The Favored Five

As promised, here are Susan Cooper's and Gregory Maguire's five favorite fantasies as promulgated for our evening at MIT:

Susan's:

Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett (told you she was deep)
The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White

Gregory's:

The Amazing Bone by William Steig
Father Fox's Pennyrhymes by Clyde and Wendy Watson
The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton
A Step off the Path by Peter Hunt
It by William Mayne

The last makes me unable to resist my favorite Dorothy Parker line. In reviewing Elinor Glyn's steamy It (1927), Parker wrote of the heroine, "It, hell. She had Those."

Live and on stage

Susan Cooper, Gregory Maguire and me, at MIT last month.

Susan Cooper speaks

WGBH has posted audio and video versions of Susan Cooper's Cambridge Forum lecture on fantasy.

Fantasy-astic

Gregory Maguire and Susan Cooper, photo by Richard Asch


While the rest of you were chowing down on thousand-dollar-a-plate surf-n-turf at the National Book Awards (unless you were too busy fondling--oh ICK I can't even say it) I was scarfing cookies graciously provided by Candlewick Press and Simon & Schuster as refreshment for our evening of talk about fantasy, the reading and writing of it, with Susan Cooper and Gregory Maguire. The house was full (guarding the door, Cambridge P.L.'s Julie Roach told me she heard all manner of subterfuges--"my friend has my ticket"-- and brooked none) and the conversation lively. Greg is naturally loquacious and Susan more reserved, so my job as moderator kept me on my toes. MIT will be posting a video of the event on their MITWorld site and I'll let you know when that's up; in the meantime you can still catch Susan Cooper tonight, free, at 7:30 PM at the First Church in Harvard Square.

Merriman is gay?

Oops, wrong fantasy*. But in honor of the upcoming extravaganza with Susan Cooper and Gregory Maguire, Kitty and Claire have put online some of the Horn Book Magazine's finest fantasy articles, including Susan Cooper on Tolkien and Tom's Midnight Garden, Gregory Maguire on Philip Pullman, Philip Pullman on The Republic of Heaven, and several more esteemed writers on the whole doom-and-unicorns shebang. They won't be up forever, so read 'em now.

*But I still maintain that, in Susan Cooper's time fantasy King of Shadows, young hero Nat and the Bard of Avon totally had it going on, if you know what I'm saying.

As Claire originally began her review, WTF?

So keep that in mind when you read her review of The Seeker.

I'm guessing Greenwitch will be a whole 'nother ball of wax.

The upcoming opening of The Seeker, formerly known as The Dark is Rising, has a lot of people on edge, not least Susan Cooper. I'm reminded of another time this title got in trouble, branded as racist in 1976 by the Council on Interracial Books for Children in their Human and Anti-Human Values in Children's Books: A Content Rating Instrument for Educators and Parents. And it was the title itself that got Cooper's book in hot water with this crowd, who believed that the equation of darkness with evil was "racist by commission," meaning overtly harmful. If I recall right, The Dark Is Rising was also labeled "racist by omission," by the CIBC, because it didn't have any black characters. I'll have to remember to ask Susan what she thought about all this.

How many do YOU bring?

I will be out of the office the rest of this week, giving a speech in Vermont and then taking a few days to enjoy the Green Mountain State ( a visit to Beau Ties, I hope, and any recommendations for food and ice cream would be much appreciated). And I'm bringing a prodigious number of books whose pages I cannot hope to get through and whose ISBNs I reproduce below in the spirit of reckless theft of intellectual property:

978-0385516297
978-0399154300
978-0670038664
978-0061231728
978-0871139603
978-0452288522
978-1400043958

Richard, on the other hand, is only bringing 978-0385721790 and 978-1400032914, which is far more sensible (and they're both excellent) but I always worry that if I bring only two, it will be the wrong two. And then where are you?

Miss Pod is coming with us too, and she's fully loaded with Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series, which I'm rereading-hearing in preparation for our chat in November. It's always good to have a book along you already know you love.

"The Writing of Fantasy": Susan Cooper and Gregory Maguire

Last Friday Daryl Mark (of the Cambridge P.L.) and I went over to MIT to look over the new location that anticipatory enthusiasm for the evening seemed to demand. So, we're still on for the program with Susan Cooper and Gregory Maguire, we're still talking about the writing and reading of fantasy, and it's still all going to take place on Wednesday, November 14, at 7:00PM. But note the new location: the program will now be taking place in the Frank Gehry glam Stata Center. MIT kahuna Paul Parravano (yes, consort to the inestimable Martha) showed us around, and it's quite an impressive place. Tickets (free but limit of four) for the evening will be available October 15th by sending an SASE to: Susan Cooper Event, Cambridge Public Library, 359 Broadway, Cambridge, MA, 02139. Note: seating is first come, first served; overflow "population" (MIT-speak for audience) will be accommodated via TV monitors. A reception will follow.

The following evening Susan Cooper will deliver a lecture, "Unriddling the World: Fantasy and Children" for the Cambridge Forum. This event is also free, no ticket required, and will be held at 7:30 PM at the First Parish church in Harvard Square, Cambridge.

Distant early warning

For those of you who enjoyed the profile of Gregory Maguire in the NYT yesterday, please put November 14 on your calendar, when I'll be conducting a public interview with Gregory AND Susan Cooper, about writing, fantasy, and the state of the world, in Cambridge, MA, location to be determined. Susan will also be giving a public lecture the next evening for the Cambridge Forum.

I'm also very happy with Gregory today because he's graciously agreed to donate a signed copy of Wicked for a benefit auction my man Richard's company is running tomorrow night for the BPL.