Author Thrills Dudley House Audience

Techno-thriller writer Ben Mezrich '91 spoke yesterday in Dudley House about how he broke into the publishing industry.

Mezrich, who is the author of the books Reaper, Threshold and The X-Files: Skin, said the Harvard name was part of what helped him to land an agent and then a book contract.

"The Harvard name really helps in getting them to read your manuscript," he said.

But Mezrich said the troubles don't stop once the writer has gotten into the industry. Profit is a publisher's primary interest, he said, and writers who don't sell well are often considered expendable.

"The publisher is kind of the enemy," Mezrich said. "They don't have your best interests at heart."

Mezrich was also disapproving of first-time writers trying to break into the writing business with what he derisively called "literature."

"I see it as a kind of masturbation," Mezrich said. "Let's say you could write a great literary masterpiece. You should be able to write a great thriller, too, and get published that way."

He reminded the audience that 95 percent of books don't turn a profit.

"Now that I'm established, however, if I wanted to write a literary work, the doors are open," he added.

Although he conceives of his books visually, he said that he still finds it difficult to write screenplays.

"In books, you can show what the characters are thinking. In movies, the characters don't think," he quipped.

Mezrich called Hollywood worse than the publishing industry. When his novel Reaper was made into the television film Fatal Error, he said he was able to exercise some creative control, but the movie ended up with a cast that wasn't exactly what he had envisioned.

Mezrich has tried to get other projects going out in California, including films, television series and other television movie projects. But so far, he has been unsuccessful.

"If you have a movie, your books get to the next level [in sales]," Mezrich said. "That's definitely where I'm looking now."

Mezrich had tips on the writing process, too.

"The key to a book is the character, and his obstacles, and the idea," Mezrich said.

The idea is the most important thing, he added. Both Hollywood and the publishing industry look for projects with themes that can be summed up in a sentence or two.

"Writing a character is like acting," Mezrich said.

He described how, to get inside the head of a fugitive character in his most recent novel, he traveled cross-country for a week-and-a-half with $30,000 in cash in his backpack.

"It's kind of scary to be travelling on a train in Washington and know that the person next to you would kill you for your bag if he knew what was in it," he said.

Under the pen name Holden Scott--"my fantasy WASP name," Mezrich said--he is also the author of Skeptic and The Carrier.