“The story is about the people and their machinations” - An Exclusive Interview with Paul Westlake

Tough Business recently had the incredible opportunity to sit down for an in-depth and intimate chat with Paul Westlake, Donald Westlake's son and one-time caretaker of his official website. We're delighted to have gotten the chance to talk to Paul about his early life, his favorite Parker adaptations, Mr. Westlake's personality, his writing process, his influences, and more.

Paul also kindly shared a number of family photos that we have the honor of publishing here for the first time.

1) There used to be a post about Levi Stahl's The Getaway Car on the Donald Westlake website where you mentioned not really appreciating his career until adulthood, what's the first Westlake book you remember really enjoying?

Why Me? was the first one that made me laugh out loud and appreciate my father's clever plotting. I was probably in my mid-to late-teens. Dortmunder is a good entry to Westlake for younger readers. Don had a habit of giving us signed copies of his latest book every Christmas, and most of us put them on the shelf and forgot. Two or three of my older brothers would start reading them on the spot, but for the younger ones, it was like getting another deck of cards in the stocking every year. I would often dutifully start reading them at some point and invariably trail off because my head was in fantasy and science fiction at the time. Then I got a hard copy of Why Me? and finished it in an afternoon. It still wasn't my preferred genre, but I got it. When Don figured out I was into sci-fi some, he offered up Anarchaos and his collection of sci-fi shorts. The deeper I read into his style, the more I realized the setting could be anywhere. New York City or a mining operation in the asteroid belt are just backdrops to him. The story is about the people and their machinations. They could happen almost anywhere.

2) The Parker novels have always had a wide range of adaptations, with Shane Black's Play Dirty film just out last year and a new series of French graphic novels on the way. Do you have a favorite Parker adaptation? Is there any particular novel you'd like to see adapted to a visual medium?

I think Darwyn Cooke's graphic novel series is superior to all other depictions of Parker in a visual medium. I love Lee Marvin, but he's too clean and avant garde for Parker. I love Robert Duvall (and Don thought he was the best Parker) but he's too relatable for Parker. Did anyone really think Peter Coyote was a good idea? Jason Statham wasn’t the only reason Parker was a disaster. He’s also a very nice guy! Really sweet to show up at the party and everything. I have nothing but nice things to say about Statham, but not right for the role. I'm looking forward to the French graphic novels. I haven't seen Shane Black's film.

What I would like to see is a proper reboot from The Hunter forward, with an actor that isn't already a household name but has the presence and chops to inhabit the role and make it his. Think casting Harrison Ford for Han Solo. That's the guy we need. A great talent on the verge of discovery and ready to inhabit a role for more than a decade. Don imagined Jack Palance when he created Parker. Nobody has ever come close to that kind of screen presence in the role. Gene Hackman in his prime would've been spectacular, but he was already a household name at too young an age. I would spend as much time as needed on casting. Once you have the cast, and they understand the assignment, they'll make the magic happen. I worked in narrative film for more than 12 years. I've seen it in action. We don't have that kind of creative thinking anywhere near the estate right now. It's a shame, but hopefully not permanent.

3) Abby Westlake once wrote a piece on living with Mr. Westlake's various pseudonyms, everyone we've interviewed who knew him remembered him as being exactly as you'd expect from his comedic novels except for when "just a touch of Stark emerged" — as Charles Ardai put it. Does any particular memory of a Richard Stark moment stand out?

Don didn't really have personalities. I've lived with people with different personalities and Don ain't it. He had some wild mood swings, especially when he was younger. It’s what can happen with people suffering from a lifetime of undiagnosed ADHD and a touch of autism, which runs on my father's side of the family. All three of his biological children have some form of neurodivergence, and as I watch my thirteen and ten year old children grow up in a world that treats early childhood development much better than we did in the 1970s, I can say with a high degree of confidence that what others regarded as droll personality quirks were the kinds of things that people go to therapy for today. Don was multifaceted. He didn't intend to do harm, but he was a bohemian in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, when mad men were busy taking over the world. He was a product of his time. My children's experience is very, very different.

4) In a 2008 interview with Ed Gorman, Donald Westlake spoke about how his father's "just-keep-moving" attitude was a major inspiration for how he wrote Parker. Do you know of any other family members or friends that served as an inspiration behind certain characters or novels?

Don didn't tend to use people who were that close to him, or at least not enough of them to make it obvious. Don's father was a just-keep-moving guy, but his personality was understated, not like Parker — a taut wire, tense with potential energy. Also, Parker is judgmental in a way that Don's dad wasn’t, at least not to the extent that I knew of his demeanor (I never met him). Don wanted his characters to serve a purpose, and if someone he knew could serve as the archetype for that, great, but only within reason. He would never have worried about staying true to a character archetype as much as servicing the plot and story.

If he found himself at a dead-end with one character, he'd just get another one. Grofield exists to fill in the gaps where Parker didn't work. Dortmunder exists because Parker isn't allowed to be funny. Rather than trying to match the situation to the character, Don tended to match the character to the situation. He took several characters from headlines, like the bad guy in The Stepfather or Massa in the Sara Joslyn books, but he then molded them into what he needed them to be to service the plot. As a stream of consciousness writer, he didn't get hung up on the kind of detail that would make sci-fi fans argue for centuries. He even recycled Alan Grofield (Greenwood) in a Dortmunder novel. His tongue was always in his cheek. He cared less about realism and consistency than about the story and having fun. That's why he always considered the Dortmunder novels, despite their high jinx and comedic timing, as far more realistic than Parker. In Dortmunder's world, just like real life, shit just happens.

5) Similarly, some of Mr. Westlake's novels have some pretty enigmatic dedications — the five Tucker Coe books have always stood out to us in that capacity, like with A Jade in Aries' "for the hand of the four-in-hand." Are you able to shed some light on the meaning?

That is a reference to Edgar Carreras and Don’s second wife, my mother, Sandra Edna Kolb (1935 – 1992). A Jade in Aries was published in 1970, not long after my birth in November 1968, which means he was writing it when I was in diapers. At that time, our family lived in a house in rural northwestern New Jersey. There were four boys living in that house, Sean (10) and Steven (8), from Don's previous marriage, Tod (5), from my mother's previous marriage, and me, about a year old at the time. Four boys in total. And the first time my mother had to run a household of that size.

She had help in the form of a gay, draft-dodging au pair who is still one of my dearest friends to this day, and who, over one snowy, alcohol-enhanced evening, filled Don in on the "gay scene" in NYC at the time. But Edgar was maybe about 20 years old, so it was a new and inexperienced perspective. His wasn’t the only gay POV that Don was able to access at the time. But in the late ‘60s, everything was dangerous, and Don and Sandy were models of discretion. And even though they were intensely critical of each other and any stray thought they disagreed with, no matter where it came from, they were also extremely liberal about other people’s identities. America has always been a walking contradiction.

A story Edgar recently told me: It was 1969, Edgar was on the run from the Army and the FBI was looking for him (among many). One day the phone rang and Don answered. It was the FBI, asking if he knew of Edgar or his whereabouts. Without missing a beat, Don said, “He’s in red China with my wife!” and promptly hung up. He then turned to Edgar and said, “You better get out of here for a while.” Vintage Don.

6) We've been building an archive of men's magazine reprints of Richard Stark novels, partially inspired by the tremendous work you were doing cataloging reprints and editions on the Donald Westlake website, and we've been able to find nearly all the Parker novels before Deadly Edge and three out of the four Grofields. Are you aware of whether The Blackbird was ever reprinted in a men's magazine? Or any additional ones that weren't presented on the website?

I do vaguely have a memory of seeing a Blackbird title in a magazine but it’s too long ago to remember more, and I might be confusing it with something else, so don’t get your hopes up just yet. Might’ve been French. I'm about halfway through the project I started all those years ago, but time, resources and other things have gotten in the way of continuing. The collection of as-yet-uncatalogued books remains in my basement. At some point, I'll have the bandwidth to finish it out, but there's no timeline for that as of now. Since I haven't been doing that research for several years, it's not fresh enough in my mind to be of any help right now. When I return to the project, I'll publish everything I can find.

All that said, most of the early stuff is already cataloged. It's possible there are some leftover magazines in one or two boxes, but I didn't pack them so I don't know how good a job they did as they went along. I can't help off the top of my head, but I'm sure you've already connected yourself with the wider Parker and Westlake fan ecosystem, who are really impressive with their skills at ferreting things out, including old prints, etc. I'm not really in any way useful on that front right now, but I will return to the project eventually.

7) Speaking of the Donald Westlake website, it was an invaluable resource for readers and fans everywhere. Is there any chance of it ever coming back?

It was a labor of love that required a lot of my time and effort with little or no support from the rest of the family or the estate. (A couple dollars for my costs and some fun recriminations were my reward.) When I could no longer devote the time to it, it fell by the wayside. As I have no power or control over the estate, I have removed myself and prefer to let it run on its own until conditions change. Meanwhile, it is what it is and I have no dog in the race. That, by the way, is a very 'Don' attitude. I know who I am.

8) We imagine Mr. Westlake's personal library must have been pretty extensive, but was there anything in there that he particularly treasured or that you have especially fond memories of?

I'm sure there are a few quirks that could stand out, but it's been a long time since his personal library was intact. He saved almost everything, so it's hard to decipher what may have had more resonance with him. He put his Edgar Awards on a top shelf, but he also hung-up a credential from a random book tour in Europe, I think, just because he liked the picture. And if you looked at his filing "system," you would come away wondering if he had any priorities of any kind at all.

I didn't spend a lot of time with my dad as a kid. My parents divorced, my mom moved to L.A. When I visited, my dad was in his office writing constantly and came out mostly for food, booze or Scrabble with friends (the analogue variety). Don didn't like kids much. He preferred people "when they became interesting" (that's an actual quote), which was true for most adults in the ‘children should be seen, not heard’ era of American exceptionalism (there are so many to choose from!).

I got to know Don a lot better in my teen years when we appeared in two community plays together. (He was loosening up in his old age, and he did some acting in school, so he got the bug again, briefly.) Don opened up to me more when he perceived me as a whole person. We didn't see eye-to-eye on everything, but we ended up with a fundamental respect for each other.

His last moment was a point he never got to make. He raised his right index finger as if to say something, then slumped over. It was quiet and quick, under a palm tree, and with the next thing on the tip of his tongue. We should all be so lucky.

Paul also shared a couple more anecdotes from a recent conversation with Edgar Carreras — the so-called “hand” of the “four-in-hand” mentioned in the A Jade in Aries dedication — about his life with Sandra and Donald Westlake, and the fateful night that may have served as inspiration for the aforementioned novel:

“One story I did not include took place during this time, and was one of the stories that Edgar told Don that snowy night. He was maybe 19, in the city and on the run from the FBI. He couldn't go home, he couldn't go to a friend and he was young, gay and horny. So he went home with an older guy that picked him up at one of the usual bars in the Village. When they got to his apartment, everything seemed very normal, almost boring and straight. Then his host turned off the lights, and what remained, visible only in the black light left on for the purpose, was an entire mural of scenes depicting men engaged in every lewd sex act imaginable on every wall in the apartment. Edgar was shaking like a leaf, exhilarated and terrified all at once, but he stayed. He had nowhere to go. And he had the time of his life. Never saw that guy again, but he never forgot that night. He told Don every detail.”

“Another Edgar anecdote about Don. They were out shopping for regular stuff in the city when they passed a shop window with a fabulous body suit covered with weird-looking studs, probably 1970-71. Edgar needed to check it out, so they went in together and Don waited while Edgar tried it on. He wasn't sure about it and decided he'd come back later if he wanted it. Three months later, it was in a box under the Christmas tree. My mother adored Christmas and lavishing people with presents on Christmas morning. No doubt, she asked Don for ideas, he mentioned the body suit and where it was, she knew Edgar's size, the rest is history. Edgar said his first Christmas with Don and Sandy in 1968-69 was the best he ever had, before or since.”

We would like to sincerely thank Paul Westlake for his kindness, his willingness to share so much, and for taking the time to chat with us!