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Chapter 1: What childhood experiences shaped Harlan Coben's writing?
D-U-B-E-S-O-R. I'm coming to you backwards and forwards. This is Rosebud. I'm Giles Branforth. Cue the music. Hello again and welcome to Rosebud. This week I happen to be in New York City. I've come to New York to record episodes of Rosebud, but I've also come because this week coincides with the visit to the United States of America of King Charles III and Queen Camilla.
And yesterday I got together at the New York Public Library with Queen Camilla because I happen to be a trustee of a charity called the Queen's Reading Room. This is the charity set up by Queen Camilla to spread the joy of reading. So she was in New York at the New York Public Library and there was a fascinating panel of authors there, distinguished authors. And one of them was Harlan Coburn.
who I know has supported the Queen's Reading Room in the past. He is literally one of the world's best-selling authors. I mean, his books have been translated into 46 languages, sold more than 90 million copies.
Chapter 2: How did family influence Harlan Coben's perspective on life?
He's a Sunday Times number one bestseller, a New York Times number one bestseller. He's a big international star on the writing scene, and now his books have been turned into very successful Netflix series. So I thought, you're in New York, I'm in New York, Let me grab you. Let me bring you over to Essex House overlooking Central Park, where we have our Rosebud studio in New York.
Let me sit you down and let me discover the plot twists of your life. Who is Harlan Coburn? And I'm thrilled. He said, yes, I'll come. And I learned a great deal about writing and about life from a remarkable writer who I now count as a proper friend.
I've only met him two or three times, but I really felt I bonded with him, and I think you will too, as you listen to, I think, a very special Rosebud conversation with one of the world's most successful writers, Harlan Coburn. Welcome to Rosebud. Cue that music. So, Harlan Coburn.
Chapter 3: What inspired Harlan Coben to become a writer?
Am I pronouncing your names correctly? You are. You're going to explain to me in a moment what the origin of them is. We reveal to people your date of birth. Is that all right? Yes. Born on the 4th of January, 1962. That's correct. Harlan, what is your very first memory?
You know, it's funny. I was just thinking about this the other day because I think I was maybe two and a half, three years old. I went to the New York World's Fair, which is not far from here in Queens. And maybe you've seen this. If you land at JFK Airport, you drive past this, it looks like a giant globe. It's a unisphere.
Chapter 4: What is Harlan Coben's writing process and philosophy?
It's a gigantic statue of the planet Earth. And I have a recollection of staring at that and then also the sound of It's a Small World After All, which they played at that World's Fair. In fact, when I was younger, I thought when I first went to Disney World that I had imagined it from that, but no, they had played it there.
So my first memory, and it's very, very vague, I was maybe under three years old, was the World's Fair in New York City staring at that unisphere that now all of you drive by if you come in from Kennedy Airport. When you're coming into New York, look on your right, and you will see it by Citi Field where the Mets play. And why would you have been there?
Were you in a car being driven past it?
My parents took me to it when I was like two or three years old. To go to the World's Fair? We went to the World's Fair. Of course, I remember absolutely nothing else about it. My parents are long gone, so I can't really ask them. And being a fiction writer, I think about this a lot. And having just read a memoir, I think of this a lot.
I never really know, sure, what is memory and what is fiction.
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Chapter 5: How does Harlan Coben develop his characters and plots?
It's a very thin line, as you and I both know. So for years, I also had a pennant, what they call like a flag, a pennant, sort of triangle-shaped thing hanging on my wall, felt one, from when we visited that time. So maybe I just imagined that memory from looking at that for most of my childhood on a wall. I don't really know anymore, but that's my oldest memory.
I can still see, and when I go by it, I still get hit with that really strong deja vu, and I still see it every once in a while. Who were these parents of yours? What were their names, and how did they meet? My father was Carl, Carl, and my mother was Corky, Barbara, but I already called her Corky, C-O-R-K-Y. Fine. Carl Coburn. Yes. And who was he?
Well, Carl, first of all, he was Cohen, which probably doesn't surprise too many people. We changed the name because Cohen was so common where they were. This is before I was born.
Chapter 6: What challenges did Harlan Coben face in his writing career?
They changed it. My mom just like, because her real name is Barbara. Barbara Cohen was like saying John Smith in certain neighborhoods, and she didn't like that, I guess. So she... My mother was very odd with a lot of things with names, but so they changed it to, uh, to Coben. My mother was from New Jersey.
My father was from, uh, Boston mass town, a city called Revere, Revere beach right outside of, uh, Boston. And, um, yeah. God, I don't even remember. They met, I think it was about four year age difference between them. And literally like two weeks after they met, my mother already planned the wedding and just hadn't told my father yet. Wow. Yeah.
So when he asked her and she was like, you know, I've always wanted to get married on October 23rd because she already booked the place. So she kind of already was playing him.
Chapter 7: How did social media impact Harlan Coben's life and work?
My God. Yes, playing him early on.
What age would she have been when she was thinking this? Four years younger than him?
Oh, God, I think she was... My mother lied so much about her age, I'd get years confused. In fact, right before she died, one of her last requests was that I not put her birth date on her tombstone.
Oh, bless her.
Because she lied so often about it. Well, we must respect that.
So we must.
So she was in her early 20s. Let's put it that way at the time.
Well, Corky, in her early 20s. And what's the woman want? Give us, you're a novelist.
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Chapter 8: What life lessons has Harlan Coben learned from his experiences?
Give us that paragraph describing her. She was caught in that. She was a very modern day feminist. She marched with Gloria Steinem. We had a bumper sticker when I was a kid on my car. Think about this bumper sticker for a moment. And the ladies out there, well, I think really love it. But it said, women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.
Ha, ha, ha.
this is in the 70s this was on our on our car um so she was a big sort of outward feminists on the one hand um and the other hand she was also like she was from a bad production of fiddler on the roof playing you know golda so it was like half kind of caught in that balance where you know wanted more couldn't quite have it and was fighting for it and was she an achieving person I would say yes.
Both my parents were extraordinarily intelligent. And I think they were frustrated that they didn't do better in their minds in sort of life. Though they did far better, I think, than they should have, than they exceeded. And we have this three of us, three sons that they had. I'm the middle child. And my older brother, Larry, just retired as the CEO of
of NRG, which is one of the largest energy companies, a Fortune 500 company, NRG Stadium, is where the Houston Texans play. And my younger brother, who has lived in London for over 30 years now, was an investment banker and now a columnist for the Financial Times. So everybody did accomplish, but we were pushed quite a bit when we were younger. They wanted you to be achievers. They did.
And you delivered. What did your father do? My father, by trade, was an attorney, but he was vice president of a, most of his life, he was vice president of a sort of commercial laundry business, the kind of place that went around at night and grabbed all the tablecloths from restaurants and cleaned them off and
brought them back the next day that was what he did most of the time uh well what he did at the age of 57 he lost his job and the company was sold and i think that was a you know a terrible thing you know men are so we're so defined unfortunately by our our jobs that i think that was very hard on him so that's why you said earlier that there was a sense of slight disappointment in their lives that it might have been better they might have done more
I think that's most people anyway. I mean, my parents were both, they really were super intelligent. Both of my brothers, this is Americanism, so I don't know if this will translate, were both sort of geniuses. Both my older and younger brother, they were able to, they got into Yale as undergraduates, both graduated Harvard Law School. Those are the two top schools in the country.
We take a standardized test called the SATs here. Both had perfect SAT scores. So I was like the idiot brother between these two geniuses who were skipping grades and doing all of that. And so everyone in my family, I was probably the dumbest person, and I put that in quotes to some degree, in my family.
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