Fifteen Questions: In his blood
It isn’t the subject matter of Blue Blood, first novel of Edward Conlon ’87, that has won the cop drama extensive media coverage and a spot atop bestseller lists. It’s the author himself, a literally blue-collared detective for the NYPD who happens to have a Harvard diploma. FM tracked Conlon down for a phone interview while he was on tour in California, and the author was happy to talk about hiding his Harvard degree from his fellow cops, his first break into security work as a receptionist for HUPD and how he never really felt part of white-collar Harvard to begin with.
1. Describe yourself at Harvard.
I was an English concentrator in Adams; my thesis was about Samuel Beckett. I wrote for the Harvard Lampoon for four years and was the Vice-President. I also worked with the HUPD in student security for three years. It was mostly night-time security stuff, manning the reception desk at the Science Center or walking around the Faculty Club, although I mostly just hid. Harvard’s campus is probably a lot safer now that I’m not working campus security anymore.
2. Did you enter law enforcement immediately after graduation?
I worked a photocopier for a couple of months at a law firm and saved up a couple grand... [then] I spent six months in Yugoslavia. After coming back I got a job in criminal justice as a sort of social worker in Brooklyn researching the backgrounds of delinquent youths. That was probably how I first got involved in criminal justice.
3. How did you get into writing?
I was from a family that was big on reading. My dad had so many books in the house that the attic suffered from structural damage and we had to move the books onto the porch, which became our library. But after that even the porch started sagging under the weight of all those books so we had to move them into the basement.
4. What made you decide to become a cop?
I wanted a real job. As a freelance writer it took me about three months to write a piece, and if I sold it to The New Yorker I might get fifteen grand, if I was published in a literary magazine I would be lucky to get a couple of free copies. I figured I’d get a stable job with a paycheck that would free me up to write whatever I wanted.
5. But there are lots of stable—but less risky—jobs out there. Why be a cop?
I grew up in a cop family and was always around cops and heard cop stories. Hanging around them I found that these were people who really loved their jobs. I could have probably found a job in Hollywood or teaching or something which would be close to writing but not quite. I thought it might be better to get a job which had nothing to do with writing so I would be free to write what I wanted.
6. Was it hard to choose something so very different from your educational and previous work experience, especially considering the physical risks of police work?
You just have to figure out over time how to be happy—it’s cowardly not to. I was constantly surrounded by cops. It took a long time for me to have these ideas coalesce into something concrete, but it happened. In terms of the risks, cops are constantly involved in physical confrontations, and you react to them instinctively. You have to remember that most of them are instantaneous, so it’s mostly a reflexive response, and it depends upon your training and character.
7. Were your friends and family surprised by your decision to be a cop?
They were pretty surprised alright. There’s no one else that I know who became a cop after Harvard. But mostly my friends saw that I was certainly happy and they were happy for me too.
8. Was being from Harvard a liability or an asset when you joined the force?
When I first joined the force it was something I kept secret for a while. I think it’s normal that when you’re first starting out a job you don’t want to have people questioning your motives and wondering what you’re doing there. At the [Police] Academy you have to fill up these background forms and for my college I wrote in a kind of cramped scribble that looked like ‘Howard’. It was good enough to fool most people, but there was one instructor who stopped a class to say “Conlon, there’s a rumor going around that says you went to Harvard.” I replied, “Not likely, Sarge.” After the class I went up to the Sergeant and told him I hadn’t been completely honest and apologized. He patted me on the back and told me that I had nothing to be ashamed of.
9. Financially speaking, your writing has been far more lucrative than your job as a cop. Has that affected your relationship with others on the force?
The information about how much I got paid to write Blue Blood was in the newspapers so people didn’t even have to guess about that. But overall people on the force wished me well and were happy for me. I think they were also glad to see that I love the job enough to keep on doing it even though I don’t have to. They’re also glad to have someone telling their story.
10. Your undergraduate education at Harvard cost a small fortune—was it worth it?
My parents probably want their money back—I hope they have a receipt lying around somewhere. Being at Harvard prepared me for my job to the extent that learning how to write is learning how to think, and cops do have to think sometimes, you know. Coming to Harvard I felt a little bit like a fish out of the water, because Harvard is nothing like the working-class, middle-class Irish-Catholic high school I went to. Overall my college experience hasn’t helped me much in my current job, although I had great teachers at Harvard and I appreciate that.
11. What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?
Don’t count on it to pay the rent. I think I am extremely lucky to be where I am. For aspiring writers I think it doesn’t matter where you go to college. If you’re going to write, you’re going to write, regardless of the obstacles. So you write, and you try it out, and sometimes it works out, but for the most part it doesn’t.
12. What do you think is your role in society?
As a cop, that’s easy—if you get mugged in the South Bronx I’m the guy who tries to help you. As a writer, I’m not too big on writerly responsibilities. I think a writer’s only responsibility is telling the truth as they see it, and even then that’s only for non-fiction writing. I wrote Blue Blood for myself as a way to remember what we do as cops in a bad neighborhood in a big city—it’s a personal memoir, a history.
13. You deal with the expressions of crime and violence daily. How do you think we can prevent them?
In terms of preventing crime, I think jobs and marriages are the two most important forces. Of course, for teens marriage is simply not an option, but most of these kids come from broken homes. Whatever work we can do to strengthen the base of where people come from and grow up, as well as find ways of increasing their stake in society is important.
14. Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?
I hate to answer these questions because whenever I try to predict the future I’m always wrong. But I definitely see myself as a cop for the next few years. It’s in my blood.
15. Upcoming writing projects?
I will certainly still be writing. I’m not sure if I want to write another book [like Blue Blood] as a sort of sequel so I’m deciding on that. Blue Blood took five years to write—it was nearly done when September 11th happened and then I took another two years to finish. It’s not like you can plan when you’re going to have something to say. Right now I’m reworking a section of my book and hopefully turning it into an essay for The New Yorker.