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Conversation with the Author
(Originally published in the Reader' s Review of Young Adult Literature, Fitchburg State College, 1995, 1.) Wickburg, the small industrial city of Robert Cormier's literary imagination, is the setting of his latest novel. John Paul, a French-Canadian high schooler, finds himself the only living witness to events involving his community in tragedy. Twenty-five years later, John Paul's son Denny seeks passage into manhood by questioning his father's refusal to comment on the unhappy past. "In the first draft," says Cormier, "Denny really emerged as too meek, very subdued, a little too dominated by his father. In a second draft, I made him a little older and more of a rebel against the father." Teenagers are sure to understand Denny's profound uneasiness (a weary breakfast of shredded wheat was like "trying to swallow hay") in a home that has become a shrine to suffering. Cormier's brilliant use of short, apt description occurs throughout the story. "This is probably the sparest novel I've ever written. I look upon it as a father-son story, with their relationship developing." Cormier recalls that the busboy who was blamed for starting the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston in 1942 received threats and harassment even decades after the event. "I had a clipping about the poor guy for years on my bulletin board, knowing that someday I wanted to write a similar story. My heart went out to him, because they absolved him of any complicity; but people needed a scapegoat and he was the scapegoat." The story begins with the promise of wholeness. Dave and his tough older sister Lulu, two characters whose lives intersect those of both Denny and his father, share an enduring love that is strong enough to survive friendly taunting or violent catastrophe. Denny's conversations with Lulu, whom he knows only as a telephone voice, nearly overwhelm the lonely boy. "I wanted to hint at the sexuality between them," says Cormier. "I don't like exploitation or 'sexploitation,' so I really had to walk a tightrope to avoid the wrong focus being there. All writing is a matter of degree and selection, and you have to follow your instincts and your standards." In the novel, Lulu's understanding of life is changed forever by a near-death experience. Cormier drew upon a time some years ago when he woke up at dawn with his mind a complete blank. "I can't describe it," he says. "It was terrifying. It was almost as if I were facing that very familiar snow on the television, that's what my whole world had become -- no picture, nothing." Cormier did not share the incident (which he now concludes was an aberration) with even his wife for a year-and-a-half. "I was very uncomfortable talking about it, frankly. It is as if talking about it makes it real. I was afraid I would bring it on almost. All this light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel stuff we read about, what's the other side of that? I love the other side of things, and I thought why not use this experience of mine. A writer is like vulture, you know, we use everything!" With this novel, Robert Cormier is again pushing adolescent literature into new realms. The loneliness of suffering, the bitterness of revenge, and the mystery of romantic pursuit: readers will find all three in Cormier's fourteenth novel, In the Middle of the Night. Copyright, Fitchburg State College, 1995. |