Time Magazine’s Lev Grossman Interviews Terry

There are days when I love my job.

Today is one of them!

Lev Grossman is Time Magazine‘s book critic. He is also one of the smartest people I’ve met, a man possessed of keen intellect as well as knowledge about all things fantasy. He has also written two of Terry’s favorite books—The Magicians and The Magician King—making him a writer Terry looks up to in many ways.

We share a common bond though. We are both Terry Brooks fans! To celebrate the 35th anniversary of Terry publishing The Sword of Shannara, Lev asked to interview the author responsible for shaping the fantasy genre in many ways.

It turned out great. Enjoy!

LEV GROSSMAN INTERVIEWS TERRY BROOKS

Lev Grossman: What’s the first fantasy novel you can remember falling in love with?

Terry Brooks: Wow! Thanks for asking a question I rarely get asked. Really. Everyone usually fixates on LORD OF THE RINGS and just assumes that was the only important influence in my fantasy writing life. But I didn’t read those books until I was in my twenties. I think maybe the first fantasy book I can remember really impacting me was THE EMERALD CITY OF OZ. That was maybe #6 in the series. By then I was hooked on the OZ books in general, this being about the time I was seven or eight. I loved those books, and I really liked how Baum always found a solution to whatever dilemma was being faced by Dorothy and her friends in a mostly non-violent but gripping way. In EMERALD CITY, several armies of creatures from outside OZ were threatening the city by tunneling under its walls to capture it from within. All the OZ folk were trying to find a way to stop them, and eventually they did. It had a great ending. But I should add that about that same time I was reading TARZAN and JOHN CARTER OF MARS books by Burroughs, and they were a pretty big influence, too.

Lev Grossman: Interesting. The Ohmsfords are the Compsons of the Four Lands. “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.” It all fits.

I also think of you as writing in a different era than Tolkien, in terms of the way wars were fought. Tolkien — a veteran of WWI, writing during WWII — have have written THE LORD OF THE RINGS in a simpler moral universe than you did — writing as you did during Vietnam, in a world overshadowed by nuclear proliferation. These were conflicts with no winners, where right and wrong were harder to untangle … or am I pushing this angle too hard?

Terry Brooks: The Ohmsfords are the Compsons and various antagonists are the Snopes, but I don’t want the comparison with Faulkner to go too far. The nature of the epic fantasy form used to write the SHANNARA books has broader implications for the larger world of the Four Lands than Faulker’s stories did for Yoknapatapha County, Mississippi. That said, you could argue that both families struggle with the same basic problem – how to adapt to a changing world where the rules are constantly changing and what was once familiar and comfortable is slowly slipping away.

I think your noting how the differences in the eras in which Tolkien and I (and you) wrote have influenced our worldview is valid. Certainly, public perception of the world after WW I was decidedly different than after Vietnam. I had the benefit of living in both worlds. I grew up in the 40s and 50s, but it was the 60s that did the most to shape my thinking. I don’t see the moral universe in black and white terms with easily defined boundaries. But I do agree with what Tolkien saw as an inescapable corruption through the bestowal and exercise of power no matter caution or good intentions. I am writing those stories every time I put fingers to keyboard because I think they are as relevant and fascinating today as they were hundreds of years ago. I think any final resolution resulting in an end to evil is an illusion. It sounds good, but it just doesn’t happen. It’s always two steps forward and one back. We struggle, but we don’t gain ground quickly, if at all. What seems to contribute to this failure is a strident unwillingness to accept differences in other cultures or to find a middle ground in disagreements. Compromise has become a bad word. But the complexities of a world grown close through technology demand we do more than stand around ranting about how it’s ‘my way or the highway.’ What’s the old saying? The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Now let me ask you something. The SHANNARA stories – at least since the HERITAGE OF SHANNARA series – are written to fulfill two separate marching orders. The first is to produce a solid tale that readers will enjoy, which hopefully adheres to my first editor/mentor’s ongoing admonition to write a good story before worrying about anything else. The second is to undertake an exploration of a current issue or complex problem or arguable dilemma that challenges the larger world, one that I think readers might want to work through. My chosen issue shows itself in glimpses beneath the surface of the primary story, but you don’t need to puzzle it through to enjoy the book. Tolkien does this with LORD OF THE RINGS. I sense you are doing it with your writing in THE MAGICIANS and The MAGICIAN KING. Am I right?

Lev Grossman: I was going to ask you next what you say to people who charge you with writing escapist fiction. But I think you may have answered it. I’m going to change course slightly. You’ve been writing fantasy for, what, 35 years now? How has the genre changed since you started?

Terry Brooks: I like to remind people that when I was growing up boys my age were reading science fiction. Fantasy was only a very small niche in the reading pantheon. Even after Tolkien, few people were writing or reading fantasy. Del Rey really broke it out of its position of obscurity with a whole raft of new writers beginning in the mid-1970s. Since then, the number of titles published has increased steadily, and after HARRY POTTER things just exploded. The market now for fantasy books is huge, particularly in YA, and the forms of fantasy published include everything from traditional epic fantasy to dark urban to paranormal to integrated fantasy/science fiction. But the salient point is that the ground swell for fantasy really began about 20 years earlier.

Besides the increase in the number of fantasy books and writers – both adult and YA – there are a couple of other notable changes. The first is in the number of related tie-ins. The approach now to publishing fantasy books with crazy looking book cover designs in many cases is to immediately start thinking of ways to expand into other venues. Books into movies is the most obvious. And there is an increasing movement towards turning books into games. Both THE LORD OF THE RINGS and HARRY POTTER have expanded into both these fields, but there are others, as well. There are even a few books that have been adapted for theme park rides, Broadway shows, traveling exhibits and various music projects. I don’t think we’ve begun to see the end.

The second change is in the tenor and subject matter of the material being written about. Today’s fantasy – especially YA – trends heavily towards edgy and socially relevant. The topics being explored in much of today’s fantasy deal with social issues and concerns that dominate our thinking in real life. A growing number of books are centered around post-apocalyptic scenarios and survival in a ruined world. Many posit repressive societies and the struggle of the individual over the state or corporate world. Again, this isn’t entirely new to literature but it does evidence a stronger presence in fantasy writing than it did in 1977. The subject matter of fiction reflects the times, and the times for many people are very dark and uncertain.

Hold on, there’s one more change I need to mention. Fantasy is not so easily defined as it was 35 years ago. This is true in general of fiction, where genres tend to bleed into one another, and defining characteristics of storytelling once attributable to one form now appear regularly in others. This is particularly true about elements of fantasy. if you read contemporary literature, magic in one form or another appears regularly as an integral part of the plotlines. It was generally believed back when I was starting out that you never mixed fantasy and science fiction, in particular. That happens all the time now, and no one thinks much about it so long as the story works.

Lev Grossman: You must have changed as a person, though, over 35 years, even if the level of the storytelling hasn’t. Do you ever find that your books reflect what’s going in your life? Is there any autobiography there, however buried or subtextual?

Terry Brooks: Well, I hope I’ve changed as a person, and I hope, too, that my storytelling abilities have improved with practice, practice, practice. Like lawyers and doctors are always ‘practicing’ their craft? Writers do that, too. But autobiographical subtext? Most of my autobiographic impulses are given vent in the MAGIC KINGDOM series, where Ben Holiday is essentially a personification of me. Acts like, thinks like. Shannara reflects more of my worldview, and you can track the changes in my thinking about the real world and its problems pretty easily. One thing is constant in life , and that’s change. So the way I think and write has seen a fair amount of that over the years. But I have to say I don’t think what’s going on in my life is reflected in these books so much as what’s giving me pause or causing me to react. That’s why I am forever saying that where I get most of my ideas is from reading the news. My life is pretty stable and pretty ordinary.

Lev Grossman: Your career is one of the great marathon performances of the genre. Your inspiration doesn’t seem to flag, or your energy or determination or ambition. Do you even take breaks? Have you got a routine? A ritual? Some exotic stimulant distilled from the glands of rainforest creatures? Or I know: there’s a portrait of you somewhere that has permanent writer’s block, so that the real you never has to stop writing.

Terry Brooks: A marathon performance sounds about right. Actually, I’m not nearly so driven as Stephen King and others who say they write every day without fail. I used to write every day, but as Clint says in Unforgiven , “I’m not like that anymore.” So I take breaks and days off, sometimes whole weeks. Some of that is possible because I’ve been doing this long enough that I’ve learned how to do most of it in half the time. I’ve also learned to trust the process. So I don’t think much about writer’s block, only about brain cramps. Mostly, writer’s block comes from one of two sources – either from spending too much time writing and not enough playing or from taking a wrong turn a few pages back. Easily found and corrected, for the most part. You just have to pay attention to your instincts.

But, you know what? I think I am as comfortable with my writing as i am because I genuinely love what I do. Sure, it’s hard work – sometimes massively so – but it’s work that makes me happy. I love the challenge of making words come together. I think of it as puzzle, but there’s no picture except in my head, and I need to put the puzzle together to see what it will look like. I think I might have mentioned to you here or elsewhere that when I am not writing, I am not happy. I get cranky and difficult and that’s why sometimes I use CBD products like Gelato 33 to help me feel better. I am always a better person when I am working. I suppose that’s an addiction, but at least it’s a healthy one.

My plan is to finish the last Shannara book just before I drop over. That might turn out to be a little tricky.

Lev Grossman: I think you’ve earned the right to preach.

Do you ever have fantasies about being a highbrow author? Of winning a Pulitzer? Does it frustrate you that fantasy doesn’t get the same critical respect literary fiction does? I’m assuming here that you haven’t been publishing literary fiction under a pseudonym all along. If Thomas Pynchon is really you, you can tell me.

Terry Brooks: I might have some wild fantasies, but not about being a highbrow author. I made a pact with myself when I started out that what I wanted out of writing besides personal satisfaction was readers and the more the merrier. I never did believe in author competition or awards. Still don’t. What I want is for my books to remain consistently good and never to disappoint a reader. This seems a more satisfying goal than winning a Pulitzer or a National Book Award.

And, no, I am not Thomas Pynchon or even Anonymous. I am just Terry Brooks, plain old commercial fiction author.

I don’t like it when fantasy is treated as fiction for children and people who never quite grew up. I think fantasy is the bedrock of all fiction, relied on and stolen from by authors of other forms of fiction across the board – especially literary fiction. So many stories draw on mythologies and legends, on fairy tales and fables, on story forms that trace their origins all the way back to cavemen. There is a universality to fiction anyway, but fantasy really lives cheek to jowl with those oldest of stories. Besides, why disparage or try to marginalize any form of writing? Isn’t the common goal to beat back all those encroachments from video?

Lev Grossman: That’s a good way of thinking about it. You are a living, breathing genre! I hope that comes with super-powers.

Speaking of marketing, a subject writers are supposed to be “above”: have you always been happy with the way your books have been packaged and sold? The covers and all the rest of it? Are there any books of yours that you wish more people had bought and read?

Terry Brooks: I’ve been pretty well treated by Del Rey and Random House regarding cover art, marketing and publicity in general. In the beginning, when Lester del Rey was alive and ran the show, I didn’t have much to say about anything. Which was probably just as well because I really didn’t know all that much. When he passed, I asked for control over my covers. A few of the early ones weren’t quite what I had hoped for. So now I work with my editor and the artist on finding and completing a cover that will satisfy all of us. So far, it’s worked pretty well. I’ve had good artists and creative people of all sorts around me from the first, so it would be churlish of me to start griping now. Lots of writers grip about how packaging damaged their sales, but I tend to think readers look past the covers for the content in choosing books. Hope that’s still so.

I do wish more people had glommed onto Running With The Demon when it first came out. I still think it might be the best thing I’ve ever done, but sales were not up to par with Shannara. Should have called it Running with the Shannara. It was such a good story, and it was my best writing. But you don’t choose these things; they get chosen for you. Sales for Demon these days are much stronger. The secret to everything in this business is you just have to live long enough.

Lev Grossman: Same question, and yet not: heroes. The Shannara series is organized around a single bloodline and a single setting, but not a single iconic hero, like Conan or Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe. What do all your heroes have in common? What makes a character, or for that matter a person, a hero?

Terry Brooks: I think heroes are interesting only when flawed, and the extent to which they are challenged by their flaws but overcome them is what captures my attention. Tolkien’s Hobbits were all reluctant heroes, young men who wanted nothing to do with the quest for the ring, but who put their fears and doubts aside because of their friendships and their willingness to do what they believed was right. I bought into that concept hook, line and sinker, and all of the Ohmsfords are required to face the same sort of challenges in the Shannara series. I wanted those Ohmsfords to be like you and me – Everyman faced with a seemingly insurmountable struggle but persevering nonetheless. The word ‘hero’ has become one of the most over-used words in the English language, and it really should mean more than accomplishing something spectacular. It should have something to do with overcoming your limitations. It should involve sacrifice for others. It should involve consideration of the greater good. If it is easier to step back and you chose not to, you transcend yourself. For me, that is more the measure of a real hero.

Lev Grossman: It’s been a real honor, Terry. A huge honor, and a huge pleasure. There’s so much Shannara DNA in my writing — it’s generous of you just to not sue me, given how much stuff I’ve stolen from you over the years. If I ever have the chance I will buy you several hundred beers by way of reparations.

It’s tempting to end on a question about endings. Maybe I’ll push my luck with _another_ question about endings. Do you know how a book’s going to end when you start it? Does that ever change in the writing? And what makes a good ending? Do you try to strike a balance, between happy and sad, wrapping everything up and letting some things dangle? I suppose it makes a difference where you are in any given trilogy…

Terry Brooks: I always know the ending before I start writing a book, and I pretty much know the ending of any given set of books. Sometimes I even know the tag line – that last sentence that just seems so right for bringing the readers home. I know all this because it helps me tremendously to be writing towards something specific. I just that ending – or even that single sentence – as a sort of finish line in a marathon. Even when I am exhausted and disgusted or despairing or just plain worn out, there’s that ending, hanging out there in neon. It’s a way to trick myself into remembering that somehow this is all going to turn out right.

What changes in the writing of the book is almost everything else. But I have only changed the ending to a book one time that I can think of, and that was with Sword, right at the beginning of things when I was thrashing around a bit. I don’t think the tone of the ending matters nearly so much as the sense of rightness it gives to the reader. I like reading books where the ending feels like it belongs, like it is the proper one for the story. So that’s what I try to achieve with my endings.

The one caveat to all this is my belief that not all loose ends should be tied up. Some things need to be left unresolved so that the readers can puzzle over what really happened and maybe formulate endings of their own for certain of the characters. The quintessential example of this comes at the end of Wishsong of Shannara, when the Weapons Master, Garet Jax, does battle with the Jachyra. Who wins? We never find out, for sure. The book doesn’t ever say. Everyone has an opinion, and the debate goes on 25 years later. That’s exactly the way it should be.