Standing Room only at Bestseller's Cafe'

Despite noisy thunderstorms Dennis Lehane fans flocked to the newly renovated Bestsellers Café in Medford Square on May 21st to be regaled by the successful Dorchester native. He has written ten bestselling crime novels including Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone which was made into a movie staring Matt Damon. He announced to the coffee sipping crowd that the screen rights to Mystic River have been sold to Clint Eastwood.  Lehane who was born and raised in Dorchester revels in his blue collar upbringing with a thick Dorchester accent that even a “Watatownie” now living in “Me’f’d” had to accommodate.

He credits his success as a writer to a “liar gene” by way of his family heritage which is Irish.  Others have used the more cutesy term “blarney”, however, it could be that in Boston wordsmithing has been carried to a new level. His parents had 16 and 13 siblings so there were a lot of aunts and uncles competing and spinning yarns creatively working on their new national identity as second generation Americans.  He learned at his uncles’ knees how to craft a story embellishing and changing endings to keep and hold the family’s attention during weekend talk-a-thons in the tradition of storytellers of Ireland.  A teacher I studied under put it this way…Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

We are wired for community and communication. Content may not be as important as the act of getting together and listening and responding. Technology has developed so fast older generations may not know how to interact in the era of computers, wi-fi, Youtube and Twitter.   We’ve traded face to face communication for Facebook seeking ever larger entertainment venues via Al Gore’s Internet. I wonder if Al has the gene too?

One of Lehane’s most influential college teachers called “writing the lie that tells the truth”.

Lehane kept the standing room only crowd laughing and the Q&A that followed revealed that locally we have a fair number of writing afictionados (novelist wannabes). Did I just make up a new word?  He signed books for a long line of readers who picked up a copy of his latest novel, Live by Night. If you haven’t read Lehane’s New York Times bestsellers or visited the Bestseller’s Café you are in for some treats. The café has a great collection of regular and gluten-free pastries to go with a nice cuppa tea or coffee. Though Lehane has spoken at other venues this is the only one actually situated on the Mystic River. We should all gather at the river more often!