- Used Book in Good Condition.
Conversing in a mausoleum with the dead, an eccentric recluse is
tugged back into the world by a pair of ghostly lovers bearing an
extraordinary gift--the final chance for his own happiness. When
challenged by a faithless wife and aided by a talking raven, the
lives of the living and the dead may be renewed by courage and
passion, but only if not belatedly. Told with an elegiac wisdom,
this delightful tale of magic and otherworldly love is a timeless
work of fantasy imbued with hope and wonder. After multiple
printings since 1960, this newest edition will contain the
author's recent revisions and will stand as the definitive
version of an ageless classic.
Questions for Peter S. Beagle
Jeff VanderMeer for Amazon.com: When you were writing A Fine and
Private Place, did you have any idea it was going to have such
staying power?
Beagle: No. Not at all, of course. When I was 19 years old I
never thought in terms of classics or being permanently around.
I'd known enough writers, even at that age, to see that what
happens to your work is so far out of your control you simply
can't afford to let that kind of concern enter your thinking.
Amazon.com: The publisher asked you to remove four chapters from
the book. At the time, did you agree with the decision? Have your
feelings about it changed over the years?
Beagle: At the time I was outraged. I fought every step of the
way, and every sentence. Today I'm inordinately grateful to
Marshall Best, the editor who did that. Marshall is long gone, so
I just hope that back then I had sense and courtesy enough to say
thank you. But I don't think I realized fully what his effect on
the book had been until many years later. If it weren’t for him I
don’t think the book would still be in print. He's also the one
who came up with the title and the allusion to those marvelously
appropriate lines from Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy
Mistress"--I'd originally called the book The Dark City, after
the way that Jonathan Rebeck saw the graveyard. Titles, sad to
say, have never been my strong suit. Most of my best have
actually come from friends or editors.
Amazon.com: To what extent are any of the characters in A Fine
and Private Place autobiographical? I ask because the detail work
in the novel, especially with regard to older people, seems so
fresh and free of cliche.
Beagle: I think that A Fine and Private Place is very nearly,
though not quite, my first attempt to capture the voices in the
Bronx neighborhood where I grew up. Nobody is based on any one
person, but there’s a piece here and a piece there was useful. I
hung fire on creating Laura Durant, when it came time to bring
her into the story, until I decided to base her physically--not
emotionally, but physically--on a Pittsburgh actress I was in a
play with. I just didn't know enough young women in those days.
And there are scenes in there which people from the old
neighborhood would recognize--when Mrs. Klapper goes into the
Wireman's grocery, that is very much the little store on the
corner across from my house. Yet even there I mixed things up. I
think what keeps the book fresh isn't the fantasy, but the fact
that I was trying very hard to make it real. To make the voices
real. In the end it is always the voices, for me.
Amazon.com: Your books have, over the years, resonated with
readers everywhere. Have reader reactions or opinions changed the
way you think of the books?
Beagle: Only in the sense that they sometimes make me go back
and look at them. When you do this writing thing day by day, you
don't do a lot of reflecting on your own relationship to the old
work. What does get me, though, is just how much the books have
actually influenced the real lives of real people in ways I
couldn't imagine. That’s enormously touching for me.
Amazon.com: One of my favorite moments in your fiction is when
the true Medieval infringes on the fake Medieval in The Folk of
the Air. You manage to convey a real sense of the alien
perspective--a sense that if we were to travel back in time, we
might find our ancestors as hard to understand as we would
creatures from outer space. Did you research your way into that
moment and that effect, or...?
Beagle: I've thought about it a lot, having read a great deal of
history (my her was a history teacher). And there are fiction
writers out there who are so good at bringing the literal stink
of a certain period into your nostrils as you read...well, for me
they are intimidating, because there are novels I'd like to write
based on certain historical events that I'm just not sure I
could. In the case of The Folk of the Air I did a lot of
research, from many angles, because the real group that my
imaginary one was based on didn't limit itself to a narrow span
of time, but rather built characters and personas out of events
as far back as the Viking era and as recent as 1650. And the
history as presented in their gatherings wasn't necessarily the
most accurate. So on the one hand I was trying to go for a
certain sense of the real, when it does come, in contrast to some
fanciful, semi-informed imaginings.
Amazon.com: What are you currently working on--and where should
we look for your short fiction in the next year or so?
Beagle: In terms of short fiction, I've got a chapbook coming
out from Dreamhaven Books early in 2008 called Strange Roads,
with three stories inspired by the art of Lisa Snellings-Clark.
There are also six or eight pieces of short fiction appearing in
various original fantasy anthologies, magazines, and fiction
websites, and I'm working on a quartet of season-themed stories
that will premiere not in print, but as podcasts. That last set
is for a wonderful little website called The Green Man Review.
They did a whole special issue about me and also named me their
official Oak King this year, so it's the least I could do. In
terms of book-length work, 2008 is going to be absolutely crazy
with original books and reprints. Just crazy. There are a couple
of new novels finally coming out, a manga-style graphic
adaptation of The Last Unicorn, several new collections, and at
least two nonfiction books. I can hardly keep track of it all
myself, so the best way for anyone to stay up to date would be to
visit my website or Conlan Press, or just sign up for my free
email newsletter, The Raven. Whatever else I might think about
being 68, the simple fact is that I'm busier than ever. It's like
George Burns used to say: "I can't die--I'm booked!"
