Dennis Lehane and The Globe Seem to Have Made Up

It’s been a few weeks since novelist Dennis Lehane called out a Globe review of his newest book and since then, it seems like he and the paper have had something of a rapprochement. At least that’s the sense we get from The Globe‘s positive profile of the author today. Reporter Mark Shanahan writes:

Lehane has literary ambitions beyond hardboiled crime fiction. Not content just to be a purveyor of entertaining pulp, the Dorchester native is turning the page, trying his hand at stories with a grander historical sweep.

“With each book, he’s hunting bigger and bigger game, and making it look easy,” said novelist Richard Russo, author of “Nobody’s Fool” and “Empire Falls.”

Earlier this month, Lehane took to Facebook to announce that though he’d never once responded to a review of his work, he had to call out a freelancer writing for The Globe, who criticized a character in his novel Live By Night as a “magical negro,” despite the fact that the character was white. Lehane blew up on Facebook, and presumably so did his fans, because he had to take to the social network a day later to ask them not to send the reviewer hate mail.

The Globe, of course, corrected the review. Now, the author seems fully cooperative with the Globe reporter, giving him access and an interview. He hasn’t lost any of his bombast though. In case you’re wondering how many quotes Shanahan included that had to include the censoring phrase: “[expletive],” it’s three. A sample, as Lehane discusses the work of his peers in his writing program:

“You gotta be [expletive] kidding me,” said Lehane, who can sometimes sounds like a character in one of his books. “Another story about white people in a kitchen in Connecticut talking about their malaise?”

Long live the family newspaper.