So what he’s saying, then, is that the life of a celebrity can be pretty rough, right?
Grisham grins. ““Hey, I’m a famous writer in a country where nobody reads.''
It’s a nice line, you want to tell him, but it says more about his self-effacing manner than it does about his actual status as the best-selling author of the decade, with 110 million books in print. On Feb. 2, the day it was published, Grisham’s latest novel, ““The Testament,’’ outstripped the first-day sales for his previous novel by 40 percent at Barnes & Noble and 62 percent at Sam’s Club, according to Doubleday. The new novel had a first printing of 2.8 million, and the publisher went back for a second printing in the first week. His success–along with Scott Turow’s–has helped make the legal thriller one of the most popular genres. Movies have been made from six of his 10 novels, and four, including ““The Firm’’ and ““The Client,’’ were huge hits.
As part of an elite handful of megaselling authors that includes Stephen King, Danielle Steel, Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy, Grisham has literally taken bookselling to places it’s never been before–not just to airport kiosks but to price clubs and, most recently, online bookselling. Grisham’s thrillers have also given publishing a global spin. American best sellers are now worldwide best sellers. Grisham has been translated into 34 languages, and he’s been a No. 1 best seller in eight countries, even ones where the legal system is entirely unlike the American model he writes about. And uniquely among that elite club of mega-selling authors, his audience cannot be corralled into a discernible demographic. He sells to everyone, from teens to senior citizens, from lawyers in Biloxi to housewives in Hong Kong.
The big criticism that dogs the appearance of every new Grisham novel is that he’s writing the same book over and over (David and Goliath go to court). Not this time. Abandoning the courtroom for the Brazilian jungle, ““The Testament’’ (435 pages. Doubleday. $27.95) proves that Grisham can spin an adventure yarn every bit as well as he can craft a legal thriller. Yes, once again the hero is a lawyer. And the villains are slimeballs. Make that unregenerate slimeballs. And the good people, particularly the missionary heroine, might as well wear wings and halos. But Grisham plays the legal stuff, if not for laughs, then certainly for its satirical value. The main event is the spiritual resurrection of Nate O’Reilly, a 48-year-old hotshot lawyer with two busted marriages, a big problem with drugs and alcohol, and a way of treating rehab like a hobby.
““The Testament’’ begins with the suicide of billionaire Troy Phelan, a mean, eccentric old coot who cuts his legitimate heirs out of his will and leaves his $11 billion to his illegitimate daughter, Rachel Lane, a missionary in Brazil. The story doesn’t get into gear, though, until Nate’s firm dispatches him to the Brazilian back country to track down the heiress. Before he can find her he endures a tropical storm and a plane crash. Following that up is a boat ride chartered by Joseph Conrad and navigated by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and we haven’t even gotten to the jungle fever and rubbing knees with the missionary lady.
Like all Grisham’s books, ““The Testament’’ is a compulsory page turner with a subterranean pull as old and potent as myth. ““His books grab you on a deep emotional level,’’ says director Joel Schumacher, who’s made two films from Grisham’s books, including the superb ““The Client.’’ Ironically, although Schumacher says that ““Grisham’s books are movies,’’ Hollywood hasn’t had a chance to make one since ““The Rainmaker’’ in 1997. Grisham has refused to sell the film rights to his last three novels, because, he says, the marketplace was just getting too crowded with Grisham stories (he’s had as many as three paperback titles chasing each other up and down the best-seller list simultaneously). ““You just can’t imagine how many ways things can go wrong with turning one of these stories into a movie,’’ he says.
The best analysis of a Grisham plot comes from a screenwriter–Oscar winner Robert Towne. Scriptwriter on the movie of ““The Firm,’’ he recalls his dismay when he first began untangling Grisham’s tortured plot. ““You remember the Danny Kaye monologue in “The Court Jester’ about the “pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle, but the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.’ That was “The Firm.’ I thought, this is going to be tough.’’ But the more closely he examined ““The Firm,’’ the more he admired it. ““It’s a wonderful paranoid fantasy,’’ he says. ““All the horrible things you can imagine happening to you do happen.''
It’s the same with ““The Testament,’’ only this time the paranoia and the horrible things are vanquished when the physical journey turns into a spiritual quest for Nate midway through the novel. Grisham himself is a lifelong Baptist. As a boy, ““whenever we moved, the first things we did were join the church and get our library cards.’’ Things haven’t changed much. Both Grisham and his wife have been Sunday-school teachers, and he has made numerous trips to Brazil with church groups to build houses and clinics. He contemplated a full-blown Christian conversion scene for Nate. His wife and his editor talked him out of it. What readers get instead is an intriguing and never pious story of a man’s search for spirituality–as a sort of bonus, Grisham tosses in a nasty critique of materialism. ““Success had brought him nothing but misery,’’ he writes of Nate. ““Success had thrown him in the gutter.’’ A strange novel, yes, but ultimately quite moving. And since quality of life and the quest for faith are hot-button issues for baby boomers these days, the story of baby boomer Nate’s rejection of the material world should resonate with readers.
And what about Grisham? Are Nate’s concerns his concerns? ““We have struggled at times with wealth,’’ Grisham says slowly. ““We’ve been very lucky and very fortunate. The point I was trying to make with Nate was that if you spend your life pursuing money and power, you’re going to have a pretty sad life. But no, there’s none of me in Nate.’’ At this point, his wife, Renee, speaks up. ““When you’re successful all of a sudden, the way we were, there is a lot of guilt.’’ Looking over at her husband, she says, ““I think in John’s books that he does try to resolve that subconsciously.’’ Grisham is staring off into space, and it’s easy to see that as far as he’s concerned things are getting a … little … too … personal. Suddenly he says, ““Let’s take a walk. Do you smoke cigars? Let’s fire up a cigar and go for a walk.''
Better yet, let him show you his Little League ball fields. No sooner had he arrived in Charlottesville than he decided the town’s ball fields were inadequate and inaccessible to rural kids. So he financed the construction of Cove Creek Park–six baseball diamonds, batting cages, clubhouse–a Little League heaven on earth that tells all you need to know about Grisham’s generosity and his determination.
““John is a handshaking, friendly, open person,’’ says his friend Richard Howorth, who runs Square Books in Oxford. ““But there’s depth there.’’ Grisham is the average guy who married the girl next door, but he’s also the boy who gets up every morning at 5 to write. Ten years ago, he strode into Howorth’s bookstore to say he’d written a novel and he’d appreciate it if Howorth would hold a book-signing party for him. And, by the way, he needed to sell 500 copies. Howorth told him he’d be lucky to sell 50 (he sold 49), but he took ““A Time to Kill’’ and promised to read it. ““And sure enough, like everybody, I was up until 2 in the morning.’’ ““A Time to Kill’’ sold about 5,000 copies. Republished after ““The Firm’’ appeared, it sold 292,000 hardback copies. A copy of that very first edition, signed by the author, will fetch $2,500.
According to Howorth, ““none of the literary people in Oxford carry a grudge about Grisham’s success,’’ because he is so genuinely unassuming about his own writing. ““I don’t pretend it’s literature. It’s high-quality, professional entertainment,’’ Grisham declares. Not surprisingly, he compares his career to an athlete’s arc. ““You have some really good years where you’re on top, and then one day it’s over. I won’t always write a book a year. I won’t always write about lawyers. Once the legal thrillers run their course, I’d like to get back to telling stories about the South and Ford County [the fictional setting of “A Time to Kill’].’’ Does that mean that this collector of Faulkner first editions thinks of himself as part of the great Southern literary tradition? ““Oh, no. I could have grown up in Denver and written “The Firm’,’’ he says. He pauses to take a long pull on his cigar. ““I think one day I’d like to become a Southern writer.’’ Another pause, another puff. ““Yeah, that’s my goal, to become a true Southern writer.’’ He allows himself a small grin. ““Who also sells a few copies. In my lifetime.''
TEN BEST SELLERS IN 10 YEARS: A STORY WITH EVERYTHING BUT SUSPENSE Of the six books Grisham’s sold to Hollywood, five were hits. The loser was “The Chamber.” Ironically, it’s his all-time best-selling novel (3.17 million hardcover copies). Otherwise, he’s been Mr. Consistency, selling about 3 million hardcover copies of almost every title.
