Author of Wicked Visits Nearby Book Store

“Did you ever really think that there was going to be just one tooth fairy?” Gregory Maguire, author of the novel Wicked, asked a group of about 30 fans at the Bank Street Family Center Auditorium on Saturday. “Think of the workload!”

During the afternoon event, Maguire read several snippets of his books and signed copies of various works for a crowd of children and adults. His tooth fairy comment referred to the characters in his latest novel, aimed for a younger audience than Wicked, titled What the Dickens.

Many of the audience questions revolved around Wicked and its second life as a Broadway musical. On seeing his work so popularized, Maguire said, it “feels like you’re having a drug flashback more serious than any aspirin you might have taken in college.”

The pronouncement that Maguire is “working on volume three of what I’m now calling the Wicked quartet” met noticeable responses of excitement.

Maguire’s novels are his tools for impacting the world. “I don’t have tractors to knock down places like Abu Ghraib. All I have is stories,” he said “But stories can be pretty powerful.... To see people cheering the Wicked Witch of the West—it feels as though I’ve hatched a small molecule of popular culture, and I never expected to be able to do even that.”

In her introduction, Beth Puffer, the Bank Street Bookstore manager, gamely characterized the small audience as “a nice, intimate crowd.”

“I could go around and give individual tooth inspections,” Maguire responded cheerfully.

“It was a little disappointing, but it’s the time of year, and New York is a tough city because people have so many options,” Puffer said afterwards. “Even if it’s a small crowd that comes out, it’s always a motivated and interested crowd.”

“I was glad it was so small, because you felt like you were really interacting with him,” Meredith Morgan, Law ’10, said.

“He’s very funny,” local Ariel Birdoff said after the reading. “This is horrible for my budget, but I really liked all the literary references [in the book]. I like the private jokes between author and reader.”

“We’ve liked Gregory Maguire’s works—specifically, Wicked—for a long time,” Amanda Fletcher said. “When we heard he was doing a reading, we couldn’t miss it.” Fletcher won the event’s raffle for a pair of tickets to Wicked’s Broadway incarnation. When drawing the winning ticket, Maguire hummed a few bars from one of the Wicked tunes.
“It was amazing,” said 10-year-old Anna Miller, who clung to a bag full of newly signed books. “There’s not really much else to describe it—I just met my favorite author!”
Mary Kohlmann can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.