Transcription of The Giver #171
Speaker 1: You’re listening to Love Maine Radio with Dr. Lisa Belisle. Recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a physician trained in family and preventative medicine, acupuncture and public health. She offers medical care and acupuncture at Brunswick Family Medicine. Read more about her integrative approach to wellness in Maine Magazine. Love Main Radio is available for download free on iTunes. See the Love Maine Radio Facebook page or www.lovemaineradio.com for details.
Here are a few highlights from this week’s program.
Lois: When I’m writing, I can always see everything that I’m writing about. Every scene that I depict in words, I’m also seeing in my head. The interesting thing is and I think the wonderful thing is that every reader brings their own memories and experience and imagination to a book. What they see is not what I see. If I write a book and a million people read it, it’s a million different books because each one brings their own individual perceptions to it.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of the following general sponsors Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth Maine, Apothecary By Design, Michael Page and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, tomorrow Shepherd of Shepherd Financial, Harding Lee Smith of The Rooms and Bangor Savings Bank.
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. You are listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 171. You’re in for the first time on Sunday, December 21st, 2014. Today’s theme is, The Giver. What better gift is there than a book? Today, we speak with best-selling author and Newbery Medal winner, Lois Lowry who has bestowed the gift of literature upon adults and children, the world over. Lowry has written 45 books including one that inspired the recent movie, The Giver. Join us and learn more about the life and mind of this fascinating Maine resident. Thank you for joining us.
On Love Maine Radio, we’ve had many distinguished guests across the microphone from me; and none who, I think, have generated so much excitement here at the Maine Magazine offices as the individual who is with me today. This is Lois Lowry who is an American children’s book author who spends part of her time in Maine. She is best-known, I think, most recently for her book The Giver which won a Newbery Award and also has been made into a movie.
Thank you so much for coming in and talking to me.
Lois: Thank you. Probably something about the age of the people here that they’re excited about me. They’re not that far from being my constituency. I’ve been around for a while; and they were kids not that long ago, I’m guessing.
Lisa: I think that’s true. I think he fact that The Giver has been a part of school curricula for quite a long time. It was published in ’93 so it’s been out there for a while. That may be so. The people who are in their 20s now and even in their 30s recognize this; but you’ve been writing since 1977.
Lois: My first book was published in ’77. I was writing before then; but I was also 40 in 1977. I had also gone back to college because I’d dropped out of college to marry at 19 and had four kids. When my youngest started kindergarten, I went back to college in University of Southern Maine. I lived here at the time. College first, graduate school, writing on the side and then finally turned my attention to doing what I wanted to do, being a writer.
Lisa: You have had a very broadly traveled life. Let’s say. You were born in Hawaii. Your father was in the military who was a dentist, I believe.
Lois: Yup, army dentist.
Lisa: Army dentist?
Lois: But he was a career military officer. He wasn’t a dentist who just happened to fall into World War II. He had made that his career.
Lisa: As a result of that, you traveled to and lived in variety of different places?
Lois: Yeah. I was born, as you pointed out, in Hawaii. We left there when I was three before Pearl Harbor was bombed. Then, of course when the war began my father had to go overseas. My mother took my sister and me, and she was expecting my baby brother out back to Pennsylvania where she had grown up. We lived with her grandparents during that period of time.
Then when the war ended, my father had to stay in Japan. He became part of the occupation. He was, people find this amazing but he was MacArthur’s dentist. That makes me chuckle for some reason, too. He was responsible for setting up dental services for the military and eventually independence coming into Japan. We went and lived in Tokyo. That’s where I went through Junior high school.
I was there 11, 12, 13 years old. Then when the Korean war began, we had to leave. My father had to stay. Casualties were coming in from Korea. We went back to Pennsylvania. Then when he was transferred, it was to New York; so I spent my high school years in Manhattan. A very big change from small Pennsylvania town; but for me, a wonderful one. I’ve been traveling ever since. Circumstances have taken me hither and yon, as they say.
Lisa: You described yourself as being married when you were 19; but first you went to Brown? Your path was not, “I’m going to get married.” Your path …
Lois: No, no. Except that this was the 50s and I think sadly in retrospect for many females in the 50s. That was probably our subconscious path, to find a husband and to marry. Many of us went to college. It was not at all uncommon to drop out and to marry, which is what I did just after my 19th birthday.
Lisa: Looking back at this now with your own children, this probably seems young.
Lois: Well, yeah. People don’t do that anymore. I don’t think. My own kids, I had four kids … I’m trying to think who got married and who didn’t because they didn’t all marry; but they waited until later. I do have one daughter who had a child when she was 22. I had four children by the time I was 25. Nonetheless, times are different now and people tend not to make monumental choices at such an early age.
Lisa: As I was reading your autobiography, which is interesting because it was written I think in ’95 or ’96, somewhere around that.
Lois: Gosh, I don’t remember what year it was published. I don’t really think of it as an autobiography. More as a kind of memoir reliant largely on photographs. It’s not an account of, “I was born then and did this and did that.” It’s just a kind of collage of memories.
Lisa: Somebody described as an autobiography. I agree with you that it is more that. What I thought was very interesting is the way that you brought on a photo of yourself and then you’re a mother at that age. You contrasted and compared sort of where people were at various stages at their own lives.
Lois: Yeah, I haven’t re-looked at that in quite a long time but; but I seem to recall that I did that twice in that book. There’s a picture of me at 12 or 13 juxtaposed with the picture of my mother at the same age. Then I think there’s a picture of me at, say, 18 and mom at that age too. In the same way, my experience at those ages is different from today’s 12-year-olds and today’s 18-year-olds.
They were also different from what my mother’s life had been. My mother, actually, didn’t marry until, probably 28, and she told me that she felt like a spinster by then. All of her friends had married and had children; and she thought nobody was ever going to marry her. Then of course, she met my dad. It was a long and happy marriage. It’s interesting to see how the different generations do things differently.
Lisa: As a result of all the moving around that you did, it is important to you when you were raising your four children to give them a sense of home, a sense of stability.
Lois: Which is not to say that I didn’t have that same sense. I think that relies more on family than place. I’d loved moving as I did often as a kid. At the same time, my kids … We moved to Maine in 1963 when my youngest child was an infant and the others would have been 1, 4 and 5 or something like that. All of them quite young, quite close together.
Then all of them grew up in Maine. Only one of them still lives in Maine. My son Ben who is lawyer here in Portland. The others are all scattered about … I’ve lost one, as you know; but it was important. It seemed important for me to have that sense of place that I had not had as child as much as I loved all the travel.
Lisa: You talked about your child that you lost; and this was your son Grey, who died as a result of sounds like a training accident as a pilot with the military.
Lois: Yeah. My son Grey graduated from Falmouth High School and went to the University of Maine in Oregano. Eventually, he got a Master’s Degree in aeronautical engineering; but in the main time when he graduated from college not quite knowing what he wanted to do next, academically. He applied to enter the Air Force for pilot training. It was hard to get in at that time. I don’t know if this is still true. I’d start to say that it’s a funny story. It’s an interesting story more than amusing.
Grey was scheduled to … He had passed all the test, the academic test, to get into the pilot training program in the Air Force; but he had scheduled a physical that was the final test he had to go through. He was perfect specimen. He was an athlete. He didn’t smoke in those days as a college guy, fraternity guy in Oregano. He probably drunk a bit; but anyway, he was a good, healthy guy.
The physical he scheduled was not going to be a problem; but he was skiing and he fell and broke his shoulder skiing. He had to take this physical so he … You don’t put a cast in a broken shoulder, of course, but he was wearing a, I don’t know what you would call it, strap around his body. He took that off and he went into the physical not telling them that he had a broken shoulder. He had to do, he told me, later a number of physical tests.
I can only imagine what they were; but he said they were excruciating with this broken shoulder. After he did all of those and pass all of those, he excused himself, went into the bathroom. He said he just laid on the floor and whopped it because it was so painful. Nonetheless, that’s how badly he wanted to be a pilot. He passed all of those, entered the Air Force, became an officer, became a pilot and became a fighter pilot. He was stationed in Germany.
He married a lovely woman. He did what all hotshot fighter pilots do when they get stationed in Germany. He went to buy a Porsche. She worked for the car agendcy. Her degree was Business and Languages. She was fluent in English. She was also very beautiful. Took him for a test ride and he got the car, got the girl and was married in Germany. They had a child after they’ve been married five years. A little girl born.
When their child was almost two years old, he was killed in this very tragic accident which was caused, it turned out after the investigation revealed, because a mechanic had the plane for routine maintenance and had replaced two essential parts backwards basing the plane to be unflyable. It crashed and exploded. Then later, the Air Force charged that mechanic, sadly, with negligent homicide, brought him to trial and he committed suicide. It was a tragedy on top of a tragedy.
My little granddaughter, the child that was his and his wife’s … In fact, she’s coming to visit this winter. She’s now 21. She’s the great gift that he left. She’s very much like him. Has his smile, his sense of humor, his determination and she’s a very good student. She’s at the University of Germany now.
Lisa: If I remember correctly, she’s also the one who’s responsible for teaching you on one German words, butterfly.
Lois: That’s funny. I, of course, always still do went to Germany often to visit. Your mentioning the word butterfly, which is in German schmetterling. I remember her with a book, picture book, and pointing out what I knew of this butterfly. In french I knew it as papillon. She said, “schemetterling” in German. I remember, also, thinking for a brief moment that I could understand German and speak it, perhaps because this two-year-old put it at the window. They lived in a very rural area and there were a lot of cows and pasture across the road.
She said something like, I’m going to forget it, exactly like, “die Kühe schlafen”. I understood that she meant that the cows are sleeping. I turned to my daughter-in-law and said, “I understood what she’s saying.” That was because she was telling baby talk. I’ve never learned German, unfortunately.
Lisa: It also became an interesting … I think you described also that when your son was buried, there was a butterfly.
Lois: That’s right. Goodness. I’d not forgotten that but I haven’t thought of it for a long time. At his funeral at a lovely old church in the small village where my daughter-in-law had grown up, it was Spring. It was memorial day weekend that he was killed. Immediately after that we were there for that funeral. Such a beautiful part of Germany. It was a warm day and the doors were open. I heard a murmur or perhaps an awareness that people were experiencing something. I turned my head to look and see a butterfly was fluttering around inside the church.
Lisa: It seems interesting just knowing what I know in your life. You’ve written 45 books. You’ve also lost your son. You also lost your sister at a relatively early age. I think somewhere in her 20s. You were in your 20s.
Lois: I was 25 and she was 28 when she died. I later wrote a book, my first book for kids, dealt with that in a fictional way. Because I was addressing an audience of younger kids, I have the two girls and the book, 13 and 15 years old; but it’s about the affect on a family of a death of a young person.
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Lisa: When I asked you about the idea of resilience and kid of bouncing back from things that happened you said, “Well, you know, when you get to be my age this happens. You’re going to have tragedies in your life.I’m not sure everybody has the tragedies that you’ve had. I’m not sure everybody bounces back the way that you have either.
Lois: Each person as they get older, I’m 77 now, has things they’ve had to recover from. They may be different, they certainly are different from one person to the next; but I done feel singled out for particular loss. I’ve experienced loss as everybody does. As a matter of fact, it’s oddly … I started to say subconscious, that’s a wrong word; but it’s a refrain, a theme throughout the book The Giver which has become so popular in recent years. The fact that we can’t dismiss, tamp down, ignore, forget tragedy it’s part of who we are.
Actually, you mentioned earlier that I’d been born in Hawaii. My father was a very good photographer. We had from the time I was a child, a terrific home movies that he had made. Not the home movies you see where people are like holding up their hands and saying, “Don’t point the camera at me.” My father took very fine home movies. It ended up on big metal reel. I’m using the wrong terminology; but I became aware when he was getting older that those old movies were deteriorating.
They smelled awful. I took them down my [inaudible 00:20:15] and have them transferred the video tape. Later, I was looking at them in the living before I sent them to my father. In Boston, I had a friend there who was a Boston lawyer but he’d been a Naval captain of a nuclear submarine. He knew Hawaii. He’d been stationed there. I showed him this film of me as an infant on the beach with my grandmother who was visiting from Wisconsin, Waikiki. Empty beach. Now a days, with Christmas, filled with tourists.
There I am alone with my grandmother. It’s quite a lovely bitter film. What I hadn’t noticed until this friend pointed out to me is that in the background, on the horizon in that film moving across the horizon and he being a naval officer could identify it. He said, “That’s the Arizona.” Here’s this child playing in this idyllic circumstances. I want to say say there is a rainbow. There isn’t but you can envision that there might have been. It’s so lovely.
Yet, crossing in the c=background behind her as she laughs and plays is a ship that carries 1200 men who will dead in a few months. The Arizona still lies under the memorial at Pearl Harbor. As an example, I think of how these things throughout our lives, throughout human existence co-exist. Tragedy, ecstasy, all of them. That becomes who we are and what our lives’ consist of.
Lisa: In they book that I guess we’ll call a memoir, not an autobiography, you mentioned wishing after your son had died that you had been able to have a conversation with your mother about the death of your sister. That really struck me as something … That sort of tragic commonality.
Lois: As I said, my sister died when I was 25 and she was 28. We didn’t live near each other. We had both been married. She had graduated from college; but got married the week after she graduated. She had three children who were 2, 4 and 6 when she became ill. I think 3, 5 and 7 when she died. Conversation with my mother. My mother lived to be 86 and certainly there were many years after the death of my sister. Yet for reasons that I don’t know and never did, I guess, she and I never really sat and talked about that experience.
My parents were very reserved people. My father was Norwegian. His parents were Norwegian immigrants. Of course, Norwegians have a reputation for being taciturn and reserved. My father certainly was. It was something that they never talked about after her death. I’m sad about that. I wish they’d been able t. I wish I’d been able to. Certainly after my son’s death, so many friends and my surviving children have been able to reminisce about him and to talk about that experience. In a way that my parents and I never did.
Lisa: It was interesting for me to read Summer to Die because I’m the oldest of ten children.
Lois: Oh, my goodness.
Lisa: You were describing yourself as the little sister. In the Summer to Die, there are two characters.
Lois: Yeah, I loved the little brother. My real brother has never quite forgiven me for that. When I started writing the book, I out him in; but a little brother in the book. At that time the girls on the book are 13 and 15. He would have been 6. He was funny. It wasn’t supposed to be a funny book but he kept appearing in scenes; and being amusing as little kids are. I took him out. Later, I did a second autobiographical book called Autumn Street. I out him in that one.
He doesn’t appear on the first. I was the middle of three children. I can’t believe you were the oldest of ten.
Lisa: This is why I think I was struck was because you’re describing the little sister as somehow physically imperfect. The older sister as the beautiful one. The cheerleader. The one who is going to go on and do great things. The younger one was the one who never thought of herself as beautiful until her neighbor who was a farmer took a photo of her and showed her her own beauty. As an oldest child, for me to think about middle child or younger child might actually feel that sibling.
That’s something that I was struck by and the fact that you’re a children’s author, a young adult’s author. I’m reading this and feeling so struck by it. That says something.
Lois: Yet, of course, as an adult I realize … Although because of her early death we never had the chance to talk about this. My sister was the beautiful one. She was nominated for homecoming queen at Penn State. The same year that I was getting the academic awards. She was the one who thought of me as the smart one. There’s always somebody who’s going to be something more than you are.
It’s when you’re a child that you worry more about that. You learn to let go of that when you become an adult and realize that everybody has something they’re better at than you. You’ve got something that you’re better at and it all equalizes, somehow.
Lisa: I would like to believe that what you’re saying is true; but I’ve met many adults who are holding on to things that happened when they were children. Still, somehow, see themselves as not the prettier one, not the intelligent one, not the whatever; but I do think that books can be a really effective means of showing a child … Here’s a story that’s not your own but could be yours.
Lois: I think one of the reasons kids, and I can speak of myself as a kid who was an avid reader. One of the things we look in books as young people is a character we can identify with. So often in a book by me, the character will have innermost feelings of inadequacy. We all do when we’re kids and some of u continue to when we’re adults. I think it’s a way the kids reading fiction id a way kids explore their own feelings,
Main characters in books, the protagonists in books, are the people who have to make choices. I think it’s a way for young people reading to explore what choices they would make given a set of circumstances. It’s a way in which they rehearse their own lives. That’s an important thing that books do for kids, I think. I;m an avid reader of fiction but I read adult fiction. Being an adult. I don think I any longer do that.
I think it’s a ting that is a particularly young persons thing to place yourself in the place of that character to think what is this were me. What I’d do?
Lisa: I suspect you have enough opportunity to place yourself in a character as part of your writing. Maybe that the reading pieces …
Lois: Well when writing, because I am writing for young people and about young people, the characters on my books are young. I’m continually in a position of having to re-enter my childhood self when I’m writing. That’s one of the things I’ve always been good at doing. I think a lot of people can’t. If you ask some people to go back and remember their childhood, they’ll remember it in an objective way.
As if they’re retelling or re-looking at a movie playing out but they’re not able to reenter the emotional life of themselves as a child. I think that’s something that I am able to do and that’s why I’m able to write for young people.
Lisa: Ho do you think that’s possible? That you are able to do that and others are not?
Lois: I don’t know. I think it’s just a different … I mean, I’m speculating here. I’m speaking from total ignorance; but it’s probably some kind of brain chemistry. I remember once when I was a journalist, before I began writing fiction, I was asked to write an article about medical hypnosis. I spent time with the doctor who used it in his practice. He hypnotized me.
I mean, I remember it perfectly. I wasn’t in some weird trans or anything; but he regressed me back to age whatever, 20, 13. Finally he told me, “Now you’re five years old. What are you experiencing?” I said, “Well, I’m standing at my grandmother’s yard. I’m barefoot. I can feel the pine needles under my feet. I can smell my grandmother’s roses. I can hear a dove in the tree above me. The call of a dove.”
Later, he said, “Wasn’t that amazing how you could reenter your five-year-old self?” I said, “No, actually.” I said, “I do that all the time.” Tell me any age and I can put myself there and I can feel what it was like to be there, to be that person.
Lisa: That’s an interesting talent. It’s something that I’d never thought about before this idea that we can intellectualize ourselves back to certain age; but we can always emotionalize, that’s not a word I know but ourselves back to …
Lois: That’s a good word. It describes it that quite well. I can give you another example. When I as in fourth grade, eight years old, I’d skip second grade so I was a year younger than my classmates. Eight years old and I wrote a hateful note to another little girl. That’s something you do when you’re in fourth grade, sadly. My teacher, Ms. Louise Heckman, had me stay after school to discuss this because my note had made Ruthy Fisher cry.
When I think of that moment, I can see Ms. Heckman. I can see the dress she was wearing that had a little patter on it; but I see it blurred. It’s because there tears in my eyes. I’m looking out through those eight-year-old eyes once again. I’m reliving that experience. It still makes me feel terrible. A) that I did that, B) that I got caught. It’s an odd sensation of having reentered a younger self.
Lisa: As a physician and a small business owner, I rely on Marcy Booth on Booth Maine to help me with my own c=business and to help me live my life fully. Here are few thoughts from Marcy.
Marci: I can’t imagine that I will ever be an artist. While I appreciate all kinds of art I know that creating it is just something I’m not able to do. I don’t have that kind of talent and I find myself in awe of the people who do. Realizing that all of us have different and unique abilities, and that we can’t be good at everything, is a tough thing to admit. It’s a lesson I teach my children, but it’s a lesson we all need to remind ourselves of as adults.
Recognizing your strengths and talents early are keys to happiness and success. Leveraging those talents that others have is another key to a success. While I may never have a gallery exhibition of my artwork I find great joy in knowing that what I, and my entire team have, is the talent to help businesses run better. We are the leverage an entrepreneur needs to be successful. I’m Marcy Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need. Boothmaine.com.
Speaker 1: This segment of Love Maine Radio is brought to you by the following generous sponsors: Mike LaPage and Beth Franklin of Remax Heritage in Yarmouth Maine. Honesty and Integrity can take you home. With Remax Heritage it’s your move. Learn more at rheritage.com.
Lisa: That ability to reenter your younger self and to create worlds that become books has to co-exist with this ability to be an adult in this other world that we call real. You area mother. You are a journalist. You’re now an author who does a lot of public speaking and connecting with people. You seem able to kind of hold these things.
Lois: I do. I have a normal adult life, adult friends, adult things that I do. Still working and doing a lot of professional things. Last week I was making a speech in Clarksdale in Mississippi. Next week or week after next, I’ll be doing the same thing in Savannah, Georgia. Yet when I’m by myself at work, at home, at my computer, that’s when I turn into my other self. When I’m working on a book and inside the head of a book character, I’m also inside the head of myself at the age.
Right now I’m working on a book in which the main character is an 11-year-old girl. I spent a lot of time being my 11-year-old self. I will say that it’s a little more difficult to become a boy. In my books like The Giver have a boy protagonist, I’m not sure why I make that decisions starting with the book. Sometimes a boy feels right. Then I have to become that boy. That requires imagination since I never was a boy. I did have two sons and I have three grandsons. They’re resources for me.
Lisa: The Giver, I watched the movie this weekend and I thought it was a very good movie. I’ve always liked Jack Bridges. I thought that he did a great job with the movie. I also thought that the book and the movie were different. Hence, usually happens with very good books and the movie creation. I’m wondering how you feel about this things that you wrote back published in 1993, which is about the time that your granddaughter, I believe, one of your granddaughters was born.
Lois: Yes, exactly.
Lisa: It’s an entire lifetime ago and it’s still kid of walking around. It’s walking around in classrooms across the country.
Lois: It’s also walking into my computer all the time because every day I still get email from readers. It used to be regular mail. Now everybody can reach through my website. Everyday there are 40, 50 emails. Most of them about that particular book. Pertly because of the movie which has generated a new interest in it. When Jeff came to me, many years ago, and acquired the rights to the book, he wanted to make a movie starring his father who was then alive.
It never came together for a hundred different reasons. Hollywood is a strange place with a lot of requirements; but he continued to have that hope and his father eventually died. Then suddenly he realized he was old enough to play the role himself. The filmmakers were not required in any way by contract to consult with me at all. They could have gone and done their own thing and I would have come to the movie theater not knowing what I was going to see. They were very courteous, I’m not sure if that’s the right word; but very gracious in including me in the process.
Sometimes more than I wanted to be included. I remember two summers ago getting an email from the director, Philip Noise, saying he wanted to get together with me. I was at my summer home in Bridgeton. He of course was in Los Angeles. I remember writing back and saying, “Well, OK. I could do that. I’m happy to talk to you. Here’s what you need to do. You’ll need to fly to Portland, Maine. You won’t be able to get a direct flight. You’ll have to change in Chicago or something. I will meet your flight in Portland and then I will drive you 35 miles to my house. It’s a big house. You’ll have lots of privacy; but we can spend a couple days.”
Immediately I got an email saying that, “No. I want you to come here.” It was disruptive to my summer. That summer and then this immediate pass summer. It just took all my time; but in the meantime they had also wanted me to go to South Africa for the filming. This past summer I was in San Diego, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York and I didn’t really want to be that involved; but at the same time I was gratified that they valued my opinion.
When they were filming outside if the four days I spent in South Africa watching, the director emailed me almost every day. Sometimes several times a day just seeking my advice on very small things. Sometimes he took my advice. Sometimes he ignored my advice. There were, as you pointed out, changes made. I knew that from the get-code that there would have to be. It’s an introspective book. There’s not a lot of action. A movie is a visual medium. They had to add action and they did.
One thing they did that I was, at first, troubled by but later came to terms with is the fact that they made the kids in the movie older than in the book. In the book they’re 12. The boy, the main character, and his two best friends. In the movie they’re older. 17, perhaps. That was done for purely pragmatic reasons. Their market research told them that teenagers, a large part of the movie audience, won’t go to a movie about 12-year-olds. They didn’t want to lose that segment of the audience and that made sense.
Another reason was, when you work with kids in a movie, they’re limited by law to how many hour a day they can work. If they had 12-year-olds as the actors, it would have doubled the time of the filming, cost a lot more. Anyway, when I saw the kids … I met the kids and I watched some of the scenes being filmed and I realized right away it was going to be OK because of the way the kids in the movie and in the book are brought up. They’re completely naive and unsophisticated so that they’re like 12-year-olds.
Right away, watching them … I don’t know if you had this experience but I could see that it was OK that they were a little older. I just asked them, “Please not to turn into a teenage romance.” They assured me they would not; but because they’re older, they’re teenagers and because this boy has this friend who is this gorgeous 16-year-old girl, of course he’s going to have romantic feelings for her once he began to acquire feelings. That had to become a part of it. I think it was not overdone. They used some restraint.
Lisa: Like I said, I did enjoy the movie. I also enjoyed the book. I had gone back and reread and book because I have a 13-year-old and so I had gone back and read the series as she was reading it. I was just struck by the fact that both are very compelling in different ways.
Lois: People who want a movie to be exactly the same as the book are always going to be disappointed. A movie is a different medium. It can’t be the same thing. The only movie that I recall where a book and a movie seemed at least, I’d have to go back and reread and rewatch to ascertain this for sure; but To Kill a Mockingbird, I think is the one that felt so much exactly like the book. Even so, there were some changes made in that as well.
Lisa: You described this ability that you have to go back to a younger self and really feel that younger self. For you, it also seems that you have strong visual sense. I know that photography has been an interest of yours. In fact in Summer To Die, your first book, you actually described the younger sister …
Lois: Yeah, I inserted my own self. That was not true of me at 13; but I studied photography in graduate school. I worked as a photographer for a while. The picture of the old man on the cover of The Giver, that was a photograph that I did. The picture of the girl on the cover of Remember the Stars is also a photograph by me. That one, Gathering Blue, I also did that photograph.
Visual, yes. When I’m writing, I can almost see everything that I’m writing about. Every scene that I depict in words, I’m also seeing in my head. I think the wonderful thing is every reader brings their own memories and experience and imagination to a book. What they see is not what I see. If I write a book and people read it, it’s a million different books because each one brings their own individual perceptions to it because each one brings their own individual perceptions to it.
Nonetheless, when I’m writing it, I’m seeing it exactly. If I were a painter, I would be able to paint each scene as I write it.
Lisa: How does havign a place in Maine impact your writing? I’m thinking about for art collector, we’ve interviewed a number of artists and I ahd the chance to be part of this. One of them actually, I think, lives in Bridgeton. She described a very strong connection with nature. She liked being outside a lot. She liked the kinesthetic experience of being in nature as opposed to seeing it from a far.
Has this had any impact on your writing?
Lois: I’ve done … Over the years, my writing has taken place in different places. I’ve lived in Boston, actually in Cambridge, Massachusetts for many years. Very urban. Though I lived in a residential part of Cambridge, very urban community. For many years, I’ve also had a summer home in Maine. That I think is where I most feel comfortable writing. I’ve now sold the house in Cambridge and I moved full-time to Maine. I’m in Portland; but I also still have the old farm in Bridgeton.
When I’m there one thing that’s important is that I’m relatively isolated, very quiet there. I have a beautiful landscape that I look out on. I’m on a hilltop. I look down to long lake, beyond the meadow. Sometimes there’s a deer walking through the meadow. I mean, you could make it up and then it would be just like that.
I think that, that sense of being solitary and quiet is important to me when I’m writing. Yet, I did it in an office in Cambridge, Massachusetts looking out at traffic, as well. A part of it is just a function of the imagination.
Lisa: You began publishing books when you were 40, which was the same time that you got divorced. You recreated yourself form the person that you were, form one to 19 or zero to 19, with the many people that you were. Then 19 to 40 and then 40 …
Lois: Yeah, I was a wife and a mother. Then the time for being that past. My kids were grown. I embarked on a career. I’ve been very fortunate with it that I chose the thing that I was best at and that I loved most. I think the luckiest people are the ones who make a living doing what they love so that you can get up every morning excited about what you’re going to do that day. That’s what my life has been like.
I don’t know about form of recreating myself, really, because that person who went at age 17 to Brown to study writing had a special scholarship for a writing program that Brown had at that time. That’s the same person I still am. I just took some pats along the way and leaped over some obstacles and indulged some other things that were also … I’ve also loved kids. I always wanted kids.
I’ve never regretted having four children. It was probably kind of foolish to have them at such a young age but if I hadn’t, then my life would have taken a very different turn. If I graduated from college, for example. I wouldn’t have been mature enough to be a writer, successfully. I would have entered the world of publishing since that was my interest. I would have perhaps become an editor. May be I would have been good at it; but it would have been a different life from the life that’s turned out.
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Lisa: I did enjoy reading in something that was out there because there’s a lot of information there about you. It’s a good thing. I think …
Lois: I hope most of it is true.
Lisa: This said that your divorce was largely due to the fact that you really had just grown apart in very significant ways. I think that that four who are, may be this is true or may be it’s not true; but I think for people to go through something as difficult as a divorce to have that be the main reason is often the case.
Lois: Yeah, particularly people who married young and we’re grown up yet. I was 19 when I married. I just turned 19 and my husband was 21. We were kids. Then we turned into adults but we were adults who probably would not have married each other had we met as adults. Nonetheless, we were married for 20 years and we had four children. I don’t regret that. It’s just the way things were.
Lisa: There was also a funny scene that I’m recalling now. I actually laughed out loud. I was sitting on the plane reading this about the man eventually become this next significant man in your life. About, I believe he was your insurance …
Lois: When I moved to Boston, three years after I was divorced, I continued to live in Maine. Then I moved to Boston. I could have lived anywhere because I have a portable profession. I forgot where my kids were at that time but probably perhaps still in New England except the one who ended up in Germany. Anyway, I moved to Boston. Drove my little car to Boston to an apartment that I’d rented by reading a Boston newspaper and discovered I had no place to park because I didn’t have a resident’s sticker.
I embarked on this quest to be able to have a parking place in Boston. It required my registering my car in Massachusetts which I tried to do and they said, “No, no. You must have Massachusetts insurance.” I then just spending two days walking around Boston on this quest. I went to an insurance agency to buy Massachusetts insurance, which I did from the secretary. Then walked back to the registry, registered my car.
Then a couple of days later I got a phone call from the head of the insurance agency saying, “It’s our policy to take new clients out for coffee. Are you free for dinner this evening?” That turned out to be the man with whom a year I moved in. We bought a condo together. He died in three years ago but we’ve been together for 32 years.
Lisa: But in the in-tram, the first time he called you, you said you didn’t weren’t really sure you actually wanted to be with him. In fact, you were just worried he might take your insurance away or something. That was …
Lois: Well, I don’t remember; but it seemed a lot and actually he later confessed that it was not of course their policy to take new clients out for dinner or coffee it was. My paper has crossed his desk and he recognized my name because he played tennis with a friend who had said to him, “I know this woman who has just moved to Boston. You go call and ask her out.” He had said sure and taken my number and ignored it.
Then when my insurance papers crossed his desk, he recalled that that name was familiar. That’s when he called me. It was an odd way of meeting. Circumstances just fell into right place. Turned out he lived not far from me in Back Bay. It was [inaudible 00:50:09].
Lisa: But you didn’t initially think that you wanted to connect with him. You were kind of tired of dating. You said, “Well, you know. I’m looking for a guy with a beard.”
Lois: You know, when you’re single at age 40, dating is not fun. I have met some weird people. Including one who in a coffee shop had taken the bill. He had sat down next to me in a coffee shop. He was a very attractive man. We got to talking and he invited me out to dinner or something. I don’t know it seemed kind of odd and I said, “No.”
He picked up my bill for my 37 cent cup of coffee, that’s how long ago this was, and balded up in his hands and threw it at me and he said, “I can buy and sell you.” Then he stormed out of the coffee shop. My god what if I did invited him in my apartment for dinner? Anyway, I had enough strange experiences like that ’til I was not rushing to meet any new man. I said to Martin, kind of jokingly, that I really like men with beard.
Actually that’s true. If I walk into a room still and there are hundred of people in the room and three of them have beards, I think that those are the most intelligent people in the room. It’s stupid but that’s just a thing I think. When I said that to him, he started growing a beard. He had a beard for the 32 years that we were together.
Lisa: As I’m talking to you, it’s clear that you enjoy the work that you’re doing, that you are currently doing.
Lois: I love my life. I love my work. I wake up every morning with a sense of acceleration and anticipation that something new is going to happen today in my mind, in my computer, in my life. It’s a wonderful way to exist.
Lisa: You mentioned how old you are. You have quite a few years ahead of you. Do you have any sense for anything that has sort of left unlived or left undone that you would like to do?
Lois: I’ve always had in my mind a list of things I’d like to do. I’ve began to cross some of them off because of my age, the realization that I’m probably not going to do that and it’s with some regret. For example, I’ve always wanted to design a house, build a house. Well, I’m not going to do that. I’m 77. That’s not going to happen.
I’ve also long thought that I would like to go live in another country. Rent an apartment in Paris or something. I’ve done that for a week or two here and there. I realize now that I’m not going to do that partly because I’ve made another decision which is kind of full-hardy at my age; but I got a puppy a few years ago. You can’t take a puppy to live in France.
You trade off. You do somethings and let go of others. However, I do still have things on my list that I still want to do. In recent years, I’ve taken some adventurous trips. I went to Easter island a few years ago. Then Guatemala. Then Patagonia. I still have travel left in me, I think. That’s always been important to me. Martin and I traveled a lot.
Lisa: What are you reading these days? You said you like fiction. Tell me some of your favorite works of fiction.
Lois: I just read … I like all kinds of fiction. I like a lot of non-fiction, too; but I like British mystery. I just picked up a book the other evening, about eight o’clock, thinking I’ll read for a little bit and it was called the Paying Guest. I can’t remember the author’s name but it is a British mystery. At two in the morning, I was still reading that book because I could not put it down. I mentioned that to a friend in San Francisco in an email.
I just got an email from her yesterday saying, “Thanks a lot. I was up ’til two in the morning reading the Paying Guests.” That’s my current recommendation.
Lisa: Louise, I really appreciate your coming in and talking with us today.
Lois: Thank you. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure for me.
Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Lois Lowry who is a children’s book author who lives in Maine. Tell me how people can learn more, if they don’t already know about you which I suspect that they do if they’re listening; but how can they learn more about you and your work?
Lois: Well I have a website, www.loislowry.com. There’s a lot of stuff on there. Since I’ve put that stuff on there, it’s all true. If you go to Expedia, you might find stuff that is a little more fictitious that other people have put there. You just Google me. You’ll find out what you need to know.
Lisa: Well thank you very much for all the books that you’ve written and all the places that you’ve been and the people you’ve been in touch with and all the children whose lies you’ve touched, and adults whose lives you’ve touched.
Lois: Thank you.
Lisa: You have been listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 171, The Giver. Today’s guest was author Lois Lowry. For more information on our guest and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of this week’s show, sign up for our newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on twitter as Dr. Liza and see my running travel, food, and wellness photos as bound on one on Instagram.
We’d love to hear from you so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, let our sponsors know that you’ve heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed The Giver show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
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