Make mine a Thompson: gun-guy and novelist Stephen Hunter on guns, gangsters and America

American Handgunner, March-April, 2003 by Michael Bane

Stephen Hunter's powerful novels of the Swagger clan, including Vietnam sniper Bob the Nailer and his hardcase father, Earl, have found places both on the New York Times bestsellers' list and in the hearts and bookshelves of gun owners everywhere. Beginning with Point of Impact in 1993, Hunter has created an imposing body of work made even more powerful by his uncompromising--and dare we say refreshing?--views on guns and their place in American culture. For the first time, Hunter sits down with Handgunner for the inside scoop on the gun culture's preeminent literary voice.

Michael Bane: From reading books like Point of Impact and Hot Springs, which are so evocative of Arkansas and the South, a person might get the impression you grew up south of the Mason/Dixon line spending your afternoons toting a shotgun.

Stephen Hunter: Actually, I grew up in a Chicago suburb in an academic household--my father was a professor at Northwestern. Guns were absolutely forbidden, taboo, evil. I absolutely could not have a gun in the house.

MB: So how, and when, did you first start shooting?

SH: The thing is, I loved guns from the start. I think my first coherent memories are of guns. I remember an episode of Dragnet, I must have been seven or eight years old, which would make it 1953-54, where Sergeant Friday is going after a fleeing felon. "Be sure to bring plenty of .45s for the Thompson," Friday says. "It looks like he wants to go all the way..." The next day, I started drawing guns in school notebook; all my notebooks are filled with drawings of guns. And it was phenomenally liberating to my imagination! I started writing fiction with guns before I was 10 years old.

MB: But you drifted from the fold?

SH: Okay, I went through a period of creepy liberalism when I worked at the Baltimore Sun and thought all guns should be banned. But I knew on some deep level I was denying myself, not being who I was. I wasn't a movie critic yet, and I was on my way to see a movie I thought might help me along. I got to the theater early, so I went next door to a magazine stand. There was a gun magazine on the rack, I remember it had a picture of the S&W 745 introduction. I bought that magazine, read it from cover to cover, then subscribed. It was like I suddenly remembered who I was. I bought my first gun right after that, a Taurus PT-99.

MB: Everything changed after that?

SH: Absolutely. I was who I was, and I was where I belonged. If the world or the people around me didn't like it, f**k 'em. I was going to be myself.

MB: What drew you to the movies?

SH: I liked the stories that the movies told; I liked the heroes, I liked the adventure. But I was never attracted to the movies as a career. I always knew I was going to be a writer. I think that's both remarkable and lucky, to know at the age of 10 who you are and what you're going to do. There's a marksmanship principle that I try to adhere to in my life: Aim small; miss small. I knew what I 'wanted to do, what I wanted to aim at.

MB: So here's the question American Handgunner's readers are waiting for: How did you find Bob the Nailer?

SH: Sometime around the late 1980s, I read Charles Henderson's book Marine Sniper, about Sergeant Carlos Hathcock. That book was very provocative to me. Hathcock lost his spotter, and that made my vision of a sniper even more fascinating. I started thinking about a sniper, and old sniper with a backpack of grief. And Bob Lee Swagger was born. That first book, Point of Impact, was a hellish experience. It took three years to write and I made many, many mistakes. At one point, the book was more than 1,000 pages long, and still no crime had happened!

MB: Did you ever hear of what Hathcock thought of Bob the Nailer?

SH: I heard that Point of Impact was on his bedside table when he died, but that he probably hadn't read it. He wasn't a man who read books like that.

MB: When you were writing Point of Impact, did you intend to write other books about Bob the Nailer and his family?

SH: I had absolutely no idea. In some ways, I was disappointed in my career, because every book seemed to be starting anew. But I didn't want to be one of those one-book-a-year guys. But the characters from Point of Impact lingered in my mind, and I realized I had to deal with them ... One discovery led to another discovery, and I found my life's work. Nailer and his father, Earl, who was killed early on, is central to the whole series, if series is the right word.

SH: The model for the relationship between Bob Lee and his father, Earl--the cop who was killed by a couple of punks in a field when Bob Lee was young--was Ty Cobb. Cobb was a monster in some ways, but he had a father he adored who died when Cobb was young. Everything Ty Cobb did was to prove himself to his father. So I wrote that Earl was a war hero who was killed when Bob Lee was young. But I couldn't get Earl Out of my mind, and I realized that I had to go back and sort him out. The "Earl" book became Hot Springs.

MB: I grew up in Memphis in the 1950s hearing stories about Hot Springs, Arkansas--a cross between Sodom and Gomorrah and hell itself. Hot Springs was Vegas before there was a Vegas. How did you discover Hot Springs? And why did you decide to place Earl there after WWII?