An Interview with Jane Yolen
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Volume 13 Number 1 Article 7 10-15-1986 An Interview with Jane Yolen Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation (1986) "An Interview with Jane Yolen," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 13 : No. 1 , Article 7. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol13/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Discusses several of Yolen’s stories and her novel Cards of Grief: techniques, influences, experiences with critical reception, recurrent imagery. Additional Keywords Yolen, Jane—Technique; Sarah Beach; Patrick Wynne This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol13/iss1/7 Page 34 MYTHLORE 47: Autumn 1986 An Interview with Jane Yolen Jane Yolen is a Storyteller who is a master of the aloud. As a writer for children, I was aware of this short story form. Many of her books are w ritten for a early but I also feel adult stories should read well young audience, such as her "Commander Toad" series. aloud. However, go to any reading, where an author Other of her published books are The Magic Three of reads aloud the words that he or she wrote, and 7 out Solatia and Dragon's Blood. In 1984 she was Author of 10 times you w ill understand why the prose is not Guest of Honor at the 15th Mythopoeic Conference at musical. The author/reader has a tin ear! Parke Godwin M ills College. The following year, her novel Cards of had an article in a recent Fantasy Review about reading Grief won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. She lives in one's work aloud. It should be read and digested by M assachusetts, and recently her collection of Arthurian authors if they plan to give a reading, and considered short stories, M erlin's Booke. was published by Ace by those who have never read their own stuff aloud. B ooks. MYTHLORE: How much do you shape your own sto ries to how MYTHLORE: You have often spoken generally of they w ill sound when read aloud? Storytelling (definitely with a capital S). It is different from "just writing a story," isn 't it? What YOLEN: Not only do I read my stories aloud as I am would you consider the main differences to be? w riting, but I have a w riter's group — six women, all professional writers though not only writing for JANE YOLEN: I call myself a storyteller and I do two children or writing fantasy — where we meet once a kinds (though they both crisscross and feed one into week and read our stories aloud for comment. There's a another). I te ll stories on the page and I tell stories t e s t ! orally. By that I mean that I am a w riter and also that I am a professional storyteller (on stage). MYTHLORE: Does the content of the story shape the form The difference is really, I think, where one you use, or do you decide your format first? perceives the audience to be. When I w rite, I w rite for myself, for the audience inside me. If I am writing a YOLEN: I begin a story at the beginning and often it children's story, for the child I was — and in some finds its own form. Rarely do I say — okay, here's a ways still am. When writing an adult story, for the (short story, novella, novel, take your pick). However adult inside. When I do oral telling, I have an I am most comfortable in the short form. Novels are, audience outside of myself to play off of. So my timing for me, more painful and frighteningly formless, w ill be different, my pauses, my emphasis. Even if I getting away from the unwary. tell one of my written stories (I do several — "the Lady and the Merman", "Greyling", "Silent Bianca", MYTHLORE: Water imagery is abundant in your stories. "Once a Good Man", "Catbride") they are always a bit Does water — streams and seas — have a special different than the w ritten version. significance for you? MYTHLORE: From what you have related in various places, YOLEN: I am n o t s u r e why w a te r f a s c i n a t e s me s o . I h av e it is clear that you have been influenced by an oral lived near water a lot, but never a house right on the tradition of Storytelling. What are the effects it has ocean or a lake. One of my great unsold books is a had on your w riting, that is, the effects you are aware study I did with Shulamith Oppenheim (who wrote The o f? Selchie's Seed and This World Invisible, both selchie novels) called Mermen: An Unnatural History. Water YOLEN: Not only have I been influenced by oral certainly seems a female medium, and a last earth storytelling but by folkmusic. I was a folksinger in frontier. But none of those is the real reason. college and w ill still perform a capella (I'm a lousy guitarist) when given the opportunity as in the last MYTHLORE: Does it relate at all to the traditional couple of World Fantasy Conventions. I think the connection of water with the subconscious, the influences are threefold: certainly the folk cadences w ell-spring of imagination. are a part of me; structurally I am very at home with the folk-story; and everything I write I read aloud YOLEN: Perhaps the w ell-spring of im agination. But your because I want to hear as well as see it. I think Lewis guess here is as good as mine. said something about that, that a story should be for the eye and ear. MYTHLORE: In "Dragonfield", the dragonsbane grows in water. Was it something that just sprang up that way, MYTHLORE: Does the oral influence make you extra the connection with water? conscious of the sound of words? YOLEN: Dragonsbane needed to grow in w ater, I suppose, YOLEN: It is not only that. I am conscious of the since I had that water right there. Actually, when I m usicality of my prose. I have often thought that many started the story, I had no idea what dragonsbane was of my stories ("Greyling" is a good example) could be or how I would use it. Nor was the kite part of it. I set to music. I am also aware that I often use the just had a picture of the girl kneedeep in water strong stress last syllable to end a sentence like the picking this flower. Of course one could remember that final note of a song. dragons are considered water creatures, as well as creatures of air and fire. But I don't know. MYTHLORE: Do you think that more w riters should be forced to read some of their stories aloud, to hone MYTHLORE: In "The Lady and the Merman," Borne, when their awareness of sound? For it's clear that many denied the — so to call it — ordinary love of her w riters don't test the sound of their prose. father, comes to an impossible love, the merman in the sea. It is also a fatal love, if one is reading the YOLEN: It is painfully clear to anyone with an ear that last line correctly: "She was beautiful for the first many — if not most — w riters never read their work time. And for the last." Whatever the water-world MYTHLORE 47: Autumn 1986 Page 35 represents for you, doesn' t this ending carry a rather Eden. Wisdom makes us realize that without evil there ominous tone? can be no good, without travail no success, without death no resurrection. Faith makes us undersand that YOLEN: F irst of a ll, "The Lady and the Merman" is one there is a god even though there are serpents in all of my favorite stories because it is so personal. The our Edens and that our belief in something greater than sea-captain is my father, only I never threw myself ourselves has nothing to do with whether evil exists or into the sea to get him/escape him. Interesting, d o es n o t. though, that her father is a sea captain and therefore It is easier to believe in H itler than angels. I a mer/sea man? I didn't realize that until several just think there is not one without the other. But not years after writing the story. My father did not sail, real angels flying around with wings.