Louis Sachar - Q&A
Q&A
Q: When did you take up bridge? Is this an interest that was sparked as a young adult or later in life? How often do you play?
A: I learned to play when I was young by watching my parents. They often had other couples over for a night of bridge. They would occasionally let me sit in on a hand. Nobody my age played the game, and I didn't play again until I was almost forty. I continued to read the daily bridge columns in the newspapers, however. When my daughter was in kindergarten, we became friends with her friend's parents. The mother had a sister who liked to play "duplicate bridge" and said she was always looking for new partners. I'd read about duplicate bridge in the bridge columns and was always intrigued by it. A few weeks later I played my first game with my daughter's friend's aunt. (We won, and I didn't realize what a big deal that was.) I've been hooked ever since. I now play about four days a week, and occasionally travel to tournaments.
Q: Can you explain the concept behind the whale icon found throughout The Cardturner?
A: The greatest difficulty in writing this novel was trying to figure out how much bridge the reader would want to try to understand. Obviously all readers are different. The whale icon was chosen by the narrator, Alton, since he had trouble getting through Moby Dick in his English class. He gives the reader permission to skip the bridge if he or she finds it too boring or confusing. I doubt if too many readers will actually skip it, but it at least lets the reader know that the author recognizes this part is difficult, and it's okay if you don't understand it. It is followed by a summary box, which gives a shorter version of what the reader just read.
Q: For you--and the main characters of The Cardturner--bridge is clearly more than just a game. What lessons do you take away from bridge that you see as applicable in every day life?
A: A good bridge player learns to think things through, plan ahead, gather information, and make changes in the plan if the situation changes as the game progresses. It takes judgment. You have to know when to be daring, and when to be patient. Most importantly, bridge is a partnership game, and a bridge player has to rely on and trust his partner, while being a trustworthy partner himself. Finally, bridge is a highly ethical game. It's not like other sports where players try to get away with whatever they can, so long as the refs don't catch it.
Q: What do you hope young readers will come away with when they read The Cardturner (other than a possible new interest in bridge)?
A: I never set out to teach a lesson in a book. To me, a good book is one that allows both the writer and the reader to explore different boundaries of our minds. I hope when the reader finishes the book she feels like she's been somewhere she's never been before.
Q: You've said you see yourself in Alton's character. How so? We heard that your daughter had a different take on that than you did, can you explain?
A: When my father was about fifty years old, and I was about seventeen, I remember him telling me that he was often surprised by the face he saw when he looked in the mirror. He said that on the inside, he still felt the same as he did when he was eighteen. I'm not sure I quite believed him. I do now.
The Cardturner is a book about, among other things, the relationship between Alton, a seventeen-year-old boy, and Trapp, his seventy-five-year-old great-uncle. It is told in the first-person by Alton. As I was writing it, I felt that Alton was very much me, although I tried my best to disguise him. When I finally finished the manuscript, the first two people who read it were my wife, Carla, and my daughter, Sherre, who was probably about twenty-one at the time. After Sherre read it, she said to me, "He's a lot like you, isn't he?"
I was disheartened that it was so obvious. I thought I had done a good job of turning Alton into his own independent character. "You mean Alton?" I asked.
My daughter looked at me like I was nuts. "No, Trapp," she said.
Q: Can you talk about the fantastical elements in The Cardturner? Was this something you envisioned from the beginning, or did it develop as you wrote?
A: It's always difficult to remember what ideas came when. Initially, I simply threw Alton and Trapp together, and waited to see what developed. However, I think the idea of using the fantastical elements came to me fairly early.
Q: We see seventeen-year-old Alton at the center of many key relationships. Can you comment on the role that family dynamics play in the development of his character?
A: Alton, like many seventeen-year-olds, feels disconnected from his parents. He's figuring out who he is. That's one of the main reasons I write about young people. The world is wide open to them, and they are trying to figure out their place in it. While Alton and his parents seem to clash at every turn, Alton has a younger sister who is smart, sweet, and brings real heart to the family.
Q: What's next? Is there a chance that you'll revisit Alton's story?
A: I don't know. Until I get caught up in a new novel, I can't tell you what the next book will be about--and then, once I am caught up in it, I won't tell you.
Q: Where do you get inspiration for your writing? You have such an enthusiastic fan base. Do they ever inspire ideas?
A: Inspiration, what little there is of it, comes from within. I simply try to come up with something that interests me enough to want to explore it a little more. In The Cardturner that was simply the idea of having a seventeen-year-old boy turn cards for an old blind bridge player. At first, I knew nothing about either of the characters, or what brought them together. Initially they weren't related. The real inspiration comes as I'm working on that idea, day after day after day.
Q: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
A: In high school, great writers were my heroes: J. D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Steinbeck. I remember being thrilled when I found out that in my English class we'd be reading something by Faulkner, or Hemingway, or F. Scott Fitzgerald, not because I knew anything about these authors, but because I had heard of them before, and now I was going to get the opportunity to read their books. I wonder if there are high school students who still feel that way. To me, there was no higher achievement than writing a great novel. And even now, when I finish writing a book, there is a great sense of having completed something meaningful. People ask about what it was like winning the Newbery or having Holes made into a movie, but nothing comes close to the feeling of accomplishment I get from the actual writing of a book.
Reviews
The Cardturner
Louis Sachar
At his parents' urging, Alton Richards begins assisting his wealthy great-uncle Trapp, a master bridge player. Trapp is blind and his last cardturner dared to question him, so Alton's parents see this as the perfect opportunity to get in good with Trapp. Soon, Alton learns the rules of the game, and hints to a long-buried scandal involving a presidential hopeful's wife. He also develops a love of the game himself. He gets to know his predecessor, the lovely--yet likely insane--Toni Castaneda, a possible rival for Trapp's fortune--and a potential soul mate. Already well-versed at immersing readers in fantastic, strange new worlds, Sachar is the first to admit that a novel about bridge seems unlikely. To prove this point, he includes pictures of a whale as a warning any time the story goes into 'Moby Dick'-style detail. Still, all of his artistry is on display, with rich characters, an intriguing mystery and more than a dash of infectious enthusiasm. It's not hard to envision extracurricular bridge competitions popping up in schools all over as a result. Perhaps because of its relatively unusual subject matter, the story never fully reaches the epic proportions achieved in his previous classics like Holes (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998/VOYA December 1998) and Sideways Stories from Wayside School (HarperCollins,1998), but Sachar has undeniably written the Great American Bridge Novel. VOYA CODES: 5Q 4P J S A/YA (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult-marketed book recommended for Young Adults). 2010, Random House Children's Books, 352p., $17.99. Ages 12 to Adult. Reviewer: Matthew Weaver (VOYA, June 2010 (Vol. 33, No. 2)).
ISBN: 9780385736626
ISBN: 9780385906197
ISBN: 9780375896477
Added 11/29/10
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