Memory of Running (McLarty)

Author Bio
• Birth—April 14, 1947
• Where—Providence, Rhode Island, USA
• Education—Rhode Island College
• Currently—lives in New York, New York

Ron McClarty is an actor best known for his work on television shows such as Sex in the City, Law & Order, The Practice, Judging Amy, and Spenser: For Hire. He has also appeared in films and onstage, where he has directed a number of his own plays, and has narrated more than fifty audio books. (From the publisher.)

More
Hear the name Stephen King and the likely images that spring to mind are those of vampires, blood-soaked prom queens, and killer St. Bernards. However, for Ron McLarty, Stephen King was more guardian angel than conjurer of terror. McLarty had been a character actor and struggling writer for countless years before the master of the macabre helped him publish his first novel at the age of 58.

Before the publication of The Memory of Running, McLarty was best known as a familiar face on television, holding down regular roles on Spencer: For Hire and Steven Bochco's short-lived prime-time experiment Cop Rock, as well as making appearances on everything from Sex and the City to Law and Order. He also became a regular fixture on the books-on-tape circuit, recording readings of more than 100 books by his own calculations. Meanwhile, McLarty had aspirations to make his way into the other end of the publishing world, composing an increasingly weighty body of unpublished work.

Still having little luck actually getting any of his work in print, McLarty managed to cajole a small Internet-only company called Recorded Books to release a book-on-tape version of his 1988 novel The Memory of Running. Inspired by the death of McLarty's parents following a car accident, The Memory of Running is a funny, moving, grim yarn about an overweight drunken couch potato named Smithson "Smithy" Ide who becomes reengaged in the world during a cross-country bike ride in the wake of the death of his parents and his emotionally-troubled sister.

As far as McLarty was concerned, that was the end of the line for The Memory of Running. Discouraged after years of rejection, he even visited a Screen Actor's Guild appointed psychiatrist to get help with his writing addiction. Still the muse refused to unhand him, and he continued producing new material in vain.

Some time later, Ron McLarty auditioned for a role in the miniseries Kingdom Hospital, Stephen King's U.S. adaptation of Lars von Trier's Danish cult-classic TV series Riget. According to McLarty in his interview with Meet the Writers, the audition was a disaster. "I did the worst audition in the world at the ABC studios. I mean, an actor knows when he stinks, and I was awful," he recalls. "I was trying to run out of the room, and Stephen King stands up and he says, ‘Are you Ron McLarty the novelist?'" At that point, King was only familiar with McLarty by name, having seen it in a catalog while recovering from his own well-publicized collision with a car in 1999. McLarty expeditiously rectified the situation, though. He raced to Recorded Books, dug up a copy of The Memory of Running, and mailed it off to the famed writer.

Next thing McLarty knew, Stephen King included The Memory of Running in a list of "The Best Books You Cannot Read" in an article in Entertainment Weekly. Then came the flood. A publishers bidding war for the rights to the novel ensued, and McLarty signed with Viking for over two-million dollars. Upon its publication in December of 2005, The Memory of Running has deservedly garnered more than its share of glowing notices. The School Library Journal deemed it "a great first novel" and Publisher's Weeky described it as "funny, poignant..." Now his darkly comic tale of self-discovery is being made into a motion picture by esteemed director Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), McLarty himself having penned the screenplay. He also has a second novel on the way.

In spite of McLarty's recent magnificent success, he still has not lost the cynical edge that gave birth to his gloomy debut novel. Though he remains unfailingly thankful for the opportunity afforded him by King's endorsement in Entertainment Weekly, he still has trouble viewing the glass as half-full. "Although I do believe it took kismet for my work to get any credibility, it's important that I express how hard I labored over this novel. I learned from a myriad of failures. I found my voice, lost it and found it again. Sometimes, frankly, it's discouraging to think that this and subsequent work will be viewed by many as luck, as if I sat down one day, popped a beer and scribbled it down... I still have 37 years of the whipped dog in me."

Extras
From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interview:

• According to McLarty, he has scribed a total of 44 plays and 10 novels. All of his work begins with a poem, which he then develops into a more substantial piece.

• McLarty's Stephen King connection does not end with King's recommendation in Entertainment Weekly. He was also the voice chosen to read the book-on-tape version of King's Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season.

• When asked what book most influenced hiw career as a writer, here's what he said:

I was most influenced as a writer (and as an actor) by the collected poems of Kenneth Patchen. The poems flow from his imagination into your own imagination. A kind of truth as he saw it. I wanted to put my own inventions on paper so they might become real.

("More" and "Extras" from Barnes & Noble.)