Dermot Whittaker

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Robert Cormier: The ROYAL Interview

(Originally published in the Reader' s Review of Young Adult Literature, Fitchburg State College, 1994, 2-3. Interview by Dermot Whittaker, March 27, 1994.)

ROYAL: Obviously you were a reader from early on. From sixth grade to high school, was there a particular book that spoke to you?

RC: OK, I have to preface it with the fact that my reading in my early years was almost non-existent. It was trash. My first reading was comic books and pulp magazines …

ROYAL: Which ones?

RC: I remember picking up Action Comics once and finding this guy called Superman. There was Batman and Robin, and then the pulp magazines of those days. The adventure magazines -- a thing called Wings about World War I, fighting over the fields of Europe. In the Thirties, when I grew up, World War I was the big thing. I was aware of the library, the children's room there, and it was very uninteresting to me. But when I was twelve, I discovered the Leominister Public Library. I was giving book reports in junior high on Thomas Wolfe and Ernest Hemingway. I remember one of the teachers, Miss O'Connor, called me up after school. I'd given a book report on a book called The Web and the Rock by Thomas Wolfe, one of the great novels of the Thirties, and she questioned me about it because the other kids were reading . . . you know, Penrod and Sam, all those simple little stories. The great seminal book for me was Thomas Wolfe's The Web and the Rock. It was about a young man who wanted to be a writer, living in a small town down South, and I felt he spoke to me.

ROYAL: Did any other books appeal to you?

RC: The first book I ever owned was a book called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. My godmother gave it to me. That knocked me out because I was just starting to write, and this showed me that you could write about small town and neighborhood stuff. Then I discovered Hemingway. He had a lot to do with my generation, and me personally, because he wrote so simply. I could see where you could do it in a simple way. Where Thomas Wolfe used a thousand adjectives, like a mountain torrent of prose, Hemingway was like a clear stream. I just went on from there to read, read, read, constantly.

ROYAL: Your novels Other Bells for Us to Ring and Tune for Bears to Dance To (both about children) seem to belong together.

RC: There are three books I want to write about the eleven-year-old sensibility, which I love. They're still innocent; they're not real children anymore, but they're just on the verge of puberty or adolescence, so the sexual thing hasn't come in yet. You can write a very pure story. I was aware of writing, not so much for a different audience. Because I was using the same techniques, but writing about a different age and a different mindset. I've embarked on a third book with that eleven-year-old sensibility. The disturbing thing is, it's changing as I'm writing it. It may not end up what it starts out to be, which is why I hate to tell anybody what I'm writing.

ROYAL: Many of the characters in your books react very viscerally to things. They perceive a situation and, in addition to thinking about it, they also will have strong physical reactions to it.

RC: That's the way I react to things too. I always thought it was an adolescent thing, responding so emotionally to things. I'm convinced that I'm still an adolescent in many ways -- an arrested adolescent -- because I react very emotionally and a lot of time immaturely to things that happened. What I call the "meanesses of the spirit" that I see going on really affect me, not the big sins. I think it's the small meanesses that send people to hell. Those things often affect me, and it comes out, I think, in my writing, in different, oblique ways, and my characters react the way I do. It's just instinctive, the way I write.

ROYAL: Any new projects?

RC: I've just finished a book, It's in New York; I'm waiting to get back the copyedited version to give me another crack at it. The book is titled In the Middle of the Night. Now that it is done, I can talk about it. It's a tragedy that happened twenty-five years ago to a sixteen-year-old boy. He might have been accused of causing it, even though his name was cleared. Now, twenty-five years later, he has a sixteen-year-old son, and it is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the event. The book is about the effect on the second generation. But it's also a father-son story, their developing relationship. The book is on two levels really -- the psychological and then the father-son relation. In the Middle of the Night is both an actual title and a metaphorical title. This family, because of their tragedy, is living in the dark, in a sort of "middle of the night."

ROYAL: Titles are important to you. Did you have that title in mind for awhile?

RC: From the very beginning. As you probably know from what you've read about me, I've had to fight for most of my titles, even recently. Fade (the title -- my publishers didn't like it at all. They wanted to call it The Fader, but I won!

ROYAL: You've also written about being a night owl.

RC: I hate to go to bed at night, until I'm tired enough to go to bed. I used to think I had insomnia. It was because I went to bed too early. There's something about the night time that I love. You know, twelve, one, one-thirty … beautiful.

ROYAL: Kids are interested in horror writing and horror movies right now. They probably were to some extent in your day too. Do you think there are any different aspects to it now though?

RC: I think there's more of an interest in horror right now. I think that's because of Stephen King, maybe; he has had a big influence on them. We're so afraid of the tender sensibilities of children. People are so upset by some of the violence in my books, which is minimal, and these kids themselves will sit down and write the most horrendous stuff, chopping off people's arms … they're writing this stuff, in their very wild imaginations.

ROYAL: Do you have any take on whether it's something that's entertaining, or whether there's a kind of working out of fears among kids?

RC: Of fears? I think though, that most kids can separate reality … they know what's fantasy, and that's why it's kind of safe doing it. They're getting all those fears out, and yet they're safe, like in a horror movie. You know, you're in the theatre and you're safe there; you're not on the screen. And I think it's good for them to have those fears expressed for them, where they're removed and it's sort of going through the experience second hand. It's healthy, really.

ROYAL: You mention movies. Do kids ever ask you about the changed endings of the movie versions of The Chocolate War and I Am the Cheese?

RC: What saddens me … they have no concept of how a movie is made … and they think I made the movie, that I wrote the screenplay. "Why did you change the ending of the movie?" or "Why did you let them change it?" And they will go as far as to say, "Was it for the money? Did you need the money?" Kids are very direct. So they do think that I'm responsible for the movie, which upsets me.

ROYAL: I wonder, is it too discouraging to think of another movie possibility?

RC: I know, I'm very leery of it. I used to get excited when Hollywood would call, because thee have been options on After the First Death and We All Fall Down. But I've had too many disillusionments.

ROYAL: Any other movie ideas for books?

RC: Fade has been under continual option as a movie. There seems like a pretty good one now with a British producer. I had a telephone conference call with him last week.

ROYAL: Looking at the world that you see around you today -- and you've got Archie and his way of looking at that world, and Jerry and his way of looking at it -- who's winning?

RC: It's a big, bad world out there today. It's a terrifying world. I don't know in terms of winning and losing, because there are still these good people out there. There are still these good, decent kids that don't make the headlines; they're the one I hear from. They call me. I get letters from them. So they are my hope that there are more Jerrys than Archies. Because I don't think Archie is pervasive. You might have ten Jerrys and two Archies. But the Archies are so powerful that they probably make up for the ten.

No, I believe in the ultimate goodness of people. And because we have the capacity for evil -- each of us has evil in different ways -- it's a wonder there isn't more evil in the world.

But there are enough good people making the right choices that ultimately I'm optimistic about where the world is going. I'm the ultimate optimist, despite the books. Who wouldn't be? I sit down and spend a year-and-a-half writing a book, hoping it will be published and people will read it! That's the ultimate act of an optimist, you know? A Pessimist would say, "I'm not even going to try." So my very life is an optimistic gesture, everything I do.

Fitchburg State College, March 27, 1994.

Copyright, Fitchburg State College, 1994.