Terrapin: A Mystery
(Ignatius Press, 2012; also in electronic book format) is the new, and second, novel by T. M. Doran, who is a
writer, consultant, and adjunct professor of civil engineering at Lawrence
Technological University. His first novel was Toward the Gleam (electronic book format and audio book download)
published last year by Ignatius Press. He spoke recently with Catholic World
Report about Terrapin, literary and intellectual influences, and the craft
and process of writing fiction.
CWR: Your background
is in civil engineering and education. Was writing fiction something you worked
at from an early age, or did you come to it later? And how?
Doran: I have been writing
fiction since I was a young boy. A friend and I traded sci-fi short stories
that we composed ourselves when we were about ten years old. I've always loved
to read, and writing came naturally to me, though I work harder at it now. I
can hardly remember a time when I wasn't working on a story. Cole Porter
Palmer, who is a character in the stories composed by Dennis Cole in Terrapin,
was conceived over a decade ago.
CWR: Who are some of the authors and
thinkers who have influenced you the most?
Doran: As to literature, Evelyn
Waugh, Flannery O'Connor, J.R.R. Tolkien, and T.S. Eliot, writers and poets who
wrote from a Catholic perspective rather than writing explicitly Catholic
novels. I read a variety of writers: Jane Austen, Dostoevsky, Patrick O'Brian,
Thornton Wilder, Oscar Wilde, Dickens, Richard Adams, and I have learned
something about the craft of writing from every one of them. I enjoy mystery
stories, especially the golden age puzzle-plot stories from the 1920s through
the 1940s. Some of my favorite mystery authors are G.K. Chesterton, Agatha
Christie, J.D. Carr (the locked room master), Rex Stout, and the early Ellery
Queen mysteries that featured pure "ratiocination". I enjoy P.D.
James, who is still writing.
I have been an avid reader of history and biography for decades, which helped
immensely when I was composing Toward the Gleam
Thinkers who have influenced me include Blessed John Paul II (especially
"Faith and Reason" and "The Splendor of the Truth"), Edith
Stein (her journey from phenomenology to the convent), Kurt Goedel (his ideas
about time and space), G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis and Frank Sheed (their
accessible apologetics), Blaise Pascal (reason in the light of faith), William
F. Buckley (conservatism based on first principles and natural law), and
Augustine and Aquinas (a little at a time). I have a four-volume Encyclopedia
of Philosophy on my bookshelf, to which I
refer quite often. I've always had a fascination with competing ideas.
CWR: Both of your novels can be described, at least generally, as
works of “mystery”. What are some of the difference between Toward the Gleam and your new novel, Terrapin?
Continue reading on the CWR site.
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