I’ve heard authors say that their least-favorite question is “Where do you get your ideas?” Not me. For one thing, I am not one of those writers who keeps a file box (or the electronic equivalent) bulging with ideas, so that the minute I finish one project, there are 18 others – all brilliant, of course – clamoring for my attention. Book ideas come to me one at a time, and when they show up, I notice. I always feel like raising a flag and doing a few Rockette kicks when a new one appears.

Plus, in the case of “The Tin Horse,” I love telling the story of how the light bulb came on in my head. In a terrific New Yorker article about women readers, Joan Acocella writes about “watershed books” that get you through a rough time. In a survey of Brits mentioned in the article, their hard-time books were lit-class fare like “Pride and Prejudice” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” My watersheds were the (equally literary, IMHO) noir mystery novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, which I read and reread during a time when I felt a deep need to identify with protagonists who were tough and fearless.

Alas, reading noir fiction did not make me tough or fearless. In those stories of hard-boiled men and fast women, I found just one character with whom I identified in any meaningful way: an unnamed woman in Chandler’s “The Big Sleep.” Philip Marlowe, the detective, wants information about a sleazy Hollywood bookseller. He goes to a legitimate bookstore nearby, flashes a badge at the woman working there, and starts asking questions. And she and Marlowe engage in this crisp intellectual parrying in which she gives as good as she gets. BTW, don’t expect to find this in the film, in which she’s just one more fast woman who happens to wear glasses.

In the novel, the woman is reading a law book, which is pretty intriguing given that “The Big Sleep” was published in 1939. But what really grabbed me was the way Chandler introduced her: “She had the fine-drawn face of an intelligent Jewess.” That word, Jewess, suggested an irremediable otherness. And it made me want to know about this nameless woman. What was her story? What was her Los Angeles?

Eventually, I gave the woman a name: Elaine Greenstein. And a Los Angeles: Boyle Heights. And a story: “The Tin Horse.”

 

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2012 at 10:32 pm and is filed under The Writing Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.