Andrew Klavan
15 min read ⭑
Andrew Klavan is an international bestselling author, Edgar Award winner and conservative commentator who isn’t afraid to share what he thinks and believes. Raised a secular Jew, Andrew came to faith in Jesus later in life, which he wrote about in his spiritual memoir, “The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ.” He’s the author of widely loved crime novels like “True Crime” (filmed starring Clint Eastwood), “Don’t Say a Word” (filmed starring Michael Douglas), “Empire of Lies” and “When Christmas Comes.” He has also put his writing chops to work on screenplays, such as “A Shock to the System” starring Michael Caine, a book on England’s Romantic poets titled “The Truth and Beauty” and numerous articles sharing his cultural and political commentary. To hear more of his ideas, you can watch his ever-popular political satire videos on YouTube or listen to “The Andrew Klavan Show” over at the Daily Wire. Or check out his unfiltered thoughts on his “New Jerusalem” Substack.
In today’s interview, Andrew is bringing an artistic perspective and refreshing honesty to our eight standard questions. Keep reading to see what gets him into a place of Zen (without the emptiness), why he approaches drinking with focused discipline and how he experiences God through constant prayer and appreciation for beauty. Plus, discover how a season of struggle (and a miracle) led him to Christ.
This interview mentions suicide. If you or someone you know is in a crisis, please call or text 1-844-472-9687 to reach the Christians in Crisis Hotline. You are not alone.
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
That’s an interesting question. I don’t really have a hometown because I’ve just traveled around so much in my life. There are places I call home, but I move around — from Nashville, where I work, to the D.C. area, where I mostly live, and New York, where my grandkids live. I’m in different places all the time.
I love eating out. I love going out to eat, and I love cafes. And there’s something special about going out midweek, not on the weekend. My wife and I walk out and around the corner, where there’s this great tapas place in Virginia. It’s on the water, and we can sit there, talk, have a glass of wine and eat small, really excellent dishes. There’s just something about that to me that breaks up the week, gets me away from my desk and gets me away from my own thoughts. I love spending time with my wife anyway, so that’s always great.
In Nashville, where I see the Daily Wire guys, there’s a club that the company belongs to where we can sit and have cigars, steak and scotch. Cigars, steak and scotch are what I expect to see if I get into heaven. I enjoy sitting around with the guys and talking politics, arguing about life and politics, and eating well. That’s bliss for me. It’s awesome.
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activities do you love and help you find spiritual renewal?
I’m always looking for practices that get me out of my head. When I was much younger, I studied Zen and did a lot of meditating, which I loved, and it was really great for focus and some kinds of revelation. But because there was no God in it, I ultimately felt it was kind of anti-life. It took you into a place of absolute nothingness, which is the point of Zen. While I found that to be revelatory once, after that, I thought, No, there’s something else I’m looking for.
I’m so obsessed with what I do as a writer that I can never really dedicate myself to anything else with the same passion. So I take up certain interests and sometimes drop them or stop doing them quite as much. At one point, I got a pilot’s license and learned to fly a plane. What I loved about flying was that you can’t think about anything else. If you think about anything else, you are going to get pancaked into the concrete, and they’re going to be pulling out pieces of you through the next week. So you have to pay attention, and it’s like having a brain cleanse. I’ve done other things like that, too. For example, I played tennis for a long time. I got a black belt in karate. But sadly, I’ve had to give up those things because I’ve aged out and can’t do them anymore without injuring myself.
So I love anything I can do that takes my full focus. The most recent one was learning to play the piano, which I’m going back to as soon as I find a new teacher. Anything that makes me totally focus on something else brings me back to that Zen place — but without the emptiness. It brings me back to that place where I feel alive, and that is a beautiful thing. I think it’s one of the things that connects me to God more than thinking, more than prayer. Being entirely present is an art, and it’s very tough to do, but I love any activity that requires it.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you hide it?
Well, I’m not sure that I’m hiding it at this point. I write so much that I’m not sure I’ve hidden anything. I’m a natural artist, and it runs in my family. It’s something that was true of me when I was little, and it’s true of me today. One of the aspects about this that people don’t talk about, especially men, is that you are like a living nerve ending. This is not a brag. This is just a fact. You receive more sensory information than other people by some exponential degree. This is why I think so many artists — especially male artists because we’re not really geared to feelings and sensitivity — are addicts of some kind. Although I can say with certainty that I am not an addict, I love alcohol. I love wine, and I love whiskey, but I put in a tremendous amount of effort to keep my consumption low because it deadens your senses.
Alcohol is the one thing that makes life kind of bearable — otherwise, you can hear the grass grow, and you’re taking it in all the time. I am really pleased with the way I run my drinking life, but I can’t run it like I run, say, my eating life. It’s easy for me to keep that under control. But with alcohol, I have to really pay attention. I have to say, “I’m not going to drink for several days. And then, if I do drink, I’m going to do it at this level.” I have to think about it because it’s instantaneous. You put that drink in your mouth, and suddenly, everything’s just a little bit softer. So that’s the thing that I have to focus on all the time.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
At the height of the pandemic in 2020, when everyone else was having a terrible time, I had one of the greatest years of my life. An idea for a book had been haunting me for years. I wanted to write about the Romantic poets, nonfiction work, what I learned about the gospel by reading those secular poems and why they informed my reading of the gospel. When the pandemic hit and all my appointments got canceled, I thought, Oh, well, this is the time to do this. I sat down, and it was bliss. It’s hard to describe the sense of God sending down one of those little laser-pointed snipers, but suffice it to say, I was standing right where he wanted me to be. It was just bliss every day.
I expected to self-publish because the topic was so obscure. I did not think there was any way that I could publish this book, and I didn’t think Christians would be interested in it. I didn’t think literary poetry fans would be interested. So I wrote this book — “The Truth and Beauty: How the Lives and Works of England’s Greatest Poets Point to a Deeper Understanding of the Words of Jesus” — purely because I felt I had to. While that was happening, my friend Otto Penzler — the great mystery editor and publisher of his generation and the man responsible for more careers than anybody else — called me up and said, “Would you be willing to write a Christmas novella, a mystery story? I laughed and said, “I’ve had a Christmas story in my mind for 30 years, but I’ve never been able to figure it out. So, yes, let me try and figure it out.”
And I did. The minute I stopped writing the book about Romantic poetry, I started writing the Christmas book, “When Christmas Comes.” It was also bliss, just so much fun. I loved doing it, and the story had been haunting me. I thought, At this age, I finally found what I want to do for a living. I want to write. I wanted to write those books because the book about the Romantics was an invented genre. I’d never read any before, and I felt like I was actually inventing something there, which I loved doing.
So both of these books came out, and both of them, to my absolute shock, were USA Today bestsellers. When the Romantic poetry book was on the bestseller list, I went into a trance-like state because, again, I didn’t even think I was going to get it published. When I sent it to the editor, he told me, “We’re never going to sell a copy, but I believe in this, so I’ll put it out anyway.” Then, when it sold, we were both flabbergasted.
From that point, I decided God had given me my end game, that is, what I was going to do for the rest of my career. So I took the character from this Christmas mystery and turned it into a series, which has been doing very well. The fourth one, “A Woman Underground,” is coming out on Oct. 15, and I just finished writing the fifth one. I’ve also written a new book about literature in the movies and what it tells us about Christianity and the state of the world. It’s more about evil with a darker subject, and that was fantastic. And of course, there’s a Substack newsletter that I’m writing with Spencer called “The New Jerusalem,” where we discuss the things of God. Those are the three things that are completely consuming me right now. I do a lot of political commentary, but Spencer and I both look at this Substack thing we’re doing like it’s a miracle. I’m not reading this kind of talk anywhere else, and the way I’m writing it is kind of freewheeling: “Can we play with this idea for a minute? Can we say something that’s against Orthodoxy here and just explore it? And can we do all this different stuff and not have to worry about people screaming at us and saying, ‘Oh, you’re heretics’?”
So we’re really having this incredible conversation right there in public that plays into my writing of the mystery stories and this invented genre of literary criticism. It’s really become a kind of unified field with my career, and it’s all connected to my late-in-life finding of God and Jesus Christ. I mean, all of it. When I look at that, I think, Boy, if I had this when I was in my 20s, what would’ve happened? That would’ve been fantastic, but I have it now, and it’s a great gift. It’s unified all my work.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
When they say pray without ceasing, I’m that guy. I believe everything is God. I’m in that conversation continually and certainly when I write. When you sit down, you never know what’s going to happen. It comes through you, not out of you.
I also have a deep love of the arts. I love good stories of all kinds, including secular stories. And I love visual beauty. I go to museums and hang out there. When I go, I pick a painting and just sit there and look at it for a while. I think that enhances my awareness of the beauty of everything.
I occasionally play video games and have always loved games of all kinds. So young men will often ask me, “Are video games art?” And I always say, “They’re art if they’re very good and if you treat them like art.” If you sit there drooling and smoking dope and playing for seven hours, then no, that’s not art, no matter how great the game is. But if you focus on the beauty of the production (some of them are truly beautiful), that’s art. Everything is about being here and being aware of what the world is at its most beautiful. Of course, life is very sad, and there’s much cruelty and suffering in the world, but the world is also incredibly beautiful. Relationships are incredibly beautiful. And art really tunes you to that radio station. When I’m really well tuned, I definitely feel that I’m seeing the world God means for me to see.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied actions that open our hearts to the presence of God. So spill it, which spiritual practice is workin’ best for you right now?
I came to God in a weird way. I was a secular Jew and an artist in places like L.A., New York and London, where mentioning God gets you kicked out of town. So I came to the faith in such an odd, independent way that I often reinvent the wheel. I didn’t learn things that I could have found out by hanging around with other religious people. I had to sort of invent them myself. Slowly, I worked my way into a church practice, finally found a church that I really loved and started taking Communion.
I’m an Anglo-Catholic, which means I’m a Catholic but not attached to the Roman Catholic Church, so I have a lot more leeway in my beliefs, a lot more freedom and independent thought, and an independent relationship with God. But that Communion blows me away. It is a practice that I do with great meditative intensity. I don’t just go in saying, “Thanks for the wine. Thanks for the bread.” I really focus on it and what I think it’s meant to do, which is to tune you into the holiness of every single thing, every common thing. Bread and wine? What could be more basic than that? It attunes you to saying, “No, you are actually experiencing God in this.” That has been so incredibly helpful to me. It’s a really deep, rich experience.
My wife goes to a Protestant church, and I think they do it once a month. But I think there’s a reason Jesus said, “Remember me this way,” and it should be practiced more often.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources — lots of things that have truly impacted our faith lives. But you know about some really great stuff too. What are some resources that have impacted you?
The most obvious one is that I went insane when I was 28. I had a very difficult relationship with my father and a very unsatisfying relationship with reality because of that, so I just cracked up when I was 28. I experienced what I now believe to have been a miracle: I went to a psychiatrist and started talking. At the time, I was suicidal. I was seriously suicidal, seriously thinking of doing away with myself. I had a beautiful wife and a daughter I loved, but I was literally thinking of throwing myself off the top of a building. And within two to three years, I went from being delusional, suicidal and massively depressed to being joyful, practically useful, good at my job and good at what I was.
I’ve never met anybody else for whom this has happened. I’ve never heard of that happening to anybody else. I’ve heard of people giving up alcohol or something similar and changing their lives dramatically, but I don’t know how this happened to me. Funny enough, although my therapist was a brilliant guy, he was a Freudian, and when it was all over, I thought, I don’t believe any of this stuff. But it was the greatest relationship. At the time, I had reasoned my way to God, but I could not accept God because I was in so much pain. I thought belief in God was a crutch, like saying, “Oh, there’s a magic sky daddy who is going to help me because I’m in pain.”
But then when this struggle was over, I was joyful. I was a happy person. I don’t even know how to describe the change. It was a 180-degree turnaround. I thought, “Gee, the logic with which I reasoned my way to God still holds. Now, I’m not in pain, so maybe I should start exploring this.” So I started to pray. It started as conversations with God, and it transformed my life. At the end of five years of probation, I basically said to God, “Well, obviously you’re there — and obviously to transform my life. What do I do now? What can I do for you? Because I’m nobody, and you’re God. How can I repay this?”
The response wasn’t a voice in my head, but I knew with absolute certainty that I should be baptized. I remember driving my car in the hills of Santa Barbara, California, and saying out loud, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” That was the last thing I wanted to do. I had no plans to get baptized whatsoever. But after exploring the idea, I realized I was, in fact, a Christian. That created all kinds of problems, both in my career and in my personal life, but I thought, This is obviously what I have to do.
I think about that situation all the time because I know someone who grew up almost exactly as I did, but they cracked and never made it out. So I had a kind of survivor’s guilt, wondering, What did I have that God plucked me out of there? When Jesus says, ‘To those who have, more will be given,’ what did I have? The one thing I think I had was the sense that I wasn’t supposed to be sad all the time, that this was not natural. This was not just the world. It was not what was happening to me; it was emanating from me. I really don’t know why I got this gift, but it was a gift. No question about it.
We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season — and tell us what it’s done for you.
I love prayer, reading and going to church. All these things are really good. But I also discovered an app called Hallow. The only reason I use it is because I wanted to learn Lectio Divina, and they guide you through it. This app has a guy named Jonathan Roumie who plays Jesus on the TV series “The Chosen.” He reads and guides you through the meditation, and it’s been really useful. I do it once a week. The other times, I actually pray, but with Hallow, I take 20 minutes to meditate on the Scripture, and it jump-starts everything for me. I’m really glad I found it. I don’t use too many mechanical aids, but this one is a good one. I like it.
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
The most kinetic thing in my life is the New Jerusalem Substack, where I’m essentially thinking out loud as I write. We have to put up one every other day. I put up one, and then Spencer puts up one, and we go back and forth. We also keep them very short. They can’t go over 500 words. Once a month, one of us writes an essay that’s longer than that. That process has been incredibly clarifying because we don’t allow ourselves to stagnate or dredge up old ideas that we’ve had and throw them on the page. We’re actually always answering one another, and it has really moved me forward in an intellectual way.
Of course, Spencer is a great scholar, which I’m not. I’m an artist. So in a way, the newsletter is the artist’s voice vs. the scholar’s voice. It has been very creative and interesting. Like I said, we both watch this thing and wonder, Is this really happening? But I think it really is, and it’s informing everything else I do. It’s just very kinetic at this moment.
What constitutes “art?” And what is its true purpose?
The answers to those questions depend on whom you ask. Some believe all art falls into a certain set of criteria laid down over centuries by artists and critics. Others say anything is art as long as you allow it to inspire you to think and feel in new ways.
Of course, the Bible doesn’t give us definitive answers about art and its purpose. But throughout its pages, we do see God’s delight in creating things that point humans to him, that stir up delight, that force us to confront who we really are — and see him for who he really is. At least, that’s how the psalmist experienced it:
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps. 8:3,4, ESV).
What art has been captivating you lately? And what does it reveal to you about God and yourself?
Andrew Klavan is the author of internationally bestselling crime novels like True Crime, Don’t Say A Word, Empire of Lies and When Christmas Comes. He wrote the screenplays for A Shock to The System, One Missed Call and Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer. His political satire videos have been viewed by millions of people, and he hosts The Andrew Klavan Show at the Daily Wire. He also wrote a memoir titled The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ and The Truth and Beauty. His latest crime novel is The House of Love and Death.