSS: James Patterson, I want to thank you for this, and congratulations on the Lifelong Learning Award.
PATTERSON: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
GROSS: James Patterson's latest book is "The #1 Dad Book." The new novel he wrote with Bill Clinton will be published later this summer. Our thanks to WHYYs Nancy Stuski, Ali L'Esperance and Yvette Murray.
Coming up, if you think accordion is a corny and out-of-date instrument, stay tuned for some music that I think will change your mind. Jazz critic Martin Johnson will review the new solo accordion album by Will Holshouser and will feature my interview with him. He brought his accordion and played. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
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