Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

     In recent years, we've had the distinct pleasure of publishing several essays by Al Borowitz in the Legal Studies Forum and have long admired Borowitz's steady prose and the absence of fashionable literary jargon in his writing. With the arrival of Borowitz's monumental encyclopedia of fact-based crime literature, Blood & Ink: An International Guide to Fact-Based Crime Literature (Kent State University Press, 2002) (and Tony Chase's review of Borowitz's Blood & Ink in LSF), we confirmed plans to publish a major collection of Al Borowitz's essays in the Legal Studies Forum. In the several years the editing of this collection has been underway, Borowitz has produced a new crime study, Terrorism for Self-Glorification: The Herostratos Syndrome (Kent State University Press, 2005). In a dust jacket comment on the book, I noted: "Terrorism for Self-Glorification is working proof that Al Borowitz is the best crime and literature studies scholar of our day. With solidly grounded literary detective work and his refusal to engage in academic jargon, Borowitz takes the reader on a thinking person's tour of the history of terrorism. Borowitz spares the reader the blandishments of politics as he draws upon such diverse disciplines as Greek mythology, literature, history, and crime studies." Borowitz's Terrorism for Self-Glorification confirms his place among the great literary crime historians of our day.

During our work on the LSF collection, we invited Borowitz to respond to questions about his scholarly work. The interview, which commenced in August, 2002, was finally concluded in July, 2004. While our preference would have been to have conducted the interview in person, we settled for a ready substitute--email.

Elkins: Mr. Borowitz, you have the distinction of not only being a lawyer but an accomplished and well-published writer. Before we talk about your writing, we should note that you were a partner at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, in Cleveland, Ohio. What kind of law work did you do at the firm?

Borowitz: My practice was generally in corporate law. Over the years, I developed specialities in securities regulation and antitrust counseling. 

I joined Jones Day in 1983 after 27 years of association with a middlesized Cleveland firm.

Elkins: In 1993, you published a biography of your old firm, Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue: The First Century (Cleveland, 1993). Can you tell us how you came to write the firm biography?

Borowitz: I wrote the history of Jones Day in connection with the celebration of the firm's centenary in 1993. The leaders of the firm, who asked me to undertake the book, were familiar with my literary career as well as with the technical legal articles that I had contributed to professional journals. Jones Day has a rich tradition of cultural and community activity and has always been supportive of my interest in literature. A particularly touching example of the firm's generosity was its decision, taken without advance notice to me, to defray the costs of publishing the inaugural catalog that accompanied the establishment of my crime history collection at the Kent State University Libraries in 1990.

Elkins: What particular problems did you confront in writing the firm biography? Did you read other law firm biographies? And if so, are there any that you might want to recommend?

Borowitz: The main problem that I faced was the paucity of archival material at Jones Day. Lawyers are simply too busy dealing with their clients' problems to give much thought to the preservation of historical records. Fortunately, the scarcity of documentary files was more than compensated for by the remarkable longevity of the firm's retired partners whose memories had been honed by decades of professional service. My book is, in large part, an oral history based on personal and telephone interviews with partners, both active and retired. I supplemented these primary sources by consulting business directories and other records in the collections of the Western Reserve Historical Society, the photographic archives of the Cleveland Public Library, and LEXIS reports of cases in which Jones Day lawyers appeared. I did not review other firm biographies, since I preferred to have this book bear my personal stamp. I hope I was saved from substantial error by the vigilance of the partners who reviewed the manuscript.

By the way, I should note that my interest in crime history gave me an advantage in an early chapter of the Jones Day book. Our founder, William Rice, was mysteriously murdered in 1910. In 1985, at the firm's 

suggestion, I wrote an account of this case, still unsolved, for Cleveland Magazine.

Elkins: You have written a good number of books, many of them focusing, in some way, on true crime, and crime and literature. We know that you've written several novels as well. Beyond the law firm biography, how would you characterize your non-fiction writing?

Borowitz: A critic has described me as a "sleuth upon the crossroads between literature and crime." I study with particular interest writers, intellectuals, musicians and artists who have directly confronted crime in their own lives or were inspired by actual criminal cases to create significant works of the imagination. These categories do not, however, claim all my attention. I have also focused on crimes that have profoundly influenced social attitudes or that cast a revealing light on human motivations and strivings, or on manners, occupations and preoccupations in a variety of eras and locales.

For me, there is no ideal criminal case to delve into nor any preferred literary format to impose on the raw materials I find. Each case leads me along its own path. Some crimes produce great mysteries, and others result in spellbinding trials. Just as often, however, the most intriguing puzzles are why human beings act as they do and why we care so much about them that we turn them into works of literature or art.

Elkins: In the preface to Innocence and Arsenic, a 1977 collection of your essays on crime, you note that crime literature "has given me pleasure since I was a child." Since I teach criminal law, I too would be willing to admit that there is a kind of pleasure in reading criminal law cases. Some might think that if there is pleasure to be associated with this kind of reading, whether true crime literature, or true crime law cases, it is a perverse one. Could you elaborate on this idea of the pleasure you associate with your reading of crime literature?

Borowitz: For me the principal pleasure of reading Sherlock Holmes, my first literary love, or a classic true-crime case is one and the same, the irresistible attraction of a suspenseful narrative. Over the years I have found that the mysteries of true crime are more compelling and longer lasting than fictional whodunits. In the Golden Age mystery novel, as perfected by Agatha Christie, all puzzles are solved neatly in the last chapter, but in the most durable true-crime mysteries, such as the identity of Jack the Ripper or the controversial acquittal of Lizzie Borden, the debate goes on forever.

Elkins: Could you tell us something about the historical research required in your writing? Do you find the research itself of intrinsic interest, or is it simply something you do to make it possible to do the writing you've set out to do?

Borowitz: The historical quest can produce some of the supreme joys of crime writers, particularly those who specialize, as I do, in bygone eras. Often the best discoveries are serendipitous. Writing to Madame Tussaud's for a photograph of a stored wax image of a Victorian murderess, I received as an added treat a manuscript transcription of her husband's unpublished full confession of his role in the crime. More recently, in England's National Archives, I stumbled across a contemporary crime-scene drawing of the 1894 attempt to blow up London's Greenwich Observatory. Now that we are blessed with the Internet, similar treasures lie at our fingertips.

Elkins: How do you select a particular case of crime to write about? Do you sometimes find, after doing substantial research on a case, that you do not want to write about it?

Borowitz: My incitements to explore a particular crime have originated from many sources -- suggestions of friends and colleagues; old criminal trials given to me by my late father, David, a well-known bibliophile; books that I have collected or articles that I have read. I have never abandoned a writing project after doing substantial research. About 1965 I composed a list of eight subjects I wanted to address in the field of fact-based crime literature. Seven found their way into my first two essay collections, and the eighth, my study of legal comedies of Aristophanes and Racine, "The Wasps and the Litigants," was published in the Legal Studies Forum. On occasion, a project that I envisioned was preempted by a scholarly publication of another crime historian.

Elkins: I've learned over the years that many writers do not try to read fellow writers who write in the same genre. Is that true in your case? Do you read contemporary crime fiction? And if so, are there writers whom you particularly admire and why?

Borowitz: Since I began to write true-crime studies in the mid-1960s, I have concentrated my crime fiction reading on fact-based novels. In my view, the greatest fact-based crime novel in the English language is Marie Belloc Lowndes's The Lodger (1913), which has inspired films by Alfred Hitchcock and others, a play, and an opera. A freely worked variation on Jack the Ripper's murders, The Lodger derives its unique 

power from a gradual shift in focus from the killer's rampage to his penny-pinching landlords' tacit alliance against his exposure. I admire Belloc Lowndes's other fact-based crime novels and those of the pseudonymous Joseph Shearing.

Elkins: When did you start writing fiction? Is there a relationship between your fiction and non-fiction writing?

Borowitz: My first novel, The Jack the Ripper Walking Tour Murder appeared in 1986 and a sequel, This Club Frowns on Murder, followed in 1990. These mysteries, like my nonfiction, exploit themes from true crime. In the novels, Paul Prye, an urban historian with a passion for crimes of the past, solves modern cases by applying analogies suggested by classic murders. His wife Alice, like my spouse Helen, is an art historian; she assists Paul's detections by her sensitivity to visual impressions, and her encyclopedic knowledge of Agatha Christie.

Elkins: What prompts a writer who has grown so familiar with non-fiction writing, as you have over the years, to attempt a novel?

Borowitz: My experiments in crime fiction are due to an inability to resist temptation. I have found that, try as I will to advance the cause of true crime writing, it is the mystery authors who are glamorous in the eyes of the public and the media, and also win most of the literary prizes in crime. My two ventures in crime fiction hardbacks have now been supplemented by a pair of e-books published by the Tarlton Law Library of the University of Texas, Death Play, and my third Paul and Alice Prye mystery, The Beautiful Red Danube.

Elkins: In your true crime essays and writings you often focus on crimes: involving writers and musicians. Could you describe this particular focus of your work?

Borowitz: You are right in noting that many cases that I have studied involve writers and musicians confronted by crime, as criminals, victims or participants in criminal cases, or as the subjects of murder legends. The biographical juxtaposition of genius and crime is an appealing literary theme because of the often striking contrast between the artist's achievements and the sordid circumstances in which his life (or death) may place him. The downfall of the great is also an ingredient in the public taste for murder cases involving the rich and famous.

Elkins: In 1991 the Smithsonian Institution Press published your book, Pawnshop and Palaces, on the Campana Art Museum which you coauthored with your wife, Helen Borowitz, who is a fellow scholar and writer. First, could you tell us something about the book, and second, anything you can publicly relate about your experience in writing a book with someone who happens to be your wife? I saw Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter in a televised interview some time ago, and they both agreed that writing a book together was extremely difficult for both of them and had created real tensions in their marriage.

Borowitz: My wife, Helen Osterman Borowitz, is a distinguished art historian and a former associate curator of art history and education at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Our collaboration, Pawnshop and Palaces, combines true crime with art history, in telling the tragic story of Giovanni Pietro Campana, who assembled the largest private European 19th-century art collection. After he was convicted of embezzling funds of a Vatican-owned bank to defray the cost of acquisitions for the collection, his holdings were dispersed by sale to English, French and Russian museums. Parisian museum politics resulted in the scattering of the French purchases to the provinces, but in our own times, these pieces were happily reunited in Avignon's Petit Palais.

I am sure that Helen would agree that spousal collaborations have rough moments, but ours was eased by the fact that our book split cleanly between the embezzlement and museum sagas. Also, Helen has the advantage of knowing more about true crime than she regularly admits. She has helped me with many of my crime books.

Elkins: When did you retire from the law firm? Have you continued your legal work in any way after your retirement? How did your retirement affect your writing?

Borowitz: I retired from Jones Day at the end of 1994, and for 5 years thereafter served as consultant to the firm regarding ethics, quality control, and professional liability insurance. Only after retirement did I have enough free time at my disposal to undertake the arduous writing project that resulted in the publication of Blood and Ink in 2002.

Elkins: You have been writing for many years and it preceded your retirement. How did you manage to both practice law (in a demanding law firm practice) and find time to write?

Borowitz: My ability to pursue two careers is due to my extraordinarily subpar athletic gifts. The physical education director of my sportsminded 

boarding school told my parents that he had never encountered a boy with such poor muscle coordination. Since all students had to support the sports program, he decided that the best I could accomplish was to weed the tennis courts.

In my adult years I have made the best of my affliction: when my friends play golf or tennis, I stay home and write.

Elkins: Where do you write? Do you write or type or dictate drafts of your essays and books? Do you find writing easy or is it something you persist in doing despite its being a great labor?

Borowitz: I usually write in my home library. I often dictate my drafts, particularly when I am composing fictional dialogue, since I believe that dictation enhances the realism of conversation. If a passage is dense or of complex organization, I am more likely to write manually. Almost all of Blood and Ink was written in longhand. For me, typing is not an option, since I have never activated more than three fingers.

I find writing very easy, but if I bump up against a tough spot, I move on and then return.

Elkins: What has kept you writing all these years? I assume, given what I know about publishing, that it has not been for the money.

Borowitz: I have been addicted to writing since my school days. Now that I look back, I see that crime was always on my mind. The University of Chicago High School staged two of my earliest offerings, "The Sarcastic Slayer," a radio parody about a World War II serial killer whose motive is to acquire cigarettes beyond the limits of his ration card; and an adaptation of Lord Dunsany's cannibalistic "Two Bottles of Relish." I have never stopped writing. Money is certainly not my motive and only seldom my reward. Since I know so little about myself, I rely on a psychiatrist friend who tells me I am driven by a desire for "mastery," not of people but of gobs of facts.

Elkins: This year, Kent State University Press published a rather monumental encyclopedic guide to fact-based crime literature, entitled Blood & Ink: The International Guide to Fact-Based Crime Literature. My first thought on perusing Blood & Ink was how could anyone produce such an encyclopedic work. One suspects that Blood & Ink is the culmination of a life-time of reading, especially given what we know of your longstanding interest in the true crime genre. How does one translate a life of reading and writing into a guide book? Could you tell us 

how you happened to take on such a great labor as Blood & Ink? How long did it take you to write the book? How did you ever manage to get it done?

Borowitz: I have long observed with regret the absence of a comprehensive guide to notable works of fact-based crime literature. Such a resource, it seems to me, is indispensable to a serious collector or researcher in this challenging field. Many important nonfiction works lie hidden in unindexed and/or unannotated collections or series of trial summaries or crime essays. Even more daunting problems of access face those who do research on fact-based crime fiction, because the names of the real-life characters are commonly changed and the historical source of the narrative may not be explicitly identified.

It is difficult, not to say impossible, for a single writer to create a definitive encyclopedia from scratch, and I intended only that Blood and Ink chart a course for others to pursue. My task was made somewhat lighter by my assembly of a vast true-crime library that includes the lion's share of volumes discussed in my guide book.

I began the planning of Blood & Ink in 1995, shortly after my retirement from the law firm, and my writing continued on a full-time schedule until the presses inexorably locked. I am very grateful for the patience of Kent State University Press in accepting last-minute supplements.

Elkins: I understand that it took you seven years to write Blood & Ink. Were there times when you began to despair, that you had the feeling that you might have undertaken a project that would better be left uncompleted? Did any of your skills and habits as a lawyer provide any help along the way?

Borowitz: Once I began to write Blood and Ink, I never looked back to challenge my decision. At the outset, I had no idea that the project would consume seven years. I intended originally to share the burdens with two distinguished colleagues who unfortunately had to bow out for personal reasons.

I think that, as your question suggests, my experience as a lawyer gave me the experience and confidence to tackle a huge writing assignment on my own. I have written many long contracts and briefs without fears or so-called "writer's block" and applied to Blood and Ink many of my usual techniques of organization, structure, and subdivision before I set a word to paper. Although Blood and Ink is longer than any legal document 

that I have undertaken, I followed a principle that has always served me well: don't keep thinking about how much work remains undone, but concentrate on the task at hand.

Elkins: In the acknowledgments page of Blood & Ink you indicate that Kent State University has established a Borowitz True Crime Collection at the University. Could you tell us more about your relationship with Kent State University and how the Borowitz True Crime Collection was established?

Borowitz: For many years my wife Helen and I searched for a permanent home for our true-crime library and important collections in other fields of literature. In 1988 Lilian Zevin, publisher of the World Publishing Company, introduced us to Dean Keller, then Associate Director of the nearby Kent State University Libraries and founding curator of the Department of Special Collections. We were deeply impressed by the professionalism and enthusiasm of Mr. Keller and his colleagues and by Kent's superb library facilities and services. Two years later the Borowitz True Crime Collection was established in the Department of Special Collections, and our program of annual donations of books and memorabilia is now well advanced. As we made our gifts, we came to grasp more fully our responsibility to clarify for the Kent librarians the historical and literary interrelations of the volumes included in our donations. The process of annotating our gifts gave further urgency to my notion of recording my knowledge of fact-based crime literature in Blood and Ink.

Elkins: What kind of writing projects do you now have underway?

Borowitz: In January 2005 Kent State University Press published my Terrorism for Self-Glorification: The Herostratos Syndrome. This book studies a strand in terrorism that traces from the destruction of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, by the arsonist Herostratos, who was motivated by a craving for posthumous fame. The quest for glory through violent crime links Herostratos's outrage to other attacks on iconic buildings, including the destruction of the World Trade Center. Herostratos's ancient precedent also established a model for modern celebrity assassinations, including the shooting of John Lennon.

An offshoot of the Herostratos project is an article I am planning to do on the history and literature of the Reichstag Fire.

Elkins: What has sustained you as a writer over these many years?

Borowitz: My mainstay has been an ambition to make a contribution as one of the pioneers of a literary genre now known as "crime in literature." I take particular pride in this issue of the Legal Studies Forum that collects my writings over a period of four decades. The Forum, and you as its editor, have been important allies in bringing my works to the attention of a distinguished readership.