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Interviews

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We Make Our Own Monsters

    “By this point in the long game, I’ve interviewed a lot of crime writers. Elmore Leonard once read me the opening chapter of a novel—while he was in the middle of typing it up. I spoke with Walter Mosley and Donald E. Westlake within the same two–hour window one Christmas Eve. Go toe–to–toe with Richard Price, and you’ll come out of it feeling like the losing end of a prizefight. But there is nothing in the world like a sit–down with Andrew Vachss.” — Clayton Moore, Kirkus, June 11, 2013
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    Guardian of the Innocent

      “Aftershock is really about America’s ‘rape culture,’ a culture so pervasive that there’s no place immune to it. There’s no safe place from it. If this sounds like an outrageous accusation to you, just check the recent events in Steubenville, Ohio. Young men commit atrocities, and get treated as juvenile offenders, while the victim is the target of Internet threats traced to young girls in that same town. It’s hideous enough to be the victim of a sex crime, but a thousand times worse when the community appears to side with the perpetrators.” — BoroPulse.com, May 20, 2013
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      Lock Them Up Longer, Sell Their Stuff: How to Curb Child Pornography

        Vachss argues that the way to fight this crime is by making it more expensive to commit. “Civil forfeiture gained prominence during the so–called ‘war on drugs,’ and gained strength with the evolution of RICO statutes,” Vachss said in an interview with the National Association to Protect Children, which he serves as a board member. “Now civil forfeiture is possible for a whole variety of crimes (including child pornography, under Title 18 United States Code 2254) but the laws involving forfeiture for drug trafficking or money laundering tend to be much stronger than those for other crimes. For example, there are expansive multi–national civil forfeiture laws when narco–trafficking is involved.”
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        Litmocracy Interview

          “I didn’t devise [Burke’s] world. It exists. It’s real. It’s out there, but most of the planet ignores it because it’s convenient. News stories come on every day about kids meeting horrible fates in Africa, in Somalia, in inner cities here, and people just turn the channel. I guess they think that’s what God made remotes for. That’s a large part of the problem. Like it or not, that world exists and has for centuries. Burke doesn’t seek out pedophiles, he seeks out predatory pedophiles and child abusers. There’s a big difference. Predatory pedophiles, by definition, have sexual urges they act upon towards children, emotional urges some [argue], but ones they act upon in a physical way. By force. By trickery. By any and all kinds of means. Burke found them and he killed them. I wanted to expose readers to a dark part of the world that exists, and I didn’t want them to be introduced to it by an angelic figure.” — Litmocracy.com, August 2, 2012
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          Rob W. Hart’s “A Conversation with Andrew Vachss”

            “I don’t meet a whole lot of people without an agenda, so I don’t know what’s really in their mind. All I can do is be consistent and truthful. Am I shocked that the NAMBLA bulletin called me a fascist? No. But do I think they’re objective reviewers? Of course not. Any more than I think most book reviewers could be objective, I don’t know how they could be. The whole concept of book reviewing is, ‘You people are a bunch of sheep and I know what’s best and I’ll point you in that direction.’ What are the qualifications for being a book reviewer?”
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            Fighting Bullies One Book at a Time

              Vachss takes great pains to differentiate between bullying and fighting. In his experience, fighting is a part of life that he likens more as gambling than intimidation—a fighter doesn’t know if he’s going to win. “Fighting means you could lose. Bullying means you can’t. A bully wants to beat somebody, he doesn’t want to fight somebody.”
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              Comic Book Daily Interview

                “Heart Transplant tackles the subject of bullying right at its center. Not quite a graphic novel, not quite an illustrated book, Heart Transplant is looking to be a perennial book for kids, parents, teachers and librarians.”
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                Andrew Vachss and Dave Marsh: A Conversation (Nov. 2009)

                  “[Burke’s] a thief. He hates people who prey on children. Not because he loves children—because he was preyed on. He wants to get even, that’s his revenge. And his revenge and his religion are exactly the same thing. He sees it as an ‘us and them’ world. He’s not really concerned if you’re rich or poor, black or white—if you prey on children and you cross his path, it’s going to be bad for you.”
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