The Line Between

including electricity, the Zone diet, and the laws of thermodynamics. What's important to me here, as a writer, is that I've grounded the single fantastic element of the tale in the most realistic atmosphere I could manage. Narrator Jake's life is like that of any stage actor I've ever known; semi–ghostly Sam's world is the world in which his real–life original lived and moved and ultimately died. Possessed cat or no, mystery or no, magic or no, the rent still has to be paid.

My favorite review of my work, of all that have been published in newspapers and magazines over forty–five years, has to be one by, of all people, the cartoonist Gahan Wilson. I can't quote the review precisely (at present it's packed away, along with ninety–nine percent of my belongings, in two storage units in Davis), but in paraphrase it credits me for avoiding tales of kings, High Elves, enchanted swords and assorted Armageddons, in favor of dealing with low–class types. My heroes and heroines, Wilson observes, are mostly peasants; my wizards are mostly out there in the rain, trying to light a fire, never mind summoning a genie. They live in the daily middle of their ordinary muddled lives, they are as complicated as we ourselves are complicated; they are real, and the more bizarre and unlikely the circumstance, the realer they become. I'm very proud of that.

I did write a «mainstream» novel once, very long ago, during the year I spent at Stanford University on the writing fellowship that first brought me to California. It's about a young American musician's romantic adventures in Paris; and if you wonder why it was never published, just remember that its author had all too recently been a young American writer having romantic adventures in Paris, and hadn't yet learned that write what you know is a gentle form of encouragement, not an act of law. There are no wizards or warriors in this novel; not a single shapeshifter or ancient goddess. There is nothing obviously fantastic in it at all (except for the mostly flattering picture of its protagonist, who looked and sounded, and — more to the point — acted as I wish I had). Yet despite this, the book is a fantasy to me, every bit as much a fairytale as The Last Unicorn, because of what its own shadows conceal. Hieronymus Bosch may have painted portraits of local burghers or churchmen, as well as The Garden of Earthly Delights, but he's still Bosch, and his monsters are visible in his subjects' eyes — they plainly see the demons and half–beasts smiling hungrily over Bosch's shoulder. Just so in this unpublished early book of mine. Even though I was consciously trying to be as realistic as possible, in every page the unreal, the uncanny, the magical all grin their own toothy grins from behind papier–mache masks. A tweak or two, a shift of emphasis: that's all it would take for them to drop the masks and dance across the line.

As I've said, I never consciously chose this way of telling stories — barring some moment of negotiation under that Bronx stairway which I have since forgotten, it seems rather to have chosen me. It's a mixed blessing to be chosen, whether by a deity or a style, or by a way of seeing. But it's who I am, and it's what I do. These between stories are the ones I have to tell. I hope they find you well, and that you enjoy them.

Peter S. Beagle Oakland, California 2006

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Gordon the Self–Made Cat

The first draft of «Gordon, the Self–Made Cat» was written more than forty years ago, when I was living on nine wild acres in the hills north of Santa Cruz, California, with my young family. We had an unguessable number of cats in those days, if you count not only the indoor and outdoor residents, but also the visitors who treated our peeling red shack as a sort of bed–and–breakfast establishment. What we definitely didn't have was a mouse problem (gophers were another matter). I made up the valiant Gordon to amuse the children, sent his story off to an animation company that had requested ideas for a feature film, shrugged at their almost immediate rejection, then buried the piece in my battered filing cabinet and completely forgot about it. It didn't surface again until 2001, when some friends stumbled across it while helping me move.

I'm currently working on expanding it, adding new characters and more adventures, for eventual book publication. I've always loved Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little; the longer version of Gordon will be my own small nod in that very challenging direction.