2008 Merchandise & Miscellaneous News Archives

Book of Lies

September 19, 2008: A Chat with Brad Meltzer

By Scotty V.

On September 18th, 2008 I had the opportunity to participate in a conference call with Brad Meltzer, where he was asked various questions about his newest novel: "The Book of Lies", which draws a fictional connection to the Bible story of Cain and Abel and the unsolved murder of Mitchell Siegel - father of Superman's creator Jerry. There are those who would shun the idea it was a murder that killed Mitchell, after all the death certificate clearly states the elder Siegel died of a heart attack, but Brad tells those of us on the conference call that he, along with at least half the Siegel family are convinced that Mitchell was in fact shot to death. Though Brad is quick to point out his new novel is a work of fiction, it's his continuing belief that the death of Jerry's father, murder or not, was key to Jerry's creation of Superman.

Eleven years ago, after the success of his first book, Brad went to his editor with his newest idea. That idea was for a modern day fable about history's most famous murder: Cain's killing of his brother Abel. Brad admits his editor told him, very wisely, that he was an idiot. At the time Brad was being marketed as the next John Grisham and he was on the Bestseller lists and his editor couldn't understand why in the world he would want to risk his career by telling a Bible story. It was then that Brad knew he'd either have to stick to his creative guns, stand up to his editor and hold to his beliefs or he'd have to cave and put aside his dream story. "I caved quicker than anyone in the history of caving," says Brad, eliciting laughter from all the participants on the call. Brad later met a woman who told him she knew more about Superman than Brad would ever know and when Brad told her he seriously doubted that, she told him something that would influence a novel he'd write over a decade later.

The woman had known the Siegel family and had also known that Mitchell Siegel's murder had been the lynchpin that led to Jerry's creation of Superman. For those that would doubt that, says Brad now, we only need to look at the proof we can easily seek out. For when Superman was first written as a hero (after a minor introduction in a pulp mag where the character was a villain) his debut has him stopping a robbery. Siegel's father was killed, be it by heart attack directly related to or by gunshot during a robbery. That story, which was written before Action Comics #1, says Brad: "was never published and only the cover remains," but it was nonetheless, the character's first appearance as a hero. Next by way of proof, we have Jerry's return to writing Superman after he was years before summarily dismissed by DC because he and Joe Shuster felt they had been treated unfairly in regards to their creation, when Jerry's first story upon his return was a father/son story in which Superman is given the opportunity to save Jor-El. According to Meltzer, this speaks volumes to the issues Jerry had dealing with his father's death and that there was a great weight upon the Siegel family after they were made the victims of crime.

The idea of a Cain and Abel story stuck with Brad for over ten years and the concept of somehow coupling the murder of Mitchell Siegel with that story was the way Meltzer eventually decided to spin a fictionalized thriller mixed with bits of what might be truth. Brad tells us that the idea of portraying Cain, who is one of history's greatest true villains as we know him, as someone who maybe isn't really the villain after all was an exciting concept for him. Anytime we can turn the idea of what we might think we know on its head and make us look at things a different way makes for great fiction, it seems Meltzer believes and in the case of "The Book of Lies," some of that fiction just might be the truth.

When asked whether he likes writing comics or novels more Brad says the idea of writing Superman or Batman is like writing a piece of history. Becoming a part of something so big, created by someone else, that you get to add to is wonderful, but that writing a novel is so fulfilling because it's creating your own thing. Someone Brad knew once likened writing your own novel to painting your own house, rather than having someone else do it and that, in that way, one is almost making love to their house. While Brad himself doesn't exactly seem clear on how that equates to writing and Brad's own father called the statement "the stupidest thing he'd ever heard," Brad took it to heart and learned to feel similarly toward his novels.

Brad was then asked which takes longer to actually do, the writing or the research for the writing and he said that the writing itself actually takes him longer. Meltzer claims the numbers are generally an average of six months to research and then a year and a half to write the book. In the case of "The Book of Lies," much of the research might have been shortened because a lot of the Superman stuff, he says, was already in his head. However, his Superman knowledge was offset by the lack of knowledge he had on the biblical research he needed to do. According to Brad, the best stuff written about was from the Middle Ages and that it hasn't yet been digitized so it can't yet be Googled and an actual visit to the library was needed and that's were he actually did most of his biblical research for this novel.

Our esteemed Mr. Younis, who couldn't attend the call and asked me to take his place wondered why "The Book of Lies" should be on a Superman fans reading list and when I asked him Brad replied that he feels guilty recommending someone put one of his books on an official reading list. While he certainly loves that people would want to read his work, he doesn't like to assert pressures or try to tell people what they should read. That being said though, he really thinks that we Superman fans would appreciate this story because it's the closest he feels we can really get to some of the real reasons Superman was created. "Superman wasn't created because America is great," he says, but because a son lost his father to a horrible crime and though the book is a work of fiction, it's been heavily endorsed by many members of the Siegel family. Meltzer tells us that when he met Jerry Siegel's daughter she told him that though many people have written stories about her father over the years, that Brad was the first author to ever come and meet and speak to the Siegels in person.

On that same note, someone asked how the creation of the Siegel Society came about and Brad responded that it all started when he felt the need to see the home where Superman was created. He continued by saying that he fully expected to see a place well preserved by time that was the epitome of Americana and that he might have even found a freshly baked apple pie on the window sill. Instead though, and much to his dismay, when he arrived at the former home of the father of Superman, Brad was stunned to see the home was a wreck and in heavy disrepair. "The house where Google was created," he says, "is a protected site. But the house where Superman was created is falling apart." The current owners of the home even told Brad that they couldn't even get a plaque announcing their home was the birthplace of Superman. Feeling strongly that the home was something that should be saved, Meltzer told the owners that he was going to figure out a way to raise money for the home and that they'd get their plaque. With a laugh he tells us on the call that he felt telling them he'd get them that plaque was the macho thing to say. If you've been paying attention here at the Homepage, you know that the Society is doing really well and raising good money toward the rehabilitation of the home and Brad couldn't be happier. Though he made calls to people and got people (artists and friends) to donate artwork for auction, Brad wants it to be known that the people of Cleveland, people who were tired of seeing the house ignored, were the ones that did the real work of collecting and setting up websites and drawing attention to the fund.

It was then asked how it was that the FBI and CIA contacted Brad to ask for his help. Apparently, one day the Department of Homeland Security contacted Brad, saying that they needed his help in coming up with new ways a terrorist might attack the United States in the future. Shocked, Brad said: "You're calling me?" He felt that if he were the best hope in figuring out the strategy of terrorists that maybe we had a bigger problem, but was informed that they were seeking people who "thought outside the box" in order to come up with more unconventional ways the terrorists might strike. The government had recently arrested someone who had a copy of Brad's "The Millionaires," a story of two brothers who steal three million dollars from an account no one knows exists but soon find that not to be the case when the secret service tries to kill them, on top of his stack of reading material and that's how Meltzer came to be noticed by Homeland Security and contacted for this task. Meltzer says that they'd spend all day bouncing ideas off each other. There were scientists, law enforcement types and people like Brad involved in the project and it went back and forth until they'd come up with a feasible way terrorists could destroy a major U.S. city. And this, he says, "we'd do in like an hour." Planning the destruction of a major city in only an hour, Brad says, was terrifying and that at the end of the day you'd go home in utter horror, concerned about the future and worried about things that might come to pass, but that the being involved with the project and working the government toward the protection of the country was "one of the major experiences of my life."

It was brought up during the call that "The Book of Lies" is a story Brad has said he was born to write and if that's the case, what will Meltzer do next now that his birth project is complete. Laughing, Brad tells us that the next book is already planned and that, though he'll give no hints as to what it's about, there's no need to worry that he'll stop writing. In fact, he says, when he completed "The Book of Lies" and he felt that his lifelong desire to right that story was finally done, his wife told him that it was never a question of finally but that the book was "inevitable" for Brad to write. Oftentimes, Brad says, authors will say things like "I'm a much better writer now than I was ten years ago and there's no way I could have written such and such back then," but that he doesn't like that process of thinking. While he hopes he's a better writer than he was when he first started thinking about this idea, he thinks it's much more a matter of being more intellectually honest now than he ever could have been eleven years ago. Along that line, Brad admits that he's always been sort of terrified to write stories of fathers and sons because fathers can often cast "such a large shadow." He goes on to say that he's so glad he finally got this story, a story which was so emotionally close to his heart, written and completed and that now he's really ready to get on the horse and try it again. Eleven years ago he knows he couldn't have written about such a tender subject.

The most important thing Brad says he can see in his writing that he didn't even know before is that all his stories are about every day ordinary people changing the world. Whether it's "Identity Crisis" or the T.V. show "Jack and Bobby" or in his novels, it's always about people making a difference in the world. The biggest threat, he says, his heroes face is always themselves. "It's not an evil corporation" or a super villain or alien threat, but themselves. It is that way because Brad says that's what's at his core and what he believes. He expresses that when he was young his father lost his job and the family needed to move away and start a "redo" of life. When Brad went to school that year he felt like a complete outsider and that he had no friends and that oftentimes that period of his life is still a great literary inspiration to him; that feeling of being alone, of losing things that are important and of overcoming change to eventually make a difference.

Toward the end of the call I had the opportunity to ask Steve's second question which related to the similarities between the way Batman's mother's murder has been portrayed over the years and if that had some bearing on the way Meltzer decided to structure his story of Mitchell Siegel's death. Brad answered that many people have believed that the Siegel family as a single unit has always been behind the idea that Mitchell died of heart failure but that, in fact, half the family will never be convinced it wasn't a shooting. "To half the family," says Meltzer, "much of the story isn't fiction." Brad says he's had so many Siegel family members call him after reading the book just to thank him for writing it. Even though the story is a fictionalized account of certain events, the family members are just glad to see what many of them believe to be the impetus for Superman's creation has the opportunity to reach so many people. In the end it doesn't even matter whether it was heart failure or a bullet that ended Mitchell Siegel's life, but that because Jerry's father died as a result of a crime that it's clear it was instrumental in the creation of the Man of Steel. So no, says Meltzer, there was no connection to Batman but instead the idea that so many people are convinced of whatever way it may have occurred and that either way, by the Siegels being victims of a crime that took Mitchell from them, a great American iconic Superhero was born.

At the end of the call, Mr. Meltzer just wanted to be sure that he thanked everyone for taking part. Having such interest meant a lot to him personally and that he has visited every one of the websites we all represented. Many of them, he says, he'd been to countless times before this call was even set up and that when he went to check on them he was somewhat surprised to find many of them already on his favorites list. He related to us that although there is often only one name on the cover of a book, that he'd be crazy to say it was ever a one-person show. People like the folks in Cleveland that really worked hard to save the Siegel house have helped to convince him that his philosophy of what he writes is sound. Everyday ordinary people can make a difference and it's never been clearer to him than when he looks at what the Siegel Society has already raised with still over two weeks to go and some of the most excusive items not even up for sale yet.

For me, having had the opportunity to listen to and ask questions of such an accommodating interesting person as Brad, I must say that I think I agree with him. I know I'm very interested now in reading "The Book of Lies" and having looked up the jacket info and reading more about it, I'm very excited. It's not directly a Superman story, but if what Brad says is true, and I believe it is, then I'd say it only makes clear logical sense that a man who'd lost his father to crime would have a reason to create a hero who, in fiction, could stop such things from happening. So yeah, I'm going to read the book, even if at one point during the call he told us all that while he absolutely loves Superman, he's always been more of a Batman guy.



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