On Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise And ‘Concealed Homophobia’

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I got to sit down with Lee Child (right), to interview him for the Irish Examiner on the publication of the latest Jack Reacher tome, THE AFFAIR. A very interesting conversation it was, too, especially when Child discussed the negative reaction to the casting of Tom Cruise as Reacher, which he believes is in part a kind of ‘concealed homophobia’. To wit:

SIZE may or may not matter, but for author Lee Child, height certainly isn’t an issue. Particularly if it means that his famously tall hero, ex-US army MP Jack Reacher, will be played in the movies by the diminutive Tom Cruise.
  “Making movies is incredibly complicated,” says Child. “Somebody once advanced the metaphor that you’ve got a hundred extension cords, and they’re all a foot too short. So there are a thousand things to worry about, but an exact physical facsimile of the printed character is not one of them, no.”
  Child is fully appreciative of the fact that Jack Reacher’s fans have been up in arms about the casting of Cruise. “I’m very grateful for the way the character seems to have entered people’s consciousness,” he says. “The ownership of the character has migrated outwards, so that every reader now has a stake in Reacher.”
  By the same token, he believes there’s something sinister in the aggressively negative reaction.
  “I think a lot of this negative anger is a kind of concealed homophobia among certain people,” he says. “I mean, this persistent rumour that Cruise is gay, and the comments about his smallness and his prettiness, smacks to me of something that is not quite all revealed yet.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

A Childish Sense Of Humour

Lee Child doesn’t have much of a reputation for being a funny writer. For all his various talents, no one has ever said to me, ‘Hey, that Lee Child, he’s hilarious.’ But I don’t know. I’m reading THE AFFAIR right now, and maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding Jack Reacher’s deadpan, laconic delivery very funny indeed. To wit:

I finished my breakfast before I spoke again. French toast, maple syrup, coffee. Protein, fibre, carbohydrates. And caffeine. All the essential food groups, except nicotine, but I had already quit by then. I put my silverware down and said, ‘There’s really only one obvious way to cut a woman’s throat …’ (pg 88)

  Like I say, maybe it’s just me.
  Anyway, Lee Child will be in Dublin this coming Wednesday, October 12th, to promote THE AFFAIR. I’ll be sitting down with him for an interview, which is something I’m looking forward to very much, but he’s also doing a few public appearances. He’ll be in the Dubray bookstore on Grafton Street at 1pm, for signings and a chat, and later that evening he’ll be taking part in a public interview at Eason’s on O’Connell Street, the event kicking off at 7.30pm.
  Incidentally, if you haven’t dipped into Lee Child yet, THE AFFAIR would be a good place to start. It’s a prequel-of-sorts, being set in 1997, six months before the first Jack Reacher novel, KILLING FLOOR, and - or so I surmise, being only halfway through at this point - explains how Jack Reacher, currently an undercover MP investigating the murder of a young woman in a Mississippi town, became a loner-drifter.
  Of course, I’m probably preaching to the choir on this one …