Madeleine L'Engle Remembered
-- Publishers Weekly, 9/13/2007
Madeleine L’Engle, author of more than 60 books for adults and children, including A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels, passed away on September 6, at the age of 88. Here some of those who worked with her and were close to her pay tribute.
Margaret Ferguson
Madeleine was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux for 45 years. She received more fan mail than any of our other authors, and what was interesting about it was that the letters weren’t just from children, but also from adults—adults who read her books as a child and then moved on to read her books written for adults. These lifelong fans essentially grew up with her books and now pass them on to their children and grandchildren and begin the cycle again. Obviously Madeleine’s writing spoke to people of all ages.
Madeleine enjoyed having lunch at the Terrace and would begin with a Bloody Mary. We would sit near a window with an amazing view of the Upper West Side and have a wonderful time, mostly because she always had a good joke and was such an entertaining storyteller. She was a very loving person—accepting and open to different kinds of people and experiences. Above all, though, Madeleine was kind. She always remembered to follow up on some detail about my life, which was amazing considering how large her “extended” family was. She was exactly who she seemed to be in person and in her writing. We will all miss her.
Sandra Jordan
I edited two of Madeleine’s books—A Swiftly Tilting Planet and A Ring of Endless Light. As the books progressed I’d be invited to spend the weekend with Madeleine and Hugh at Crosswicks, their pre-Revolutionary War house in Goshen, Connecticut. We’d work in her “tower,” a book-filled study, up a narrow back hall staircase, until she decided “we need some fresh air.”
 Photo: Sigrid Estrada |
Stephen Roxburgh
Madeleine was one of the few truly charismatic people I’ve ever met. Her manner was flamboyant, her gestures large, her energy irrepressible and inexhaustible. Physically she loomed over most people, even big people. Intellectually she was formidable. She was larger than life. Her manuscripts tended to be of similar stature and scale, with complicated plots, numerous characters, wide-ranging and varied themes. There was nothing labored or precious about Madeleine’s creative process. She appeared to have no trouble writing many, many pages in fairly short order and, to her great credit, no trouble throwing them away if they didn’t work. She would often give me a manuscript which I would read in a few days only to discover when I called her that she’d already jettisoned a significant chunk and rewritten it in the interim. After this happened a few times I made her promise not to work on a manuscript while it was in my hands—a promise she was never able to keep.
One of the strongest memories I have of Madeleine comes from our early days working together. I’d gone to her country home, Crosswicks. We worked on a manuscript most of the day and in the late afternoon she suggested we take a break and play a game of ping pong. We went into a smallish room pretty much filled by the ping-pong table. There was no room to maneuver and the ceiling was low, just over our heads. I was a good player in those days but Madeleine owned the game. She could reach everywhere, played the corners well, knew exactly how hard and high to hit the ball, and put killer spin on all her shots. In short, she completely dominated. I often thought in the years we worked together on manuscripts that Madeleine approached both life and writing the same way she approached that ping-pong table.
Neal Porter
In 1979, on my first day at Farrar, Straus, John Donovan, longtime head of the Children’s Book Council, took me to lunch. “Madeleine L’Engle is a queen,” he pronounced. “Treat her well.” In truth, Madeleine was regal in stature—helping her on with her coat was no mean feat, as I was 5’6” and she was close to six feet tall—but there was nothing remotely imperious about her. She was fiercely loyal, affectionate, and very funny. We traveled together to a regional IRA meeting and got caught in a blizzard at O’Hare, arriving via turboprop in Peoria at 4 AM. She took it in good stride and delivered a brilliant speech at 9 the same morning, receiving a tumultuous ovation. On the return trip her husband, the actor Hugh Franklin, best known for his role as Dr. Charles Tyler on All My Children, met us at LaGuardia. Instantly fans shrieking “Dr. Charles!” Dr. Charles!” surrounded him and demanded autographs. “Well,” said Madeleine in her best stage whisper. “Different strokes for different folks.”
Charlotte Jones Voiklis
People ask what it’s like to have a famous grandmother, but she’s the only one I know, my only context. I lived with her during my college and graduate school years in New York, and I am now responsible for her literary business. It was a time of transition for both of us, me in my awkward late adolescence and she learning to build a life without her husband of 40 years, who died the summer I graduated from high school. What stands out most vividly for me about that time are her stamina, discipline, and generosity. A true extrovert who drew energy from her interactions with others, she kept what seemed to me an exhausting travel and lecture schedule. And she wrote 15 books during that 10-year period! When she was home, we threw inter-generational dinner parties (though she kept a strict schedule and always retired at 9 for her evening rituals of bath, bible, and bed) and had heated conversations about books and ideas. I’m still upset that I never was able to change her mind about Jane Austen, whom she thought cold. Writing was a multi-dimensional endeavor for her—craft, reflex, defense, and gift (received and given). As fortunate as her readers might feel for her books, I think she also recognized her own privilege and good fortune in being able to both serve her gift of writing, and have it mean so much to so many people.
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