Paul Fleischman

BIO

A native Californian, Paul Fleischman never dreamed of being a writer as a child. He much preferred riding his bike and combing the streets near his home for found objects to writing. Those objects eventually became sculptures, just as his considerable interests and experiences eventually came to life in his stories. The recipient of both a Newbery Award for JOYFUL NOISE, his book of poetry for two voices, and the Scott O’Dell Award for BULLRUN, his multicharacter account of the Civil War, Fleischman lives in Monterey, California, where he dabbles in music and plays bocce with his pals.

INTERVIEW

March 3, 2000

Author Paul Fleischman had a busy year --- he's published three books and finished a movie, but he still has time to chat. This renown YA author took time out of his harried schedule to speak with our writer, Tammy Currier, about his recent novel MIND'S EYE. Find out how this book emerged from Fleischman's mind, how is family influences his writing, hear his thoughts on memorizing poetry, and more. Discovering Fleischman --- an author whose audience has no boundaries, whose stories will touch deep --- is a gift.

TBB: Told almost entirely in dialogue, your 1999 YA novel, MIND’S EYE, is set in a North Dakota nursing home and tells the story of a 16-year-old paraplegic and her 88-year-old roommate, who, together transcend their physical limitations by taking an imaginary journey through Italy, using a 1910 Baedeker guidebook. What inspired you to tell their story?

PF: Many things led me to write MIND’S EYE. My starting point was actually the Baedeker book. My father, Sid Fleischman, is also a writer. Fifty years ago he picked up a dozen or so Baedekers, all from around 1900, to use researching the adult novels he was writing at the time. They're marvelous resources. He could look on the fold out map of Shanghai and have his character exit left out his hotel, cross a bridge in two blocks, pass an expensive restaurant, catch the number 16 streetcar, get off in front of the public baths, etc. They're filled with all sorts of practical details a writer needs: prices, hours, descriptions. I remember looking at the books as a kid. You could really take a complete armchair journey with one of those books. Years later, it occurred to me that there was a book waiting to be written about a character who does just that.

I start with a germ like that --- not characters or theme. I didn't know who my characters were, when or where the story took place, whether the book was a comedy or serious. I use the germ almost as an inkblot. In this case, I saw many shapes in it: my physical differences as a child --- I was extremely short up until high school --- enlarged into Courtney's paraplegia; the Greek myth of Priapus, who was so misshapen when he was born that his parents set him out to die; my mother's death and the desire to revive her, echoed in Elva’s resurrection of her husband; my own divorce, a sudden, life-changing surprise, like Courtney's accident; my mother  
mentioning to her sister her regret at never getting to Australia, and her sister replying that perhaps she could go there for her; a winter spent in Nebraska, with 75 below (adding in wind chill), watching the weather news under 30 pounds of blankets and seeing that it was even colder in the Dakotas in the north. These are just some of the tributaries that flowed into the book.

TBB: Like your Newbery Award-winning volume of poetry, JOYFUL NOISE, which was written for two readers, MIND’S EYE also begs to be read aloud. What are you hoping to accomplish when you write for more than one reader at a time?

PF:  I wrote the book (MIND’S EYE) to be read either silently as a novel, in the theater of the reader's mind, or as reader's theatre. I grew up hearing my father read his books aloud to the family, chapter by chapter as they were written, and that experience of small-scale theater marked me and led to many of my books. I love the synergy of play reading in the same way I love playing chamber music: a group of people engaged in something that's greater than the single parts. In my poetry and readers’ theater books, I'm giving people something they can perform with family and friends if they wish --- low-tech, without costumes or lighting, brought to life not on  
stage but in the living room. I have a new book of 4-voice poems just out, called BIG TALK; one of its earlier titles was KITCHEN TABLE QUARTET, which gives you a feeling of what I have in mind.

TBB: Several times in MIND’S EYE, 88-year-old Elva, a former teacher, comments on the misdeeds of failing to develop one's mind. Do you worry that in these fast-paced, computer-oriented, television-addicted times of ours that people are missing out --- as Elva says --- on furnishing their minds “from floor to ceiling?” If so, is there a solution?

PF:  I'd say it's safe to say that few of us have minds as lavishly furnished as Elva's these days. Memorizing poetry and prose went out of fashion and the curriculum generations ago. I had a friend some years back who'd memorized a number of poems, which inspired me to do the same. Recently, I started again, first with something small (Edward Gorey's THE DOUBTFUL GUEST), then proceeded to the much longer THE CREAMATION OF SAM MCGEE. Actually, before MIND'S EYE, I'd considered writing a nonfiction book about memorizing poetry, with suitable poems included. My editor wasn't wildly taken with the idea and so the notion switched course and flowed into fiction instead. As far as helping the today's kids to furnish their minds, I do fear that the speed and volume of the media keep anything from sitting on the mental shelf for more than a few moments. How many new movies open every week? One hit song drives out another. And yet, it's been fascinating  
to see how this younger generation memorizes rap songs. Unlike my 60s generation, this one doesn't need someone with a guitar to be able to recreate the songs. The love of rhythm and alliteration and rhyme are there in rap. Now about content…

TBB: As a child, your family spent oodles of “quality” time together, playing games and listening to stories. Do you think the time you spent together as a family --- away from television --- influenced your writing in any way? If so, how?

PF:  All through my years at home, it was my parents’ habit after dinner to retire to the living room to play a game or two, games my sister and I often joined. For a time, my mother copied out the Cryptogram from “The Saturday Review” and raced my father in decoding it. I'm sure that those thousands of evenings, that education in the pleasure of being with others, in the joys to be found in joint amusements impossible alone, led in large part to my two-voiced books. One hand can't produce a clap, or play a game of checkers. Two can. Synergy! The television, I might add, was in a different room and seldom seemed to be on. A family watching television together isn't engaged in a cooperative activity; they're each playing solitaire.

TBB: Your father, Sid Fleischman, is also a very successful children's author. Did his occupation influence your choice in career in any way? How do your styles differ?

PF:  I'm sure the notion of writing for children wouldn't have occurred to me without the model of my father. Our styles and methods are both similar and divergent. We both like history, especially the out-of-the-way corners of history. We like simile and metaphor, strong plots, good characters. Five years ago or so I wandered down from the 18th and 19th centuries and entered the present day, where he rarely sets foot. My books tend to be darker and more realistic than his. He's a master improviser, while I'm more of an outliner --- thought I'm beginning to lean his way.

TBB: How old were you when you decided to become a writer? Did you ever dream of being anything else?

PF:  I never dreamed of becoming a writer. I didn't know what I wanted to be as a child --- or a young adult. I wrote my first book, THE BIRTHDAY TREE, out of the realization that I was about to graduate from college and better do something.

TBB: In books like GRAVEN IMAGES and SATURNALIA, just to name two, your  
period details, language, and concepts are always convincing and always appropriate to time and place. How much research goes into writing one of your historical novels?

PF:  I do lots of research for my historical novels. It takes many fat books in order to write one thin one. I often spend as much time researching and planning the book as writing it. It's a great detective game --- trying to find what you need. As a kid, I never understood what bibliographies were for; I know better now. There's nothing like the thrill of ordering some obscure book through interlibrary loan, and getting the call that it's in, and seeing it's from a community college library across the country, and  
finding it has a fabulous index (I'm fantasizing here) and looking up your subject, and discovering it has a long description of exactly what you need.

TBB: Are you conscious of the age of your reader when you write? If so, how do you find ways to connect with those readers?

PF:  I don't think too much about the age of my readers. I don't keep up on trends, don't try to consciously reach out to readers. I writer what I'm compelled to write and trust the readers will come to me --- 14-year-olds or 48-year-olds. I do, however, keep the references down to a level that's not to obscure for teens.

TBB: Where do you do your best creative thinking --- us there any one place that tends to inspire you?  What's a typical workday like for you?

PF:  I can write anywhere that it's quiet. No special temperature, humidity, or spiritual conditions are needed. I almost never hear myself, or any of my writer friends speak about inspiration. I work roughly 8-hour day. It's surprisingly like a regular job --- with the perks of long naps, long personal phone calls, and several months off between books.

TBB: You obviously spend a great deal of time researching and writing, but how do you spend your free time? Do you have any hobbies?

PF:  I fiddle around on various musical instruments, mainly accordion of late. This past year I began writing music. I play bocce --- the Italian outdoor bowling game --- with some other like-minded psuedo-Sicilians at the bocce courts in Monterey, where I live. I do art projects using my copy machine and computer --- tiny matchbox theaters at the moment.

TBB: And finally, are you working on anything now? If so, can you give us a preview?

PF:  I'm working on a screenplay of WHIRLIGIG, the novel that preceded MIND'S  
EYE. I have three books and a movie (of a FATE TOTALLY WORSE THAN DEATH)  
coming out this year, so it's a busy harvest season. As for planting, once the screenplay is done, it'll be time to find my way into something new. What that will be I haven't the slightest idea.

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