I'm Not a Crime Writer: An Interview with Vancouver Writer Dennis E. Bolen

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Vancouver author Dennis E. Bolen is gearing up for his “book tour phase”.

“Nineteen years ago, when I started out, it was a three-week thing. But now, with social media and all the permutations of getting the word out, it goes a year,” he said.

Bolen is currently promoting his seventh book, Anticipated Results, a collection of linked short stories about the Boomer Generation.

Results signals a dramatic shift from his earlier work, which includes Kaspoit!, a novel about crime on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Bolen worked as a federal parole officer for 23 years, and his earlier work was his response to the violence and horror he experienced.

However, Bolen feels his earlier work has been misjudged.

“I’ve been falsely identified or dismissed as this crime writer. I’m not a crime writer at all,” said Bolen.

“The term `crime writing’ really refers to these puzzlers that do mysteries—a body is found on the first page, a killer is revealed on the last page. I don’t do that sort of stuff,” he said.

Bolen considers his earlier work a unique sub-genre: “hard-hitting sociological fiction”.

Which is why Results, which revolves around middle-aged people having awkward dinner parties, going on camping trips and attempting ill-organized interventions, comes as a bit of a surprise to his fans.

“I far prefer this milieu to my old stomping ground. I’m not a young guy anymore and I’m not angry anymore,” he said.

Bolen’s recurring characters in Results are chronic underachievers stuck in dead-end careers and unhappy marriages, who have lost their ambition somewhere along the way.

“It might just be the societal set I gravitate towards,” said Bolen. “But I do know these guys.”

Bolen said his character Paul is based on an extremely intelligent friend who ended up getting left behind over the years.

“At first you’re making good money and you say `oh yeah, I’ll just party for a while’,” he said. “But five years becomes 10 years and pretty soon you’ve lost your ambition.”

Bolen talked about running into a school friend in a parking garage who had trained to become a teacher but ended up selling toner cartridges for photocopy machines.

“It’s sad,” he said.

Bolen compares these stories to the work of Raymond Carver, who he admires as a “short story God.”

“Carver really defined this territory quite well,” said Bolen.

Carver’s stories often featured characters that Bolen describes as “intelligent but not successful.”

“That’s really a terrible condemnation,” he said. “There’s this sense that if you’re stupid and unsuccessful, that’s okay. But if you’re smart, you really should have known better.”

And repeatedly in his book, Bolen’s characters prove to be well-educated and articulate, but they fail in spectacular and dramatic ways.

Whether they’re alcoholic, lazy or depressed, each of the characters is struggling through a life they expected to be easier.

Bolen’s first piece of work was published in 1975, while he was a third-year Creative Writing student at UVic.

As well as being a parole officer, he has worked for Anvil Press, served as an editorial board member for the Vancouver Sun, and has worked on editorial boards for a number of literary publications.

Bolen is currently working on a historical novel about the BC Labour movement, but is still in the development phase. He has done a lot of research on the project, but hasn’t found the right fictional framework yet.

His advice for other writers: ““Writing chooses you,” he said. “If you must write, you will write. It’s as simple as that.”