Previously: A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Peter Beagle is one of my absolutely favorite writers, so I was fairly surprised last year when I realized I’d never even heard of his first novel, A Fine and Private Place (which he wrote when he was nineteen. What were you doing when you were nineteen? I remember what I was doing, and it wasn’t writing beautiful novels). The title comes from Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress: ”The grave’s a fine and private place/But none, I think, do there embrace,” which for some reason I have always thought was written by John Donne. It’s about two ghosts who fall in love. Ghosts who fall in love! Could a book have been more perfectly tailored to suit my interests than that?
You are familiar, of course, with Beagle’s most famous and enduring novel, The Last Unicorn, which has produced a graphic novel adaptation (which I own), a Mia-Farrow-voiced cartoon featuring a soundtrack by the band America (which I also own), and at least one sequel (which I have not been able to bring myself to read. Do I dare? If you have read it, tell me what I should do). He also, apparently, wrote the screenplay to the animated Ralph Bakshi version of The Lord of the Rings (!) and the script for “Sarek,” one of the best episodes of Star Trek: TNG.
“Speaking of livers,” the unicorn said. “Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else’s liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back. The true witches know that.”
A few grands of sand rustled down Mommy Fortuna’s cheek as she stared at the unicorn. All witches weep like that. She turned and walked swiftly toward her wagon, but suddenly she turned again and grinned her rubbly grin. “But I tricked you twice, anyway,” she said.
No one is better at coming up with arbitrary, perfect magical rules than Peter Beagle. “Deer love and envy unicorns.” Of course they do. Somehow I always knew that, but it took your saying so to make me know I knew it.
“You must never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention.”
“The Red Bull never fights. He conquers, but he never fights.” It is an absolutely splendid book and it deserves every ounce of acclaim it’s accrued over the years. But you have almost certainly read it several times since you were a wee child, and you are itching for more. For you, I offer A Fine and Private Place.
I cannot think of a modern sci-fi/fantasy novelist with a more Yiddish sensibility than Peter Beagle (Yes, I see you, Michael Chabon. Sit down.) Maybe Isidore Haiblum, but he wasn’t exactly writing for a general audience. Shmendrick the magician is the mopiest, wanderingest of Jews in The Last Unicorn, but he cannot compare with Mrs. Morris Klapper for even a second. Mrs. Klapper is a regular Yiddishe Momme of the first order:
“Any day.” Lapin’s voice sounded a little petulant. She beckoned Mrs. Klapper close with a long-nailed forefinger. “But I’m ready, believe me. When I die the House of Sages will say Kaddish, regular like Rosh Hashonah.”
Mrs. Klapper knew what question was expected of her. “So what about your nephew? Better the family should say Kaddish.”
Lapin’s mouth twisted, and she wrinkled her nose. “Kaddish they don’t believe in, my nephews. For their children they wouldn’t say it.” Her face relaxed again. “For me the House of Sages will say Kaddish.”
Mrs. Klapper is a wonder of a woman. Beagle praises her in the preface: “Michael Morgan was my idea of what being all of thirty-four and unhappily but interestingly married would be like; Laura Durand is me then; and Mrs. Gertrude Klapper, thank God, is herself. I’m very proud of Mrs. Klapper, even now.”
Beagle’s Yiddish worldview comes through in more than just Kaddish and corned beef references, of course. He has a knack for creating melancholy, complex worlds that are full of magic but without redemption, ghosts but no gods, love but no heaven. Mr. Rebeck, a failed pharmacist who secretly lives in the Westchester cemetery, survives on food that a talking raven brings him every day (usually baloney; roast beef when he can get it) just like Elijah in 1 Kings. But Rebeck’s raven isn’t sent from God; bringing food to lonely men is just what ravens do.
“Do you mind,” he said hesitantly, “bringing me food? I mean, is it inconvenient?” He felt silly asking, but he did want to know.”
The raven stared at him out of eyes like frozen gold. “Once a year,” he said hoarsely. “Once a year you get worried. You start wondering how come the airborne Gristede’s. You ask yourself, What’s he getting out of it? You say, ‘Nothing for nothing. Nobody does anybody any favors.’”
“That isn’t so,” Mr. Rebeck said. “That isn’t so at all…”
“Of course it’s a trouble. Of course it’s inconvenient. You’re damn right it’s out of my way. Feel better? Any other questions?”
“Yes, ” said Mr. Rebeck. “Why do you do it, then?”
The raven made a dive at a hurrying caterpillar and missed. He spoke slowly, without looking at Mr. Rebeck. “There are people,” he said, “who give, and there are people who take. There are people who create, people who destroy, and people who don’t do anything and drive the other two kinds crazy. It’s born in you, whether you give or take, and that’s the way you are. Ravens bring thing to people. We’re like that. It’s our nature. We don’t like it. We’d much rather be eagles, or swans, or even one of those moronic robins, but we’re ravens and there you are. Ravens don’t feel right without somebody to bring things to, and when we do find somebody we realize what a silly business it was in the first place.” He made a sound between a chuckle and a cough.
Only Peter Beagle would throw a little detail like ravens not having any respect for the intelligence of robins in the middle of a monologue like that.
“You’re alive,” the raven said. “You hide behind gravestones, but it follows you. You ran away from it nineteen years, and it follows you like a skip-tracer.” He cackled softly. “Life must love you very much.”
“I don’t want to be loved,” Mr. Rebeck cried. “It’s a burden on me.”
“Well that’s your affair,” the raven said. “I got my own problems.”
That’s very much the kind of book this is, by the way: conversations between two or three characters (of probably a grand total of eight) about life and love and death and meaning. This may be a format you’re not wild about, so if your favorite parts of The Last Unicorn involved traveling and adventuring, this may not be the Beagle follow-up for you. I’m a bit surprised this hasn’t been adapted into a play, frankly; it seems designed for a brief Off-Broadway run.
So: in this world, when people die, they become ghosts for a little while. Maybe a month, maybe longer, maybe not so long. It’s temporary. You can’t stray too far from wherever your mortal remains end up, and you slowly lose all form and memory of your human life as you return to nothingness (CHEERFUL). Enter Michael Morgan, recently deceased (either by suicide or murder; he can’t quite recall) and Laura Durand (hit by a truck). They fall in love, among other things, all the while knowing that sooner or later they will both forget each other, themselves, and what love is altogether.
“Nothing’s worth any effort in the end,” he said to Laura, “because everyone is going to die and there is nothing in the world that will stop them from dying. Nothing lasts. A few things last longer than most people live, but they go too. Hope goes, and desire and wonder and fear and eagerness. Love lasts a few minutes longer, that’s all. A minute or a month or an hour. The paper match burns down until it singes your fingers and goes out, and there you are in the dark again, rubbing your two little sticks together. But this is the last time, the last match. There won’t be any more light. No more. And no more noise of things moving or animals lying down. Only our separate, untouching selves, and soon not even that.”
“Then we’ll sit in the dark,” Laura said. “We’ll sit and wait.”
“Wait for what? Nothing’s coming. For God’s sake, we spend our whole lives waiting, you and I. Why should anything come to us now that did not come then? There’s just this, just this miserable little sketch of love to keep us from being immortal a while longer.”
Oh, my heart. Perhaps do not put this on your to-read list if you have very recently loved and lost. Give yourself a little break, re-watch Love & Basketball, then take a crack at it.
Tags: a fine and private place, books, death, fantasy, ghosts, peter s. beagle, ravens, slightly less beloved classics, the last unicorn
Two of my favourite books!! I read A Fine and Private Place when I was 17 and thought, “Agh, I only have two years to write my first novel!” Many years later, still nothing. Anyway, these books, they are perfect.
Also I have not read The Line Between, but Two Hearts was wonderfully and terribly sad.
Commenting as a guest to say that these are two of my favorite books ever and I may or may not have just written something that makes heavy use of how real magic can never be done by tearing out someone else’s liver.
(You have to tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.)
I got into an argument with a friend recently because she said that because she didn’t consume The Last Unicorn as a child she had missed the window of where you would like it, and I just grit my teeth and said, no. No, you are wrong. The Last Unicorn has only become more meaningful now that I’m older and understand life’s pains. And reading this article, I can see that I need to read A Fine and Private Place pretty much immediately. That last excerpt particular feels like it could have been taken right from my internal monologue.
Yes, yes, yes. The most impressive and meaningful fantasy/scifi I have read are all things that I read as an adult (Terry Pratchett, Ursula K. LeGuin, and yes, “The Last Unicorn”). LeGuin’s “Tales of Earthsea” and “The Other Wind” were books that I only understand fully once I was out away from the protection of childhood and being hammered by life on my own.
I read The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place when I was too young to really appreciate them, like 8 or 9 maybe. (Because my mom had a book that contained both novels and it had a unicorn on the cover so of course.) I remember finding them both poetic and evocative but struggling to follow A Fine and Private Place. Now I’m definitely thinking that it’s time to reread as an adult.
READ THE LAST UNICORN SEQUEL. (It’s called Two Hearts.)
Then cry.
For those interested, you can read Two Hearts here:
http://www.peterbeagle.com/works/shorts/two_heart…
I would of course highly encourage sending money his way to show your appreciation, but it is there.
I went and saw Peter Beagle speak at a The Last Unicorn screening, and did you know he went bankrupt and had no idea anyone liked The Last Unicorn and he basically thought he was a failure? Then this other really enthusiastic guy whose name I don’t remember wanted the rights to one of his works to make a movie, found Beagle divorced and penniless and they started on this quest of redemption? But seriously. Something about copyright problems and lawsuits later, they’re on tour to breathe some life back into it. Crazy, right?
Beagle also wrote a YA ghost story called Tamsin that is a good read but not on the same level as The Last Unicorn. Although I must confess that I don’t *love* The Last Unicorn the way so many others do; the writing is a bit too poetic for me, seems to slip through my fingers. Still, I recognize that it’s a lovely book even if I’m incapable of appreciating it fully.
TAMSIN is amazing. It’s not on the same level of THE LAST UNICORN, but few books are. I read TAMSIN when I was 15 and had been moved from Connecticut (where I’d lived for 12 years) to Texas and TAMSIN perfectly captures what it’s like to move between two different worlds at that age.
I have so many quotes written down from these two books. The last one in the article is one of my favorites. Another from the same book is “The wise in life sometimes become wiser in death. The petty in life remain petty. The dead change their addresses, you see, not their souls.”
I loved A Fine and Private Place so much. And also Beagle’s super weird SCA novel, Folk of the Air.
On the play front – there’s actually a musical, though I only have the cast recording, haven’t seen it performed.
Has nobody else read his other book, The Unicorn Sonata?
It was such a relief when I finally read The Last Unicorn after watching the movie umpteen zillion times and it was even better than the movie. And the soundtrack… well, you can’t go wrong with that much America.
Never read it but have now downloaded the Last Unicorn!
Peter Beagle is hands down my favorite author. I’ve been a Last Unicorn fan since forever thanks to the movie, which I am pretty sure I saw before I could even read. Of course as soon as I was able, I read the book as well. I feel like the older I get, the more I get Molly Grue. She’s one of my absolute favorite literary women. I can’t ever get through “How dare you come to me now, when I am this?” without crying my face off.
I’ve met him a few times at various DragonCons and he is always such a pleasure. The highlight of my LIFE was seeing the movie screened with live commentary from him at this past year’s DragonCon — he got to to “How dare you come to me now” and had them pause it and said, “I don’t know where I got Molly Grue. She was a gift, and I didn’t deserve her,” and of course my crying my face off turned into sobbing my face off and I didn’t even care. I was surrounded by other people doing the same damn thing.
I picked up A Fine and Private Place this time around. I could have sworn I had a copy, but apparently I did not. Tamsin is great as well. He’s also got the short stories, which he is SO FREAKING GOOD AT. We Never Talk About my Brother is amazing.
I can’t ever get through “How dare you come to me now, when I am this?” without crying my face off.
You and me both. I can’t read this COMMENT without getting all teary (…at work…). Oh, Molly Grue.
The thing to understand about The Last Unicorn is that it is in no way a children’s book. All of its themes are ‘Adult Themes’, not in the sexy-voiced SBS way (for Australians), but in the sense of ’emotions that a child is very unlikely to have experienced or understand’ – certain kinds of bitterness and loss of potential, and things.
The Innkeeper’s Song has traditional meaning of Adult Themes in the form of a group sex scene in which one of the characters changes gender midway through. Excellent.
They’re in all of his books, but my god, CHECK OUT THE BADASS WOMEN in The Innkeeper’s Song. Like, all kinds of different mixes of physical and mental and emotional badass. And not just written as genderless or men-except-they’re-women, but written with care and respect and love, with actual gendered reactions that make sense in a world that is similarly shitty to ours w.r.t women.
For those interested, you can read Two Hearts here:
http://www.peterbeagle.com/works/shorts/two_heart…
I would of course highly encourage sending money his way to show your appreciation, but it is there.
Speaking of Yiddish sensibility and ghosts, there his drop-dead gorgeous short story, “The Rabbi’s Hobby.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=zHzOq8ICnkQC&…
By all means, read the sequel story, “Two Hearts.” It is lovely. The Innkeeper’s Song is my favorite Beagle novel, but I like all of them very much. If you like Beagle, check out my book: Beyond Horatio’s Philosophy: The Fantasy of Peter S. Beagle, available on Amazon.com and other fine booksellers.
I’ve been meaning to read this for years. The quotes are pretty compelling, I’ll add it to my Amazon Wishlist (and try to remember to follow a Toast affiliate link when I buy it!).
That said, I find the authority with which Mallory speaks about Yiddishness to be presumptuous and offputting. Let’s leave it to actual Jews decide who is the Jewiest of them all, shall we.
You’ll quite like it, I think, although I can’t say I agree with you that addressing Beagle’s Jewish sensibilities is presumptuous at all. It’s a unique feature; it’s part of his writing and it’s a big part of what sets his books apart and makes them so wonderful. It’s not a “Who’s the most Jewish” contest, but it is something remarkable when you consider how many modern sci-fi/fantasy novels contain Christ figures and deeply Catholic or Christian imagery.
I don’t object to you “addressing” his Jewish sensibilities. By all means, notice it, address it, enjoy it. What I object to is “I cannot think of a modern sci-fi/fantasy novelist with a more Yiddish sensibility than Peter Beagle (Yes, I see you, Michael Chabon. Sit down.)”. So glad a gentile is here to decide these things! It’s not your place to assign hierarchy to representations of other people’s cultures. To be blunt, what do you know about it?
Michael Chabon is, of course, free to sit or stand as he pleases. I don’t agree with your reading of it as a decision, or an assignation of hierarchy, of course, but you’re perfectly right in that I don’t have any sort of authority on who is what type of writer or how they embody their own cultures in their everyday lives; I do, however, think that having read Chabon’s body of work, he’s much more in the tortured late-twentieth-century Sad Young Man vein of DFW and Franzen than he is of a more overtly Yiddish tradition. All that I know of it comes from his work; I would never say that Chabon is a more or less Jewish person than Beagle.
I love all of Beagle’s work, and can recommend the Unicorn sequel without hesitation. It will make you cry, though. I discovered his work first through The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place, but then received a copy of The Worlds of Peter S. Beagle, published in the 70s and including a Fine and Private Place, Unicorn, Lila, and Come, Lady Death. I still cherish them all.
I love all of Beagle's work, and can recommend the Unicorn sequel without hesitation. It will make you cry, though. I discovered his work first through The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place, but then received a copy of The Worlds of Peter S. Beagle, published in the 70s and including a Fine and Private Place, Unicorn, Lila, and Come, Lady Death. I still cherish them all.
Two Hearts, the sequel, is wonderful. And every time I read it, I end with sobbing on my couch in the night it’s so good and yet so heart-rending and perfect.