Charlotte and Paul Zindel: how they
met, how his life as a young adult author began
Charlotte's daughter, Crescent, clearly remembers the night she, her
mother, and her father were sitting on a blue couch in the family living room,
watching a play on New York's Channel Thirteen, the educational television. The
play was the extraordinary The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon
Marigolds; about a loving and horrible mother and her daughters,
particularly one who is trying to do the science project mentioned in the title.
"I remember Charlotte moving from leaning back into the couch to sitting up
straight, almost rigid, transfixed --- pointing like a spaniel."
"There," she said, "is someone who really understands how
teenagers feel. I have to contact him about doing young adult books for
us." And she did. (Above left:The cover of the
current edition, in book form, of the play that brought Charlotte and Paul
together.)
Zindel had never written a novel, nor had The Effect of Gamma Rays on
Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds been done on Broadway. Zindel went on to write
more than a dozen stunning, groundbreaking young adult novels, the first
generation of them edited by Charlotte. And The Effect of Gamma Rays on
Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, which, according to Variety, was "the
most compelling work of its kind since Tennessee Williams' The Glass
Menagerie'," went on to win a Pulitzer.
Paul Zindel on being edited by Charlotte
"To me Charlotte was my discoverer, my psychoanalyst, magician,
protector, guru, confessor, savior, clairvoyant, divining rod, witness and
phantasmagoric friend. That is to say, she was my editor. Her artistic vision
was to me one of the few I've known that was capable of shuttling with lightning
speed between the two utterly different brainscapes of editing others and her
own formidable and daring and prolific career as a writer.
"Whenever I was with her, she had the generosity and chameleonic brilliance
to appear only in her dazzling incarnation as editor. She was invariably the
human light to my paralyzing darkness. The constant warmth to my fear of warmth.
She was my editor on The Pigman (current edition's
cover pictured above left), and My Darling, My Hamburger (current
edition's cover pictured right), and I
Never Loved Your Mind, and through nearly a dozen other YA books, including my memoir,
The Pigman and Me (current edition's cover, pictured below). "Ah, Paul," she would always say -- or set down in an
eternity of handwritten notes in the margins of my drafts -- "Ah, surely
there must have been something sociable about this character!" Every seven
pages she would simply write the word "good."
"Charlotte was my supervising alchemist, suggesting for each beat of
a story the reasonable, but elusive, elements of balance. It was her equilibrium
that was the basis of what made my realism possible. She fought endless rough
and tough battles for me, and never laid their pains and dangers and vexations
at my door. She taught me to keep my eye on the golden fusion, the simmering
epiphanies and boons and oxygen each writer must bring back from the journeys to
distant dragon grounds.
"And so it was through her editing that Charlotte confirmed for me the
extraordinary purpose of human art: writing and creativity as problem-solving;
dreaming as the purest of stories; and, therein, Charlotte, unsentimentally,
insisted I stay alert to glimpse an irrefutable sacredness in all humanity."
night she, her
mother, and her father were sitting on a blue couch in the family living room,
watching a play on New York's Channel Thirteen, the educational television. The
play was the extraordinary The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon
Marigolds; about a loving and horrible mother and her daughters,
particularly one who is trying to do the science project mentioned in the title.
"I remember Charlotte moving from leaning back into the couch to sitting up
straight, almost rigid, transfixed --- pointing like a spaniel."
"There," she said, "is someone who really understands how
teenagers feel. I have to contact him about doing young adult books for
us." And she did. (Above left:The cover of the
current edition, in book form, of the play that brought Charlotte and Paul
together.)
magician,
protector, guru, confessor, savior, clairvoyant, divining rod, witness and
phantasmagoric friend. That is to say, she was my editor. Her artistic vision
was to me one of the few I've known that was capable of shuttling with lightning
speed between the two utterly different brainscapes of editing others and her
own formidable and daring and prolific career as a writer.
cover pictured above left), and My Darling, My Hamburger (current
edition's cover pictured right), and I
Never Loved Your Mind, and through nearly a dozen other YA books, including my memoir,
The Pigman and Me (current edition's cover, pictured below). "Ah, Paul," she would always say -- or set down in an
eternity of handwritten notes in the margins of my drafts -- "Ah, surely
there must have been something sociable about this character!" Every seven
pages she would simply write the word "good."
each beat of
a story the reasonable, but elusive, elements of balance. It was her equilibrium
that was the basis of what made my realism possible. She fought endless rough
and tough battles for me, and never laid their pains and dangers and vexations
at my door. She taught me to keep my eye on the golden fusion, the simmering
epiphanies and boons and oxygen each writer must bring back from the journeys to
distant dragon grounds.