Ruth Rausen

An interview with Madeleine L'Engle Miss L'Engle, can you remember when the idea first occurred to you that you might be a writer? I think the idea occurred to me so early that it wasn't at all a conscious idea. My mother kept m y stories which I wrote when t was five, which were all about a little G-R-U-L because I hadn't learned to spell yet; and Ruth Rausen is young adult specialist for I've always written. I don't ever remember when writing stories wasn't Manhattan Borough with a complete part of my life, just as necessary as breathing and sleeping. the New York Public Library System and as A n d all the writers that I've ever met were great readers. Were you a part of her work serves great reader as a child ? as moderator of the Oh, an enormously great reader, because I was an only child here in library's radio show, Teen Age Book Talk - a New York City, with m y mother: she was almost forty when I was born, program on which young I think; she had wanted a baby for nearly twenty years, and she hadn't book reviewers meet the been able to carry a child through beyond three months until she got authors of current titles. me - stubborn then, stubborn now. So I was terribly overprotected; I wasn't allowed to go out alone, and there wasn't a library near, so I simply had to read what my parents had, what I had been given, and when I had read everything four or five times I just started to write my own stories.

Photo by Jerry Bauer, courtesy of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

L M Montgomery

Emily of New Moon; Anne of Green Gables

Do you remember which kinds o f books appealed to you most? Information? Did you like fantasy, or were you looking for books o f philosophy, ideas? Can you remember which gave you the most satisfaction as a young child ? What's always given me the most satisfaction is a story which is a story on the top level and underneath has something mythic to say about life, about the human condition. I loved Oscar wilde's fairy tales, I loved George McDonald's fantasies, I loved L M Montgomery, particularly her books about Emily o f New Moon, much more than Anne o f Green Gables, because Emily wanted to be a writer. Also in Emily o f New Moon there is a touch of what is now called the "occult" in that Emily

An interview with Madeleine L'Engle had extraordinary dreams, and I believe in that world which is around our conscious minds, and which I think art of all kinds comes from.

J- R R Tolkien The Lord of the Rings Madeleine L'Engle A Wrinkle in Time

We often talk about the influence o f books when we're doing our criticism and our book selection in libraries and I wonder how you feel about this question. Do you think books are a major influence? Were they with you? I think that in all the books that I read, and particularly the books that I reread, there's a way of looking at life which involves a sense of responsibility, that the human being is a responsible human being, that honor does mean something, and I think that there are times when I've had choices to make where I have been guided to make a more difficult choice because that's what the heroes in the books that I loved most did. They didn't just take the easiest ways out. They did what they thought was right, knowing that they really weren't strong enough to do it, but they had to do it anyhow; so it's a sense of knowing your own fallibility, your own h u m a n weakness and brokenness, and that despite all of this, great things can happen. I think that's underneath one of the terribly popular books of the last ten to fifteen years, the Lord o f the Rings, when Frodo does more than Frodo can do, and that's behind all of the great fairy tales. Not long after A Wrinkle in Time came out - and as you k n o w that was rejected by publisher after publisher for nearly two years - a librarian in Baltimore was asked which book had meant most to her children during the period that we almost went to war over Cuba, and she said, A Wrinkle in Time w i t h o u t question, because it gave t h e m courage. So if I was able to give other people courage it was because o f the books that gave me courage and which still influence me. I still reread my favorite children's books. Some of them were my mother's books. Some of t h e m came out during my childhood. They're my children's favorites, and now m y grandchildren are five and six and I'm beginning to read to them. When you became a parent, did you try to direct your own children's reading? I wouldn't read them anything I wasn't interested in. I'd read t h e m any book once, and if I didn't like it, if I was bored by it, I w o u l d n ' t read it twice. I'd say, "Read it yourself, I'm bored." The world has changed quite a bit from the time you were a child. Television has come along, and that has brought children a much bigger world, we know. It's a world that parents can't control for them. It's so easy for them to watch television and have all these influences coming to them that their parents are not part o f now. I think the basic change in the world was before television. I was born right after the armistice that ended the First World War, and I think that that war was the major change. I see in people who are five or ten years older than I am a different way of looking at the world. I grew up

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in a world where, althougl~ there wasn't television, there was stiii instant communication. There was radio. There was the telephone. If there was an explosion in Leningrad we would know about it. And I think it's the instant knowledge of too much. Now, when you know all the horrors that are going on in the world, I think the worst thing that happens is that you begin to lose compassion because you simply can't cope with that much. I remember hearing on the radio, "Only seventy-five killed this week." "Only seventy-five" - you can't say "Only seventy-five." I think the worst thing that television does is to teach passivity. The kids sit there and they absorb passively. They don't have to do any creating of their own, whereas when you read a book, the reader is creating the book just as much as the writer. It's an act of collaboration.

Madeteine L'Engle The Arm of the Starfish

Madeieine L'Engle The Wind in the Door Madeleine L'Engle The Young Unicorns

Well, fortunately there are still marzy young people around who love books; they love words, and we know that you love words, and we're delighted in the library that we have many requests for A Wrinkle in Time and The Arm of the Starfish. I know that kids love the books and love words, because I get so many letters. And at least once a week there will be a letter saying, "I love words, I love your new words." I have written another book in the same area as A Wrinkle in Time called The Wind in the Door. It's more adventures of May and Calvin and Charles Wallace, although it can stand on its own, and right now I'm writing a book which will be a sort of third along with The Arm o f the Starfish and The Young Unicorns. It has some characters from both those books meeting each other and it has a brand new character as chief protagonist. But a lot of old friends meet, because I get terribly involved with my characters and I want to find out what goes on, so this is that kind of international intrigue science fiction. We're all passionately concerned about what's happening to the earth, and Dr O'Keeffe has been asked to go see a lake in Venezuela that's dying. The abuse by greed of our earth's resources is very much in my thinking now, and what I'm thinking about is bound to be reflected in my writing. Do young people in their letters ask you about your books and what A Wrinkle in Time means? Oh, yes. I suppose I average five to ten letters a day, which is a lot of letters, and I will treasure every single one of them. If you've gone through as long a period of absolute failure as I did, ten years where I couldn't see anything I wrote, then each of those letters is just such a marvelous affirmation to me that I was right to keep on struggling and not to give up and learn to bake cherry pie properly (which I never have learned to do). I answer every letter I get. I remember quite some years ago a young boy asking me about A Wrinkle in Time and asking me whether I thought that Calvin was the religious teacher, and f said that I wouldn't be at all surprised, but you really

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o~ght ro write :~liss L'Et~le a letter and ask her whether this came from Calvi~z. Well, I just thought that Calvin, who is so Protestant, and O'Keeffe - such an Irish name! - made a marvelous conflict, and that Calvin himself is a slightly paradoxical person. He's born in a family where nobody reads a book, and here is Calvin with this passion to learn and to know and to understand. So I just did it as a sort of pleasurable paradox. How do you view the c,rrent books beit N written specifically for y o , , g teen-agers? 77zey ha~e taken as their theme very serious adMt problems: drug addiction, unwed parenthood, homosex~tality. When they're written to teach a lesson I don't like them, even if they only teach in the last five pages. But when they're written because this is what the author is passionately concerned with, and has to get it out onto paper, that's fine. ! don't think there's any such thing as a taboo s~bject. I think it's the attitude behind the subject which makes the book acceptable or not acceptable. Where a writer has been - is - himself concerned with drugs, where he's been involved in them or has been with someone who's been involved with them, and is writing out of his own urgent need, then that book can be a reaibook. But when it's because it's fashionable, it's selling, it's what's going right now, then the book is usually phoney. Kids can spot that in a second. Relevancy has become the big word. Relevant and m e a n # @ d and . .. Robert Cormier

The Chocolate War

It is probably inevitable that we get a book such as Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War. Have yo~,~ read that? That's a book intended for children. No. I've heard a great deal about it, I very much want to read it. One thing about writing books is it takes an enormous amount of time to write, and then when I'm writing a book 1 usually have to do a lot o f scientific research for whatever the science underneath the book is. But in The Yoking Unicorns when I was writing about the simulation of the pleasure center of the brain, that hadn't become a thing. We now have L-ads. That's really kind of scary, because in almost every book I write about something that hasn't happened yet. My agent said, "I wish you'd stop being so prophetic."

You've worked a great deal with young people in many ways, and you've had writing workshops for them. I do every year. Are these young people from the inner city? I try to have a totally mixed group. I don't like all inner city or all outer city. The group I have now I would say is basically a third black,

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a third Oriental and a third white, and the whites are partly Christian, Jew, atheist. So it's a beautifully mixed group, and the nicest thing about this kind of a group is to watch a trust slowly building up in the kids.

Did you make any general observations on what they were seeking and what they were writing? Mostly they want somebody to say, "Yes, you are. You exist, you matter, ana what you do with your life matters." The distressing thing is that it takes me a little longer each year to get the trust going among the kids and to get the trust going to me. So this is why trust always comes into it, because we tend to put people on pedestals, and that always leads to disaster. We suddenly find out that this person we've had on a pedestal has feet of clay. I want them to accept the feet o f clay right from the start. I got involved with trying to teach this kind of mixed group because ten or fifteen years ago there was pressure put on writers to have protagonists from minority groups, from the inner city, and I felt that it was not my right or my privilege to do this because this is not in my own background. I don't come from an affluent background; I was on the fringe of inner city. But I wasn't in it, and so I felt the only thing I could do was to try to give some of these kids the equipment of vocabulary and learning to tell a story that would make them able to write out of their own experience, because a story which is not based on experience never is really real. My two most talented students were both black. Do you see that the situation has changed since you started the writing workshops? I know a few years ago the young people didn't trust anyone and were very hostile to adults. They refused even to think about a future because they couldn't deal with the present and they were sure that there would be no hope for them in the future. Do you see those attitudes changing? I find there's a more marked discrepancy - that those who are negative are more negative than they used to be, and that those who are positive are more positive. There are always a few kids who really give me extraordinary hope for the future, but there are some who are so negative that I sometimes come close to despairing. But usually a chink will open and there'll be at least a small ray of "yes, one day it may be possible to hope," and that's enough; it's not very much, but it helps. Do you think that sometimes in the young people who are totally negative that it's just a pose with them, that they feel it's a necessary part o f their role playing ? I think it basically comes from playing it safe, really more than attention getting, because everything we see on television, particularly the commercials, is leading us into a world that is just about as secure and dull as the womb. The scientists now talk about the refusal of the baby to be born. The baby does not want to be born, to get out o f his

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nice cozy amniotic fluid and to have suddenly to breathe and eat and function. In a lot of kids there is, I think, a rejection of being born. But our lives are a constant series of being born and reborn and reborn and reborn from one stage to another, and we do tend to reject birth, because Jung said there is no coming to life without pain, and we're taught that pain is bad and pleasure is good. I think pain is bad, but on the other hand I have learned that almost everything good that has happened to me has followed a pained birth experience, and that simply is a statistical fact which I can't evade. >[< >g 96 >~ g

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We're aware o f the low reading scores here in the New York area and they're explained by the educators as the result o f poor attendance in school, lack o f motivation. A basic nonunderstanding o f the English language seems to be a large part o f it too. And it's all so sad to us who know the joy and excitement that reading a good book can bring. In your writing, especially in A Wrinkle in Time, we feel your enjoyment of the richness of language, texture and sound and meaning of words, all o f it. Do you see any merit in controlled vocabulary books? ! get a vision of a large hairy man with horns sitting and twitching his tail happily as he gets these books out. I think they're immoral; they're horrible. If you keep a child within the vocabulary, how is he going to learn new words? Kids love great, big, unwieldy, cumbersome, exciting words. I think one of the reasons that Wrinkle was rejected so often was, who's ever heard of a tessaract? Well, it's a real concept. It's an honest-to-goodness scientific word, which you'll find in the footnotes of large dictionaries. I think it's terrible to limit vocabulary. I think they did discover that there were a great many young people who could not read. They simply could not take on a book that had too many unfamiliar words. And it was a noble experiment. I think it was a total lack of trust in the fact that a good writer will always use the simplest word possible. Mark Twain said he never used metropolis because he could use city, and that when a writer uses a complicated word it's because it's the only word that he can possibly use. I had to use tessaract; there wasn't any other word, because I needed the actual accurate scientific word. I remember Beatrix Potter uses soporific; lettuce has a soporific effect. She wouldn't be allowed to do that today. T h e y ' d say, " Y o u can say it makes them sleepy.' She'd say, 'No, that's not what I mean; I mean soporific.'

Do you like libraries? I adore libraries. Do you have any advice for librarians? Because we feel that we're losing

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ot~t a~zd I w o n d e r . . , l't~z slate yo~'re ~ot tl'w kiy,zd o f person who likes to gil,e ~ch,ice, som~o1~e who thinks y o u have the answers or anything like th,~t, but what cdt~ lt,e c/o, do y o u think ? I don': have the answers, and what I'm going to say may sound slightly pompous but I believe it. al~d that is, I think, that love is just as contagious as hate. Emerson said, "What you are speaks so loudly over your head that I cannot hear what yott say." So if you really come in every morning loving books, and loving to share them with people, then that's catching. Did you know that I'm a librarian? Yes, at tl~e Cathedral o f St Johy~ the Dil:ine. Rigt~t. I walk into that lovely beautiful room every day and my heart just sings. When I went into that library it was absolutely empty. I went there to write because I knew nobody used it, and l hadn't been there very long when the young librarian was called to be on jury duty and he got in an awful flap, and I said, "Oh, relax. Just go tell them I'll keep it open for you as long as 1 can use the electric typewriter." So I kept it open for two weeks and used the electric typewriter and was terribly happy, and when he got back they kept calling him over to other offices because there wasn't really enough to do there to justify a salary, and then he left. 1 said, "Why don't you just leave me here? I'll write my books here, and you don't have to pay me." So we have sort of a nice reciprocal trade treaty. Well the thing is that I love the library so much that other people have discovered it too. So we now have a part-time paid librarian so I can get my writing done! Do young people talk to you abo~t what they've read? Yes. It's a good setting, lt's a beautiful room with high ceilings and paneled walls and great bay windows which look across the Cathedral close to the Cathedral building itself. And there I am at a lovely desk which sort of puts me (no matter who I am) in the position of being somebody who's there and can be talked to. The first thing I did was to keep the teapot going so that people could have a cup of tea. I think that every adolescent needs somebody to w h o m they're not biologically bound, as they are to their parents, to talk to, to throw ideas off, to see what makes you happy - and a lot of grownups aren't happy - and when they see somebody like you, obviously doing something you are qualified to do and doing it well~ and see somebody like me also doing what I love to do and want to do, that gives them a sense of, "Okay, maybe I can grow up and it's not disastrous after all. Maybe I am born to grow up." References

Cormier, Robert (1974) The Chocolate War New York: Pantheon; London: Gollancz L'Engle, Madeleine (1965) The A r m o f the Starfish New York: Farrar,

An interview with Madeleine L'Engle Straus & Giroux L'Engle, Madeleine (1973) A Wind in the Door New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Dell L'Engle, Madeleine (1962) A Wrinkle in Time New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Dell; London: Longman, Penguin L'Engle, Madeleine (1968) The Young Unicorns New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux; London: Gollancz, Penguin Montgomery, L M (1908) Anne of Green Gables New York: Grosset and Dunlap, Airmont; London: Harrap, Penguin Montgomery, L m (1923) Emily of New Moon (out of print) Tolkien, J R R (1966) The Lord of the Rings London: Allen and Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, New York: Ballantine

A Bibliography of Works by Madeleine L'Engle USA

(1945) The Small Rain New York: Vanguard (1946) llsa New York: Vanguard (1949) And Both Were Young New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard (1951) Camilla Dickinson New York: Simon and Schuster (1957) A Winter's Love Philadelphia: Lippincott (1960) Prelude New York: Vanguard (1960) Meet the Austins New York: Vanguard (1962) A Wrinkle in Time New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Dell (1963) The Moon by Night New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1964) The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1965) The Arm of the Starfish New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1965) Camilla New York: T Y Crowell (1966) The Love Letters New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1967) The Journey with Jonah New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1968) The Young Unicorns New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1969) Dance in the Desert New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1969) Lines Scribbled on an Envelope and Other Poems New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1971) A Circle of Quiet New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1971) The Other Side of the Sun New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Fawcett (1973) A Wind in the Door New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Dell (1974) Prayers for Sunday New York: Morehouse-Barlow (1974) Everyday Prayers New York: Morehouse-Barlow (1974) Summer of the Great-Grandmother New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

UK (1963) A Wrinkle in Time London: Longman, Penguin

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(1969) The Young Unicorns London: Gollancz, Penguin (1969) Dance in the Desert London: Longman (1970) Prelude London: Gollancz (1972) The Other Side of the Sun London: Eyre & Spottiswoode

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