Dennis Lehane's The Drop - the evolutionary process of a great novel

Art doesn't originate and emerge fully-formed from a vacuum. Novels, symphonies, films, plays, poems - they're all as much about imitation and amalgamation as perspiration and inspiration. Those of us who strive creatively lift elements from our self-appointed mentors often and with no apologies. Van Gogh worked closely with Gaugin. Beethoven regularly paid homage to Haydn & Mozart. Faulkner looked to Sherwood Anderson.  Lew Tabackin draws from Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas and Charlie Ventura. I could go on, but that's really not the point of this post.

One lesson repeated ad nauseam in many creative workshops is to work a piece until it's done, and then set it free into the world to live on its own. I know why teachers impart this wisdom. The urge to continually revise, redirect and redact our "babies" can stultify and eventually extinguish our purest conceptions. On the other hand, slavishly adhering to this principal can also severely limit our creative output. If Beethoven had stuck to this rule, portions of his Creatures of Prometheus never would have found new life in his Third Symphony. Similarly, Dvorak's Slavonic Dances would have remained piano etudes and never realized their full potential as orchestral masterpieces. Da Vinci's Mona Lisa would have come down to us as a great portrait instead of an icon. Billy Bob Thorton's Sling Blade would have always been just an odd short film.

Sometimes a piece isn't finished the first time around. Sometimes we "steal" as much from our earlier efforts as we do from the masters. Dennis Lehane's tale of a seedy Boston bar and an abused puppy bears testimony to this simple fact of substantial art. Originally entitled "Animal Rescue," Lehane's first go around at the characters and incidents appeared in the anthology Boston Noir ( https://www.scribd.com/read/247764287/Boston-Noir ). The story is haunting and captivating, so much so that Hollywood wisely optioned it as a screenplay. Forced to revisit his source material in more depth, Lehane not only fleshed out the tale's main characters, he also fully explored tangential plot points only alluded to in the original story.

By the time he's finished, Lehane's reworking becomes a truly well-crafted film, The Drop. In the hands of gifted actors like Tom Hardy, Matthias Schoenaerts and James Gandolfini, the likes of Bob Saginowski, Cousin Marv and Eric Deeds truly benefit from an infusion of fully realized motivations. Even the abused dog evolves from the rather nondescript Cassius into the more engaging Rocco. Additionally, Lehane's creation of a brand new character, Detective Torres, rounds out his gritty tableau and introduces a real sense of urgent crisis into the life of stolid, taciturn Bob Saginowski. 

Fortunately for us, Lehane didn't end the creative process with his screenplay. Once more tackling the grimy backdrop of Cousin Marv's bar, Lehane transforms a great film script into an even more compelling novel. Pathos, poignancy, heroism - The Drop serves us five full courses of the human condition in sharp, often bitter, slices of life. The novel also demonstrates that sometimes it's not over when it's over. Sometimes the fat lady gets an encore or two, and when we finally leave our seats we're truly satisfied.