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NEW YORK (AP) — Gregory Maguire attributes the primary grain of the concept for his new guide “A Wild Winter Swan” to “Mary Poppins” writer P.L. Travers.
He met her 25 years in the past as he was on the point of publish the massively fashionable “Depraved,” written from the attitude of the witches in Oz.
“We talked about fairy tales that we beloved and mythology that we had been drawn to, and when the topic of Hans Christian Andersen got here up she mentioned, ‘Nicely, there’s that boy with one wing,’” (from “The Wild Swans.”) ‘Give him one thing to do.’” Maguire says he hung onto that nugget for 24 years till final yr when he was transferring many years of handwritten journals to the pc.
“I transcribed the dialog I had written down together with her after I left her parlor in London and I believed, ‘I’ve all the time beloved that child.’ After I was a boy, I used to suppose, ‘If he was round right here, we’d be finest mates.’”
In “A Wild Winter Swan,” that boy with a swan wing for a left arm is outstanding in a teen’s coming-of-age story set in New York Metropolis in 1962.
Maguire says he believes the guide is “an ideal pandemic learn” and “consolation meals like mashed potatoes.” He spoke with The Related Press about his life-long love of fairy tales, the celebrities he forged in his thoughts as characters in “Depraved” and the way his children ended up on-line regardless of his finest efforts. Solutions are edited for readability and brevity.
AP: Did you all the time love fairy tales?
Maguire: These had been the books the place magic occurred. My favourite books had been the “Narnia” chronicles, the “Grimms’ Fairy Tales,” the Andersen tales. In eighth grade I started to appreciate there’s one thing doubtful about somebody in center faculty studying fairy tales so I started taking out books for camouflage like ‘Bronco Joe’ and ‘Quarterback Joe’ and would slip ‘Grimms’ Fairy Tales’ between them.
AP: “Depraved” is now marking its 25th yr since publication and the Broadway present has been such an enormous success. Share what that writing course of was like?
Maguire: My ambition was to put in writing one thing that was like “Battle and Peace” or “Gone with the Wind” set in Oz, and one thing that had scope and sweep and time. The “Oz” books are all actually compressed. I needed to put in writing about generations and household strains and nice political powers at play. After I set off to put in writing that as a result of it was such an enormous job, I really forged my novel with Hollywood actors so I may preserve them straight. I had the younger Antonio Banderas taking part in Fiyero. I had Glinda being performed by Melanie Griffith together with her high-squeak, helium voice and blonde curls. And my Elphaba was performed by ok.d. lang like from the duvet of Self-importance Truthful the place she’s being shaved by Cindy Crawford. I forged even smaller components, like Angela Lansbury and Emma Thompson.
In a sure method I used to be filming it in my head as I used to be writing it. I believe it’s not unusual for writers that the story unspools as sort of a non-public movie… I used to say after I taught children writing, “Each sentence needs to be wealthy sufficient that if Steven Spielberg exhibits up in school tomorrow and says, ’Give me that’ and appears at it, he can discover a route for his digicam crew or his actors in each sentence.”
AP: Are your children massive readers?
Maguire: No, they’re kids of their time. And even supposing they had been raised by two very studying mother and father and that we suppressed entry to the Web and even to tv once they had been younger, they turned kids of the machine. We lastly cracked and realized we had been sequestering them from the lifetime of their friends in a method that wasn’t socially wholesome for them.
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