I transcribed a few parts of an interesting YouTube video in which Boston’s most popular writer, Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River and Shutter Island among other books, shared some insights about Boston, Bostonians and the Boston voice.
Basically, they all settled in this one area of the city called Dorchester and they lived, invariably, within a mile of each other. You couldn’t swing a cat without coming across one of my relatives in my neighborhood. What they all would do was visiting and trading houses on weekends. They were never associated with anybody else. It was just like growing up in the Mafia. They would go over to each other’s houses and the houses rotated every weekend, because there were a lot of them. Every Friday and Saturday that’s what they did. They got together every weekend, sat in the kitchen or the living room, drank highballs and Schlitz, smoked Lucky Strikes and told some stories. And you knew they were drunk when they started singing Danny Boy. That’s all they did!
My old man on Saturdays would take me to the farmer’s market, located in the Fields Corner area of Dorchester. This is where we grew up. …Then we’d drive back up to Dot Ave and we’d hit a bar. I was about nine, maybe ten. He’d take me into the bar. On Saturday afternoons to this day, one of my all-time favorite smells and feelings is to sit at a bar in a Saturday afternoon on the first warm day of spring. I don’t know why. With spring coming through the door and you can still smell winter coming off the sidewalk. It’s been melting all winter, So, he would bring me into this bar and we sat. I used to get ginger ale, no ice and with a red straw because it looked like everyone else’s drinks. And I would listen to guys telling stories. That’s what they did. They sat around this bar and they told stories. They weren’t all Irish, they were working class guys from Dorchester. Whether they were Irish guys off the boat, or they were Polish guys off the boat, but there were a few basic rules. This was story telling that was blood sport. This was not genteel story telling. “That was an interesting story Aaron (golf clap), very well told.” No. This was, if you weren’t telling the story and getting in and grabbing them fast, engaging them fast, you got shouted down or you got told to sit down and shut up, or the bartender said, “Hey, Jimmy turn the Sox game back up.” That was it. You were out.
Another reason I became a writer– which could get your ass beat into the ground in Dorchester, Massachusetts so you had to really believe in it–
was that I loved to read. I was a big reader. And I would read in private. It wasn’t like I was telling my friends. My friends would be like, “Did you see what Carlton Fisk did last night in the game?” And I would be like, “Well, actually I was reading Alexander Dumas.” …(pounds his fist into his hand) “He’s talking like a smart guy, so I beat the shit out of him. “..”Good job, son!” It wasn’t considered cool where I grew up. It wasn’t even considered remotely cool. So I had to really believe in reading to read.
…Bostonians are their own complete breed. By that I mean, they’re all just a little cracked in the head. I’ve never met a Bostonian who isn’t just missing a couple of cogs. That’s being kind. Including myself, I put myself in here. We’re all just a little whacked, just a little off center. I realized this at a pretty reasonably young age, because I noticed people speaking very vividly where I came from. Whenever I was visiting other places, I’d listen and be like, “Huh…Nobody’s really hitting those words quite the same way as the people in the neighborhood. This is really kind of odd.”
One of the reasons I’m a writer is because I wanted to capture the Boston voice, which I think is an extremely unique voice. And now I make my case.
…I went back home for Christmas and I ran into a buddy of mine. He had always been kind of a brawler and I said, “How ya doin?”, he replied, “well, I got stabbed.” And I inquired, “what happened” he answered, “Well, I was at Sean’s, I got in a beef with this guy and we’re throwing a few punches then all of a sudden he whips out a knife, stabs me, and I don’t know what you’ve heard, but when you’re stabbed it can kind of take the fight out of ya.”
There are two phrases that are the key that says everything about inner city Bostonians. The first is, “I don’t know what you’ve heard.” Like, in case you’re under the impression that getting stabbed is more like a hot stone massage at a really great spa. And then the massive, massive understatement: “It kind of takes the fight out of ya.” Not, oh my god, I was bleeding all over the place. They called an ambulance. I was praying for my mama. “It ..kind of.. takes the fight out of ya.”
We were living in one section of Boston, a section that actually inspired Mystic River, a place called Charlestown. …And Charlestown for a hundred years was incredibly insular, it was 100% Irish and 100% poor, filled with generational violence, it was pretty much your daddy was a bank robber or a longshoreman. That was pretty much it. And bank robbing was considered the family trade in Charlestown. So much so that if you robbed a bank and jumped over the counter to get the money, they called it the Charlestown hop. ….Charlestown is a really wacky place with a really wacky history. For 50 years, it had the highest unsolved murder rate in the United States. Not too many people died. Not too many at all, but when they did die, nobody talked. There was even what was known as the “Charlestown excuse”: you said, “I was drinking.” So seriously, it was like, “Your brother was shot right beside you, why didn’t you see the shooter?” …”I was drinking officer.”
People used to go into the barbershop looking for me, “Doesn’t Dennis Lehane live here?” And the guys in barber shop would say, “no, no, no.” He’s in the barber shop in the projects.” And there was no barber shop in the projects. I had no worries, Charlestown’s got my back.