Dennis Interviews Andrew Klavan

One of the clearest thinkers and a profound man, Andrew Klavan of The Daily Wire. He has a podcast there. He is an international bestselling novelist. I very rarely have novelists on, but I'm having Andrew Klavan on, A, because my producer says this thing is absolutely riveting, and because Andrew Klavan is a thinker. He's the host of The Andrew Klavan Podcast on The Daily Wire. He's a screenwriter, author, The latest book is a detective thriller, A Woman Underground. And if you go to Amazon, you will read— here's an example— a masterful combination of psychological insight, urgent literary detection, and ticking clock cat-and-mouse suspense. So let me just say this, you, you people who write novels, mysteries, etc., You have undoubtedly worked on your innate ability, but there is an innate ability. It's, you know, I have certain innate abilities, obviously, I take no credit for it. I was able to speak well at a very early age. Okay, fine. But if you would say to me, write a short story, forget a novel, Dennis Prager, we want you to write a compelling 2,000-word short story. And remember, I write a column a week. I have 1,000 columns on the internet. That's— but it's all obviously nonfiction. I couldn't write something worthy of a 7th grader who had talent. So when did you know you had talent to, to write fiction?

I was about 13 years old. I started to realize that I saw things in terms of stories. I even knew then that I saw big pictures in terms of stories. I mean, I think I looked— could look at an entire group of people and think there's a dynamic here, interchange of personalities, and it all just sort of told itself in my mind by stories. I had been an addictive daydreamer as a little kid, and it always bothered me, but it actually turned out to be a talent. It actually turned out to be a gift, so I grabbed it.

So you would daydream what, plots of stories?

Well, this was an interesting thing. I would have a daydream. All kids have daydreams, right? You want to be a hero, you want to be Superman, whatever it is. But I had this kind of quirk, which was that my daydreams had to make sense. They didn't have to be realistic. I could, you know, fly to Mars, but I have to explain why I could fly to Mars. And so before I could start my daydreams, I actually had to build up this entire story to get to the point where I could be what another kid would have dreamed about without even thinking. So if I wanted to be invisible, I had to figure out how did I get to be invisible? How does that happen? What's it like to be a little kid who can drive a car? Or what's it like to be a little kid who's, you know, a famous movie star? Whatever I wanted to dream about. And so that was— that developed this sort of habit of building stories in my mind.

When did you first write published fiction?

I— my first publication was, I guess, when I was about 19 or 20, and I sold a short story I'd written to a small literary magazine and saw it in print. I think the first time I was paid was probably when I sold a story to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, which was a tremendous, tremendous thrill.

How old were you?

Because I had read it all. I guess I started really publishing fiction when I was in my 20s, and it didn't—

you know, you should have laminated that check. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm sure you wish you had at least a picture of it today because it's got to have been a thrill beyond words. I was paid to write fiction.

It was insane when I was paid to write fiction, especially I had grown up reading the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, watching all Hitchcock's pictures. He shaped my imagination. All the mystery writers, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, they shaped my imagination. And to see my name in print on that kind of pulpy paper that they use was just, it was unbelievable. It was like being in a dream. Yeah.

My first paid, I'm not sure I was paid, it was, but it was equivalent. William Buckley published me in my 20s, like you. I was 25. And he published a piece I wrote on Poland because that was my area of specialty, communist countries. And I just want you to know, everything I wrote in that column turned out to be wrong. I am so grateful to William Buckley Jr. for publishing me, but I predicted that the head of Poland would fall any day now. He lasted another 10 years. 10 years! The book by Andrew Klavan is A Woman Underground. It is up at DennisPrager.com. We're going to talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome when we get back. This man is a thinker, not just a writer.