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Carl Hiaasen Creates His Own Reality
By : Rosa Rojas
The Florida Everglades and Keys
The grassy waters of the Everglades and the lush, subtropical islands of the Florida Keys, are the setting for many of Carl Hiaasen’s hilarious mystery novels. In fact, “nature itself is almost a character in some of the novels,” he says.
Hiaasen, a best-selling author and award-winning columnist, had always wanted to live in the Florida Keys and seven years ago he got his wish. ”I grew up in Fort Lauderdale and it was always a dream of mine to get out of the city and move down here to the islands.”
His love for the area is obvious in the columns that he writes for The Miami Herald, which he began working for in 1976, as well as in his satirical novels, where he usually kills off litterbugs, overzealous developers and sleazy politicians in quite imaginative ways.
His latest novel, Basket Case, follows the adventures of an obituary writer turned detective. Hiaasen is also currently working on a mystery novel for younger readers, as well as a television series, both of which are set in Florida.
What do you consider the most charming or intriguing areas of the Keys?
I would consider those areas as far as possible from the mainland. Those are the places I go to by boat and around Everglades National Park, in particular. The area all the way down on Flamingo [Road], the eastern part of Florida Bay, all the way up to the Ten Thousand Islands. Those are all areas that look very much like they did thousands of years ago, they haven’t changed that much and there’s a lot of interesting wildlife. It’s much more intriguing to me than slogging down US1.
So those are the areas you’d recommend someone visiting?
Well, sure if you’re interested in nature. If you’re interested in getting drunk, then I’d stay on the mainland.
So you’re more of a nature guy?
Yeah, I just prefer the solitude of the Everglades over the excitement of Duval Street.
How does living there affect your writing?
It makes it easier. A lot of my novels have to do with or at least have some interaction with nature. Nature itself is almost a character in some of the novels. So, I’m much closer to that here in the Keys than in the city. And it certainly affects the newspaper work as well because this is a place that I care deeply about and a lot of the issues that are important and surface in the newspaper columns also surface in the novels. They have to do with trying to save what’s left of Florida. This is a prime example of a place that’s worth fighting for.
Where did you get the idea for your new novel, Basket Case?
I wanted to do a novel in the first person, which I’ve never done before, and I thought it was natural to put it in the voice of a newspaper guy because that’s the only occupation I’ve had for the last 27 or 28 years. So I decided to make him a middle-aged obituary writer because the theme of death is certainly something that pops up in lots of fiction and literature. As an obituary writer he would have to sort of confront it and deal with it everyday in some emotional way while he was writing about it. And I also wanted to make it a little bit of a mystery, so I thought it would a neat idea for an obituary writer to stumble upon a homicide and try to solve it in spite of that not really being his job, and also the bureaucracy of the newspaper which would inevitably conspire to take the story away from him. So it’s a little bit about death. It’s a bit about rock ‘n roll because the victim is a rock star who dies in a suspicious and mysterious accident. And it’s a lot about the newspaper business too. About what’s happened in the newspaper business the last 20 years.
Whose work do you enjoy reading?
When I get the time to read, which is not often, I certainly enjoy people like Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake and Richard Ford for Americans. I love Martin Amos, he’s a British writer, a very sharp-edged satirist. There’s a few airplane type of books that you grab at the airport. I’ll go back and read anything that John D. MacDonald ever wrote, may he rest in peace. He was the original sort of bard of Florida, the original cranky observer of what was happening to Florida. All of us who write down here in the Sunshine State owe him a great debt.
What would you consider the three greatest highlights of your adult life?
It’s going to sound corny, but the birth of my first son who is now a reporter at the Palm Beach Post and that was 30 years ago that he was born and then the birth of my new son who was just born two years ago, not even two years ago. I hope there will be a newspaper business around for him to go into when he’s old enough. Those are the first two highlights and the third, I would have to say is when I met my wife down here in the Keys at a restaurant. Those are the three personal high points. Professionally, I would say certainly going to work at The Herald, which was and still is a pretty darn good newspaper. And being published as a novelist, which is a thrill. It’s something you dream about as a writer and I’ve been very lucky and fortunate that people still have some perverse appetite for my novels.
If you were a superhero what would your special power be?
I don’t think you could print that in a family magazine.
OK, your second special power?
I think to automatically and abruptly remove from the highway any bad drivers. Point at a car and have it vaporize right in front of my eyes. It would certainly make the driving easier here in South Florida. Yeah, just completely vaporize at the snap of a finger a bad driver. It would be satisfying and on top of it it would be fun too.
Which way would you prefer to die—choking on a plastic alligator or in the hands of an amorous dolphin?
I guess it would depend on the dolphin.
If it were a good-looking dolphin?
Yeah, those are two of my more twisted death scenarios in the novels. I would certainly prefer to be in the water somewhere. I don’t want to sit and contemplate either one of those two options.
What other types of writing have you tried—TV sitcoms, screenplays?I wrote a screenplay years ago. Right now I’m working on a novel for kids, 10-14 something like that. So that’s a new thing. It’s fun, but it certainly requires tidying up some of the language that my characters tend to use.
Can you say what it’s about?
It’s just about a kid who is trying to figure out a little mystery involving another kid and it’s based here in Florida. It’s about one kid with family problems who sort of has run away from home and another kid who is trying to help him and they get caught up in a little bit of a mystery. I’m also working on developing a TV series that’s set here in Florida for a company in California that has done quite a few TV shows and that’s new for me too. I’ve never done anything like that.
If someone would ask you to come up with a reality show in the Keys what would it be like?
A reality show in the Keys, that’s a contradiction in terms right there. This is the whole reason people come to the Keys is sort of to create their own reality and each of the areas of the Keys is so different I don’t know what I would possibly imagine as a reality show here unless it involved, again, you know, activities that may be on the borderline…Every day is a reality show down here.
What plans do you have for the future?
My plans for the future are to check my mail.
Hiaasen’s best-selling novels include Tourist Season, Double Whammy, Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Strip Tease (made into a movie of the same name starring Demi Moore and Burt Reynolds), Stormy Weather, Lucky You and Sick Puppy.
Photos By Tim Chapman
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