Robert Cormier Dead at 75
The author of 'The Chocolate War' was a gentle man who asked tough questions
Staff -- School Library Journal, 12/1/2000
He was a devout Catholic whose most famous novel depicts a parochial school where hatred and cruelty flourish. He was a gentle, self-effacing man who could create searingly evil fictional characters. He was, of course, Robert Cormier, who died November 2 at age 75 in his hometown of Leominster, MA.
"Robert Cormier is the single most important author in the history of young adult literature," says Michael Cart, who wrote From Romance to Realism: 50 Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature (HarperCollins, 1996). "He was the first who had the courage and the art to give us literature that offered readers the plain unvarnished truth that there weren't always happy endings."
The Chocolate War (Pantheon, 1974), the novel that made Cormier's reputation, was one of the first books to provide an alternative to the sugary stories about horses and junior proms that long dominated teen novels. Cormier not only opened the door for a darker, more realistic look at teenage life, he also raised the literary bar for the still young category of young adult fiction. "All of us who were editors in this [then] new thing called YA saw that here was a level of achievement that we had to go out and fill," recalls George Nicholson, a literary agent and former editor who published several of Cormier's books at Delacorte Press.
In 1991, Cormier won the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in young adult literature. But his dark themes and graphic realism made Cormier's books a frequent target of censors, and they are still among the most challenged titles in schools and libraries.
Behind the writer who could create such disturbing fiction was the Cormier whom friends and colleagues describe as a modest, gentle family man. "He was as nice a guy as you could ever hope to meet," says Craig Virden, president and publisher of Random House Children's Books, Cormier's longtime publisher. The author, colleagues agree, had a deeply serious side that he preferred expressing through his books. "There was a moral core to his work, in terms of asking the eternal questions of life and faith and understanding the nature of evil," says Nicholson. "I think when his work is looked at from a distance, that will be part of what's so important about it and why people respond to it."
When he died, Cormier had just finished the manuscript for a new novel. Virden says he hopes to publish it. --Andrea Glick
