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Getting carried away with Joe Finder
by
Mim Harrison
 It didn't take Joe Finder long to figure out he wanted to be a
writer. He knew it by the time Mrs. Cameron wrote back to him in the third
grade.
Eleanor Cameron was the author of one of a series of science
fiction stories that Joe discovered, and then devoured, in the early years
of primary school. It was, he says, "the first time I really grasped the
fact that behind every novel is a writer." He wrote Mrs. Cameron a fan
letter—she wrote back—they kept up the correspondence—and he knew there
and then that he would be a writer. "It just took me another two decades
to get up the courage to actually write a novel."
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His fan letter to an author sealed his fate
as a writer when he was in the third grade.
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Reading was something Joe had taught himself to do at the age of three,
and with little effort. Both parents were university professors and their
house was filled with books. "Reading was just about as natural as
breathing," he says. One of the books his father read to him, Sleepy ABC,
is now a book Joe reads to his daughter.
Reading was also how Joe taught himself to write. Ironically, he was an
instructor in writing at Harvard for five years, but he never took a
writing course himself. Instead, he read.
He studied different writing styles, seeing which ones he was drawn to
and which wouldn't work for
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A book his father read to him as a child is
one he now reads to his daughter.
| him. After a series
of successful books, including his most recent novel Company Man, Joe
still reads like a writer. "I'll admire a passage or a bit of prose or
even the way a novel is constructed, and I'll make a mental note to
myself," he says.
In college he segued from the thrillers of Robert Ludlum to the
urbanity
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He loved Saul Bellow's language—"the way he
veered from street-smart to learned, the way his language spouted
out, how vibrant and jazzy and improvisatory it was."
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of Saul Bellow. Humboldt's Gift was its own gift to Joe. "It taught me
that a serious novel of ideas could be told in a colloquial voice." He
loved Bellow's language—"the way he veered from street-smart to learned,
the way his language spouted out, how vibrant and jazzy and improvisatory
it was."
Joe uses books not only as his writing instructor
but as his life mentor as well. They have been the silent sounding board
for working through relationships, getting over rough patches—and getting
out of academia. (Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim was the impetus.) 
"The more you read, the more you're affected by books," Joe says.
"Nothing goes as deep or lasts as long."
He hopes his own books keep readers up past
midnight or going longer on the treadmill in the morning because they can't stop turning pages. "The one thing I don't
want is for them to do the worst thing of all," he adds, "to read ten
minutes in bed before falling asleep. That way you read little bits and
pieces. But you never get carried away."
Mim Harrison is the senior writer
for Levenger and the editor of Levenger Press.
Joe Finder was a guest at Levenger in Delray Beach on April 30, 2005.
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