How the Novel Began

The Chieftains of South Boston was born in a graduate seminar I took while earning my MFA at Columbia University, with a little help from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

One seminar assignment was to sketch out a novel. Over the course of a few weeks, we were supposed to refine our concept so that we’d have some sort of structure to use if and when we chose to leap into the writing of a book-length work of fiction. A crutch, if you will, against the doubt and fear that grip a writer launching into the unknown.

I began with a set of characters from the world in which I grew up. They were mostly politicians, some from South Boston. The milieu was the 70s during the turbulent time of desegregation in the city, when I came of age. I ended up with life-based characters floating in an undefined soup of story.

Dostoevsky’s Structure

The professor leading the seminar made a very useful suggestion: Select a novel I admired and copy its structure. Use it as a way to organize my ideas and feelings around my milieu. I wouldn’t need to follow the structure for the entire novel, but rather use it as a point of departure to get my story off the ground. At some point in the writing, probably early on, the story would assume a life of its own and I could lose the crutch.

I’d recently read The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky and was really gripped by it. The story is a family drama involving a cruel father, Fyodor Karamazov, and his three sons. The older brothers, passionate Dmitri and philosophical Ivan, hate their father. The youngest, Alyosha, is a novice monk who doesn’t share his siblings’ feelings. Instead, he tries to guide his father toward redemption and a spiritual path.

There’s also a half-son, Smerdyakov, who has his own reasons for hating his father. When Fyodor is murdered, it appears that Dmitri is guilty. Ultimately, it’s revealed that Smerdyakov has committed the act.

The Brothers Karamazov Becomes The Brothers Mahoney

That’s the basic structure I took from The Brothers Karamazov. I lined up my main characters this way:

The Karamazov family would be the Mahoney family living in South Boston. The Dmitri character would be Francis Mahoney, head of the Irish mob. Ivan would be Jimmy Mahoney, the politician poised to become president of the state Senate. The two of them would be inspired by the famous South Boston siblings, Whitey Bulger and Billy Bulger.

Even as I began applying it to The Chieftains of South Boston, I found myself changing the structure in small ways. The biggest shift came with the third brother. Matthew Mahoney would not be like Alyosha. Instead, he would join his brothers in hating their father Salty Mahoney. The opening chapter would be from Matthew’s point of view (the second chapter would be from Francis’, and the third from Jimmy’s). The subsequent chapters would weave all three together.

Matthew Mahoney and Buzzy Driscoll

Matthew would be the most accessible character in the novel, the one through which the reader would experience the heart of the story. His brothers, on the other hand, would be larger than life. The reader wouldn’t have access to what schemes Francis and Jimmy were plotting in their respective worlds until events unfolded. With Matthew, the reader would know more than he does and would be aware of the traps he was about to step into. Again, this brings the reader closer to his perspective.

In The Brother Karamazov, the identity of Smerdyakov as the half-son is revealed early on. In The Chieftains of South Boston, the identity of Buzzy Driscoll as the half-son of Salty Mahoney is withheld until later in the book. It’s important that Matthew not know that Buzzy, his best friend from childhood, is his half-brother. Francis is aware of the fact, and Jimmy suspects it.

The murder of Salty Mahoney occurs at the end of the first chapter. All evidence points to Francis as the culprit. As with Dmitri, Francis is guilty of many things in his life as a mobster but not this particular crime.

Capturing the Time and Place

After the initial setup, the novel took its own course, guided by the main characters, and the energies and conflicts within them. All of it was filtered through the zeitgeist of the mid 70s and late 80s, and through the platzgeist of Boston during those years.

Side note: As I was developing the story in a thesis workshop, my advisor asked me if I’d ever read Freud’s writing on parricide. I told him I hadn’t. He paused before suggesting I not read any of it, presumably so it wouldn’t taint the experience I was having as I played out the drama in my creative bubble.