Prime Time Replay:
Peter S. Beagle
on The Unicorn Sonata
MsgId: *omni_visions(4)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:01:02 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
Good evening, everyone. This is Ed Bryant with the latest edition of Omni Visions, your Thursday night interview series with the finest writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. My guest tonight is Peter Beagle. My friend, the late newspaper columnist and reviewer, Don Thompson, is quoted in the press release for The Unicorn Sonata, as saying, "Peter S. Beagle is by no means the most prolific fantasy writer in the business; he's merely the best." Even allowing for Don's enormous enthusiasm for Peter Beagle's work, he had a point. The Last Unicorn has been popular from the first, a cult best-seller, and never has gone out of print. Ditto for A Fine & Private Place. Other novels have followed, as well as some quirky nonfiction and a selection of film and television scripts.Welcome, Peter. The Unicorn Sonata seems intended to send a wakeup call to all who loved The Last Unicorn, but it's clearly not a sequel. True?
MsgId: *omni_visions(9)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:10:47 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
True. It's not a sequel. It was a job taken on because I needed the money. The amazing thing is that I got to like it and became very involved with the characters. So I had a much better time writing it than I expected to, but it's been 27-28 years since THE LAST UNICORN. And one moves on.
MsgId: *omni_visions(10)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:13:02 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
Since it's not at all a sequel, I'm going to let you, if you will, give me a precis of the new work. Pretend this is a pitch.
MsgId: *omni_visions(11)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:17:59 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
The story is about a 13-year-old Latina in a Los Angeles suburb, a misfit in school, feeling like a misfit in a lot of ways, as everybody does at 13. But she has a natural gift for music and suddenly, a very strange music that no one else seems to hear. She stumbles across a border between her world and another in which creatures out of mythology exist and in which unicorns are the dominant species. She learns to move back and forth between those worlds, and she becomes obsessed, first with transcribing the music she hears, and then with bringing her grandmother, who is her best friend, out of the old-age home into which she's been stuffed into in this world. The story is as much about the relationship between Joey, as she's called, and music, and Joey and her granmother, as it is about Joey and unicorns.
MsgId: *omni_visions(13)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:20:21 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
I had a sense that this was a work where that old writer's chestnut of a character grasping control of the story came into play. Is this true of the Mexican grandmother?
MsgId: *omni_visions(14)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:22:57 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
That damn grandmother leaped into the story, stole every scene she was in, demanded more scenes, and probably saved the book. Every now and then, if you get lucky, that happens, but you can never predict it. And all you can do is be grateful. The grandmother, by the way, turns out to be based on my favorite aunt, who died shortly before I started the book. I didn't realize that--it took my wife to point it out.
MsgId: *omni_visions(15)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:26:34 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
Something else that struck me about The Unicorn Sonata is the importance of music. It's integral to the story; not just a cosmetic add-on. I happen to know you're an accomplished performer yourself. Could you address this? (And if we had an audio hookup I'd ask you to play and sing, believe me.)
MsgId: *omni_visions(16)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:31:07 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
All my life I've loved to sing, I've loved songs of all kinds. I worked as dinner music in a French restaurant for 12 years, and if I had a choice between being a writer and being a Nashville session sideman, it'd be really close. My great fantasies are not of winning Pulitzers but of being the rhythm guitar with Billie Holliday making her first recordings. That one's my favorite--I have others. In THE FOLK OF THE AIR, I allowed Joe Farrell to be the first-rate musician I've always wanted to be. I'm just good enough to know what really good is.But music turns up in all my books, and it probably always will. I have a book of stories coming out next year called GIANT BONES. The first novella is about a wandering bard, and it's based very much on a great French songwriter-singer named Georges Brassens, who was the nearest thing to a guru I've ever had.
MsgId: *omni_visions(18)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:33:50 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
Since you mentioned the Innkeeper's Song, and since I have a strange feeling that's among your favorites of your own works, why?
MsgId: *omni_visions(19)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:37:00 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
I always think of it as my first grown-up book. It's hard to explain exactly why, but it's got something to do with a density of emotion that perhaps I had to reach this age to be able to produce. It's certainly the only one of my books that I found myself longing to revisit. I miss the people, I miss the world, and that's never happened to me before. I know that even ten years ago, I couldn't have written it. There are things you do when you've grown into them, and I'm a very slow learner. I keep telling myself that the young or middle-aged writer has to make sure that the old one has enough to eat, because there's stuff I really want to get to when I know how to do it. Maybe THE INNKEEPER'S SONG was the first of those.
MsgId: *omni_visions(20)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:39:06 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
Well, that leads to a perhaps all too obvious query. You didn't write a sequel to THE LAST UNICORN. But what would prevent you from revisiting the world of THE INNKEEPER'S SONG?
MsgId: *omni_visions(21)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:41:36 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
Absolutely nothing. The GIANT BONES stories are all set in that world, but none of them deal with characters from THE INNKEEPER'S SONG, except one in which Lal and Soukyan encounter each other when they're both very old. I was very glad to see them and very happy to spend a little more time in their company. I've never been like this with a book. You finish telling the story, you go on somewhere else and tell another story. But this one has more to tell, somehow. I'll tell you more when I know.
MsgId: *omni_visions(22)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:44:24 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
Since GIANT BONES is made up of separate literary components, will we be able to get a preview from seeing any of the individual tales published separately?
MsgId: *omni_visions(24)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:47:49 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
I hope so. My agent is trying to find markets right now. One of the stories will be published this year in an anthology called SPACE OPERA, edited by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. Another, called "The Magician of Karakosk," will be published in a collection called DAVID COPPERFIELD PRESENTS TALES OF THE IMPOSSIBLE 2, edited by Janet Berliner. There are four others that don't have markets yet--but maybe.
MsgId: *omni_visions(25)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:50:19 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
You've been writing professionally for something like three and a half decades... After all that time and experience, what's your take on reconciling love and commerce? It's clear you love your storytelling. How do you deal with the occasional commercial exigency?
MsgId: *omni_visions(26)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:54:56 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
I've done it for so long that they no longer seem to oppose each other. For instance, I once took on the pilot script for the Saturday morning cartoon series that Disney made out of THE LITTLE MERMAID. I didn't like the original movie, I loathed the story that they wanted me to dramatize, and the real challenge, as always, was to make it fun for myself. I always fall back on the words of a P. G. Wodehouse character, who says at one point, "When dropped unaware into some foul hole, I always ask myself, 'Now, how can I leave this foul hole a better and happier foul hole than I found it'?" There's always some way to make it enjoyable in some measure. Given the choice, I'd just write novels, but maybe it's as well that I've had to do the other work. There's a great deal to be learned from foul holes.
MsgId: *omni_visions(27)
Date: Thu Oct 3 22:57:28 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
Speaking of foul holes, has Hollywood done anything to recommend itself to you as anything less than lethal? How did you feel about the adaptation of THE LAST UNICORN?
MsgId: *omni_visions(28)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:01:05 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
I can live with it, which surprises me. Because Rankin-Bass was about one step up from Hanna-Barbera. To my surprise, they shot the movie just about the way I wrote it and I like a lot of it. For the rest, there are a few things I've done that I was genuinely proud of, especially a television movie called "The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened." But I did a lot of scripts that never got produced but for which I got paid, I got to meet a few interesting people, and I worked with Ralph Bakshi, which means I can never be scared of anyone again. In the end, I was always buying time. A script or a screenplay fed me for x number of months or for a year, and meanwhile, I could work on a book. Everybody who does this sort of thing works out his or her personal balance. It beats hanging around English departments.
MsgId: *omni_visions(29)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:04:01 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
I know what you mean. I once interviewed with Bakshi for FIRE AND ICE. I didn't get the job, but I felt more comfortable about writing horror. Question: since you're experienced with the big and small screen now, are you venturing into the wild new world of multimedia?
MsgId: *omni_visions(30)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:07:39 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
We recently got the first fax we've ever had. Does that tell you anything? When Turner Publications said that they wanted to do an online interview to promote THE UNICORN SONATA, I said that it was fine with me but that they'd have to get a whole lot of tin cans and strings. I'm still in the old mode of sitting in the marketplace telling stories. I figure that what I do should just about last out my lifetime. Beyond that, multimedia can have it.
MsgId: *omni_visions(31)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:11:33 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
Elephants! Now elephants are low-tech and traditional parts of the natural world. I'm curious about IN THE PRESENCE OF ELEPHANTS and your role with it.
MsgId: *omni_visions(32)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:16:53 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
I have an old buddy named Pat Derby who is the nearest thing to Dr. Doolittle I've ever met. Twenty years ago, we did my one as-told-to biography, because she had an astonishing life. Her maiden anme was Shelley, and it's that family. She couldn't care less about Percy, but she's very proud of being descended from Mary Shelley. Her father taught Shakespeare at Cambridge. She was supposed to be a ballet dancer. And she takes in wild animals. I think of myself as Pat's house hack. IN THE PRESENCE OF ELEPHANTS is about a couple of African elephants she's nursed and raised in a central Sacramento Valley town called Galt. She could have written the book herself but she was busy with the elephants. So she asked me to do it. And all you have to do is let me play with a family of wolves, and I'll do anything.
MsgId: *omni_visions(33)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:20:53 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
Clearly not your standard nonfiction... 30 years ago you turned a fascinating road trip by motorscooter from the Bronx to the Bay into I SEE BY MY OUTFIT. Ever consider saddling up a Harley and checking out the territory today?
MsgId: *omni_visions(34)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:24:04 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
I think I can still travel on two wheels, but I'd rather not find out if I'm wrong. My son, at one point in his career, was a mechanic for Honda motorcycles, and with shameless hypocrisy, I made sure he wore a helmet even if he was just driving the damn bike into the barn. I never wore a helmet, I did incredibly stupid things on two wheels, it's a bloody miracle that I'm alive, and I can't say what I was thinking of. But I do still dream, every now and then, that I'm back on a motorcycle. Those are very nice dreams, and I think I'll leave it right there.
MsgId: *omni_visions(35)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:27:09 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
Something almost as dangerous as biking without a helmet is editing? Ever want to try another project like that wonderful collaborative editing partinership with Janet Berliner that brought about the superb PETER BEAGLE'S THE IMMORTAL UNICORN?
MsgId: *omni_visions(36)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:30:21 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
As I indicated in my introduction, Janet did three quarters of the work. Not only could I not have done it without her, I wouldn't dream of trying it without her. Undoubtedly, she'll bug me into doing something like it sometime in the future, but I don't have any plans for it. And I have a tendency to snarl when I pick up the phone and it's Janet: "What do you want from my life, Berliner?" But she'll get me sooner or later. She always does. In fact, I'm a very good editor for my own work. I don't really think I'm good with other people's stories. Janet is a hell of an editor, and she made me look very good.
MsgId: *omni_visions(37)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:30:33 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
MsgId: *omni_visions(38)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:32:10 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
I've got to get some dinner shortly, but I've got time for one or two questions.
MsgId: *omni_visions(39)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:34:16 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
The time has flown by, Peter. It's been a great conversation, if a little like talking back and forth from the Lunar colony. If you want to call it a night, that'll be fine. But let me ask: along with GIANT BONES, will there be another Peter Beagle full-length novel in the near future? I hope so.
MsgId: *omni_visions(40)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:37:08 EDT 1996
From: Peter_Beagle At: 206.80.183.214
I'm working on a novel whose working title is TAMSIN, MISS SOPHIA BROWN, MISTER CAT, AND ME. I'm supposed to deliver it late in 1998, and I just assume I will. In a detached kind of way, I'm always fascinated to see how I get out of these corners I've painted myself into. But I do like the book so far, and if I can just figure out how to get to England where two-thirds of the book takes place, we're in business. Because I've already done the New York third. I'll think of something. That's my job.
MsgId: *omni_visions(41)
Date: Thu Oct 3 23:40:30 EDT 1996
From: Ed_Bryant_(mod) At: 206.80.181.62
And your job you perform splendidly, Peter. Thank you very much for your conversation tonight. It's been, as ever, a genuine pleasure hearing from you.
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