Sid Fleischman: A Biographer Drawn to Masters of the "Sleight of Hand."

Jennifer M. Brown, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 8/14/2008

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Listen to Sid Fleischman introduce and read from The Trouble Begins at 8

As the author of nearly 20 fictional works, including the Newbery Medal winner The Whipping Boy (Greenwillow, 1986), Sid Fleischman primarily thinks of himself as a novelist. But he is also a magician who started performing his craft in the fifth grade, and thus was attracted to the subject of his first biography, Escape!: The Story of the Great Houdini (HarperCollins, 2006). The book met with such success that his editor, Virginia Duncan, suggested that Fleischman write a second biography, and The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West (HarperCollins, 2008) was born. Here the author discusses the challenges of the genre, and the importance of choosing the right subject.

How do you select your subjects? Is it noteworthy that both Harry Houdini and Mark Twain were masters of the “sleight of hand”?
Biography can get tiring because you’re living with this subject for years. If he eats with his fingers or something, [you don’t want to live with him anymore]. Even with Houdini, as much as I admire him, I got tired of his ego. I wanted to say, “Calm down, Harry.” So I have to be careful. Early on, I thought of Edgar Allan Poe, and as I learned more about him, I thought I’d be in a straitjacket [by the time I finished his biography]. But I kept coming back to Twain. I was enchanted by his sleight of hand with language.

Your writing style emulates Twain’s. I’m thinking of lines such as, “Genius is not catching like the measles” or “He had allowed the convictions of others to settle in like squatters.” Was that intentional?
This is my style, but I have enjoyed [Twain’s] regionalisms, and I’m sure I’ve been influenced by him. I was amazed, as I read biographies of Twain, at how infrequently others cite his wit. I dragged [in quotes of his] by the heels. I could fill a book with his wit.

In the case of The Whipping Boy, there are even plot parallels between your novel and Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper.
[Laughter.] I was trying to escape The Prince and the Pauper! That was the second time I’d done that. With The Ghost in the Noonday Sun (HarperCollins, 1989), I was trying to escape Robert Louis Stevenson.

I must confess that I had not heard of Roughing It (Twain's adventures traveling West with his brother) until I read your biography.
That has been a bestseller ever since it was published. But you have to read it with caution, because [Twain is] the world’s greatest liar. He thought nothing of creating characters. [George] Bemis, for instance, was a figment of his imagination. And in The Innocents Abroad, there was the ugly American [Mr. Brown], who didn’t exist. Today [Twain would] be skinned alive for calling that nonfiction. Once I knew I couldn’t take for granted that he told the truth, we got along just fine.

Your title refers to Twain’s secondary career as a lecturer/performer. What do you think prepared him for that?
[He turned] life experiences into good storytelling. There was no radio, no TV; through his mastery of irony, he turned everything into a laugh. Nothing slipped by him. Twain knew that the performers at that time all referred to “Curtain up at 8” and he turned that into “The trouble begins at 8.”

Performing is storytelling writ large. He was petrified the first time he went onstage. But he was enough of a ham that he began to enjoy himself. When Twain found himself on the stage, in the double sense, he was fine. It’s easier to talk than it is to write, even for him. If you’re sure of your material, you can master the platform.

The path you lay out seems so deliberate—first Twain learns to read, when so many children at that time did not, then he learns the printer’s craft, then he becomes a newspaper reporter. Yet it almost seems like it came as a surprise to the man when he became a successful writer.
There were these slow increments toward writing, yet his success was a complete surprise. Only with “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” did he realize he had such riches to draw upon in his own life.

Part of his genius was in his ability to react. Most people sleepwalk through life; he did not. How difficult was it to be the village atheist? And also to be at odds with his mother, whom he adored, but who was a bigot? Twain had convictions, and he couldn’t walk away.

Do you think your background as a magician helps you as a novelist?
I had no aspiration to be a writer, [but] my training as a magician helped me. Magic is like a three-act play. You have to plan ahead; you have to look around corners. Inventing tricks is like plotting a novel. If you decide you want to make something float, you have to figure out, “How do I do that?” [As a result,] my plots are more generous with their surprises.

How is writing fiction different from writing nonfiction?
Here is the fundamental difference between writing fiction and nonfiction: with nonfiction, there’s no inventing of characters or dialogue. It’s all there already. With a novel, you invent it all yourself. [And] you can get on a roll. I don’t plot in advance, so I want to find out what’s going to happen.

With biography, you have to stop and check dates, etc. […] I’ve been thinking of Charlie Chaplin. There’s no reason he should have lived out his childhood; he grew up in such poverty. Genius strikes in the strangest places.

Listen to Sid Fleischman introduce and read from The Trouble Begins at 8

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