After exploring Oz, Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author of more than 25 books including the wildly popular Wicked, from which the hit musical was adapted, has turned his creative eye to the culture of tooth fairies. His new children’s novel What the Dickens is a tale within a tale: trapped by a Hurricane Katrina-like storm, a school teacher tells three frightened, suspicious children the adventurous tales of a lonely tooth fairy whose odd name comprises the book’s title. But are the tales pure folklore or could they be true? After his Saturday appearance at the Bank Street Family Center, Maguire sat down with Spectator to discuss truth, fiction, and the importance of storytelling in a turbulent age.
Spectator: To start off with the obvious, why What the Dickens? Why now?
Gregory Maguire: I got the idea from talking with a group of sixth graders and giving them an assignment to take one character from the real world and one fantastic character and have them meet. I did the job myself, and I invented a tooth fairy and an old lady who was expecting to die ... and when it came time to write a new children’s story, I expanded it. But I didn’t want to do it, frankly, because life is short, and my attention these days in fiction is to things that really seem important. I began to put it together with the problems of people, especially children, who are suffering because they have no other nourishment: my instance that I thought of was Hurricane Katrina. Children were herded under highway overpasses and into gymnasiums where there was no security and no food, and they didn’t know what happened to their families or their homes. I wondered what could be given them that would be at all nourishing and consoling. Well, the thing that consoles us most in any sort of distress is the story of someone else who has suffered and found a way through. That’s why [I wrote] the story of a lone tooth fairy now because children are still in need of stories about individuals trying to survive in difficult circumstances.
Spectator: Your storyteller character Gage, an English teacher, sprinkles his storytelling with subtle allusions to works of literature. I thought I was imagining things until the tooth fairy floated through “caverns measureless to man” (from Coleridge’s Kubla Khan). Was this characterization or writerly fun?
GM: It was both. He [Gage] is keeping himself amused because he’s scared too. In the late ’80s, I went to Nicaragua as a witness for peace in one of those citizen protection plans—American citizens trying to be a presence for peace in terrain where the American government was supplying arms. While I was in a local house one evening, the lights went out, and the widowed father got very nervous and said, “There might be an attack tonight.” And his children came up and snuggled under my arms. Even though I barely speak Spanish, and they had just met me that afternoon, I was still the best they had for protection in that scary moment. What did I do without my limited Spanish? I began to make animal noises [demonstrates, impressively], just to make them laugh and distract them a little bit. I was using “storytelling” to the best of my ability in a real situation of terror for these children.
Spectator: You describe yourself as Catholic. What the Dickens ties the devout religious faith of its characters to the idea that the stories we’re told, as children and later in life, inform our worldview. How do you see religion and storytelling intersect in your own life?
GM: I do genuinely rely on the part of my Catholic upbringing that was story-driven. I raised my children Catholic not because I think it’s the “right” faith, but it’s the faith I know most coherently and with the most sincerity. And therefore it is the language I use to teach them about moral choices. If I can to say to them, “the Good Samaritan” and they will understand, it’s because we have a shared language about how to be kind in critical situations. That, to me, is what a shared faith is—it’s a common set of stories that provide a sort of shorthand for teaching how to make moral choices.
Spectator: As a student, I’m supposed to be building my own worldview in part by reading the stories of others. What do you think of the processes of thought being produced by today’s educational system?
GM: The notion that there ought to be an assemblage, under the umbrella of the university, of different ways of thinking, all of which are acceptable—indeed, all of which enrich everyone—is a concept that I think has gone a little awry. Although most liberal arts colleges espouse points of view that I agree with—that is to say, more left-leaning—I still think there ought to be more room for dialogue. Perhaps if we had more real dialogue in colleges, we might have more real dialogue in the political world as well, instead of constant position-taking and sniping.
Spectator: You said in an interview that the Broadway version of Wicked does some things: “that I didn’t do myself that I actually considered and rejected. But that’s not to say that I disapprove of them.” What does it include that you actually considered while writing?
GM: I considered having the witch pop out of a trapdoor. And indeed, the way that I wrote the novel, I made it unclear what was happening. No one saw her die, except for Dorothy, who’s gone, and nobody can really prove what happened. While I did not think that I would ever write about her again, I left her in that somewhat hazy situation. Similarly, when the witch sees the scarecrow with her telescope approaching the castle, she even wonders, could it be her former lover? When I wrote her wondering that, I remembered I shifted my camera view at the supposed murder of her lover in the middle of the book. I did that on purpose in case he survived. I wasn’t sure myself. I wanted it to be possible in the reader’s mind, but I didn’t want to write a soap opera. I wanted it to be, right up until the last page, maybe something will turn around. But really, that’s not the subject of the book. Not to make you feel happy, but to make you question.
Spectator: When asked what places you love best in the world, you mentioned “certain lively streets in Manhattan.” Which ones?
GM: When I met my husband about 10 years ago, he was living in D.C., and I was living in Boston, and we both had a slightly difficult set of personal situations to get out of. We would meet in Manhattan for the first few months. We met down in Greenwich Village, and we’d spend the weekend and then peel off and move on to our private lives. So whenever I go to that part of the city, I have this lovely memory of that happy time—but in a way it was a scary time as well. There was a lot of complication, but a lot of happiness too, in a life that had been shy of happiness for a while.
Spectator: Anything else you’d like to add?
GM: What I could not have imagined is that What the Dickens has actually done that thing that Harry Potter’s done. It’s being bought by children and adults. There’s an 11 year old and a mother, and the mother will buy one for him and one for her husband—and without any blushing, without any apologizing or saying, “Well, he is a doctor. He does know how to get along in the adult world. He’s not emotionally retarded or anything.” I’m so happy that there’s been that breaking down of stereotypes about what is appropriate for whom and who can derive which nourishment from which piece of literature.