Q&A with ‘The Polar Express’ Author and Illustrator Chris Van Allsburg

Author and illustrator Chris Van Allsburg, who lived on the East Side of Providence for four decades, pulled much of the inspiration for his books from the capital city. He now lives in Massachusetts’ North Shore. Photo courtesy of Chris Van Allsburg

You grew up in Michigan. How would you describe that coming-of-age experience there? 

Well, I grew up in a suburb, and the coming-of-age experience wasn’t I think so different from growing up in any American suburb. I went to a good high school and there was a general expectation that I would be off to college at some point. When I was born we lived in a house that was not in the suburbs it was more so in the exurbs, with gravel roads and the houses were kind of set far apart because not all the houses that the developer had planned to build had been built. I was out in the fields a lot as a child. There were ponds to go to and catch tadpoles and things like that so up until I was around seven or eight, I lived in that kind of wilder than the suburbs world. Then we eventually moved to a suburban house where I lived until I graduated and went to college.  

Did you always gravitate towards art and writing growing up? I know sculpture was kind of your first love.  

As a child one of my keen interests was model building. It was just a thing that kids in the late 50’s early 60’s did. I mean we didn’t have video games, so we had to spend our time doing something. For me it was building models of cars and planes and boats. By nature, I’m not a boastful person but I have to say, looking back at my model building life, I was quite good. I had a kind of level of patience and commitment to it that I think was kind of unusual for a child that age. You know, I maybe spent a little more time in the basement raising the sails on little plastic boats than I should have but I got good at it. Even though its not in the conventional sense making art, it still sort of engaged my imagination in a way that art would eventually. When I was making these things, if I was making a model plane, I imagined myself flying it; if I was making a model boat, I imagine myself sailing it; if I was making a model car, I would imagine myself driving it. So, this act of making these little models did engage my imagination and at the same time develop my skills as a craftsman. I got really good with my hands through it. That was my principal interest when I was very young. While I remember enjoying art whenever it happened and always looked forward to it, but by the time I was in high school art was not part of my curriculum anymore. 

How did you revisit art again as you grew older and went off to college? 

CVA: People who grow up in Michigan have an excellent opportunity to get a terrific education without leaving the state because of the University of Michigan. So, I went there as an art major, not because I had a keen interest in it and not because I thought I had any talent in it. My transcript was void of any art classes, but I was still able to talk myself into art school. I think it was because it was 1967 and I think I was just sort of feeling the anti-establishment sort of vibe. I wasn’t really a rebel, but I think as an 18-year-old I was feeling this kind of resistance to the expectations of, not really my parents but maybe the world. You feel urged to think about going to college; to get a degree in something that would allow you to have a reliable income and basically live the life your parents lived in the suburbs. I don’t think I consciously rebelled against that, but I think thought I’d go to art school because it was kind of a counterculture choice.  

Theres a defiance to it for sure. 

CVA: Yeah so, I went to art school and discovered that I really didn’t know much about art because there were a lot of kids there that had been going to arts high schools and things like that. The thing that actually got me into the groove was when my old enthusiasm for model building sort of kicked in. I ended up being a sculpture major and it was a good undergraduate education that I enjoyed. When I graduated, I had the expectation that I would go on and get an advanced degree in sculpture which is fairly common. A lot of artists when they finish their undergraduate education go on and get a Master of Fine Arts because that will allow them to teach. Artists typically would rely on teaching as basically a way to subsidize their efforts.  

Was that the route that you were taking? Did you want to be a professor? 

No, I really didn’t want to be a professor. I was simply following a course that suggested itself. I saw what everyone else was doing around me, even my professors had careers as artists and had their own studios, but it was fairly clear that teaching was a big way for artists to support and sustain themselves. You couldn’t depend on the one thing that you were making in your studio to do that, you had to have some other means of income. So that was the path that everyone chose; get your graduate degree, find a teaching opportunity, and maybe look for a studio at the same time. I also was thinking that while I needed the graduate degree, as a sculptor I also needed a studio with tools which the school could provide. I’d have, at least for two years, access to the materials, the foundry, the wood shop etc. through the school.  

RISD is regarded as one of the best art schools in the world. Were there other factors that influenced your decision to go there?  

I had a girlfriend I had met at University of Michigan. She was an art education major and had been looking around for job opportunities on the east coast and had found a fairly progressive job at a school system on the east coast in Providence, Rhode Island. She took the position there and I took the year off to earn a little money and prepare myself for grad school. I applied to other schools but since my girlfriend was in Providence and there was a pretty great art school in Providence I figured I ought to just go there. I arrived there in 1972 and joined my girlfriend. We lived on the East Side and I started my matriculation at RISD and spent two years in the MFA program. 

Had you ever heard of Providence before? As you’ve probably experienced when you mention Rhode Island people ask if it’s in New York sometimes or don’t fully know where the state is, let alone Providence.  

I had heard of it partly because when I was younger, I used to sometimes spend summers in Duxbury. We would sometimes take little excursions to Newport. I don’t think we ever went into Providence, but I knew Rhode Island as a result of those vacations.  

When you got to Providence and started school did you start having a clearer understanding of what you wanted to do?  

I never contemplated it. (laughs) 

It sounds like you’re like a lot of college kids where you went to school with your youth not thinking about much after that.  

There’s a little bit of that. I definitely wouldn’t have made a decision like I did then if I was older because it would have seemed irresponsible. As I aged, I was more calculating or at least considerate about the decisions I made so it was probably a feature of youth and a feature of the time I was living in why I didn’t give it much thought. I remember just before I left the University of Michigan, someone had posted a list of about 20 occupations, but it started with the worst ones. And the first one I remember was philosophy but the second least likely occupation to support yourself from was being a sculptor.  

Did that worry you? 

It definitely felt like a warning. It was almost saying be prepared, have something to fall back on and be resourceful. But despite having that information and warning, I carried on with my plans anyway.  

We’re talking so much about your artistic journey with sculptures but when did the drawing come into the picture? 

When I graduated from RISD I set up a sculpture studio on South Main Street, above where Fane Carpet was. I got a couple shows in New York City with a bona fide uptown gallery but for a few reasons I felt like I needed a break. I decided I’d take up a hobby and the hobby I decided on was drawing because I already knew a little something about drawing. The drawing I had mostly done though was draw pictures of sculptures I wanted to make so I didn’t really know how to draw photos. I became a hobbyist drawer and truly never anticipated showing them or selling them, it was just something to do after supper. My wife, who was very supportive of my sculpture career, ended up teaching in the Providence school system and she used picture books to teach kids art lessons. She brought these picture books home to show to me and she said that maybe there was an opportunity for me to do something with picture books, to make myself available to a publisher to illustrate a book.  

How did that idea to maybe illustrate children’s books lead to you actually writing the books? 

CVA: Well so my wife took the material of a few of the drawings I did, probably about nine drawings, and took them to publishers in Boston and New York City. She got a good response and, in some cases, even returned with manuscripts that the publishers were suggesting I would take a look at to illustrate for. So, my wife got a positive response and I ignored it because the manuscripts they sent back with my wife for me to take a look at, to gauge my interest, were ones that I couldn’t imagine myself making pictures for. They were really simple, well meaning, but, simple. After a few months one of the editors called me and asked what I thought of the manuscripts, and I had to tell him that I just couldn’t imagine drawing for them because I really wouldn’t be making anything I cared about. He said that if I wanted to illustrate, which I wasn’t really sure I did, and have any control over the kind of pictures I was making that I could always write the story myself.  

But you didn’t want to do that. 

I honestly didn’t know if I did. When people talk to individuals who’ve had some success in the field or spent a lot of time in the field, they always make an assumption that there was something in their childhood or something when they were younger that pointed to their destiny. But there were no fingers pointing in that direction for me. I really never thought I’d write or illustrate for children’s books until I started to.  

Can you walk me through the first book you worked on? 

 I wrote this story about a boy who was tasked with babysitting a disobedient dog. It all grew out of a picture I was working on that had nothing to do with a book, it was a picture of a topiary garden. The picture struck me as sort of compelling and slightly mysterious and I thought it might look interesting if I put a figure in it. I imagined the figure being a boy chasing a dog, but I never drew the image, I just had it in my imagination. That picture really was what led me to a kind of series of questions that I asked myself that built the story. I thought, this is a strange garden, who owns it? Why is the boy chasing the dog? Who is the boy? After a couple weeks of thinking about it and writing it down I finally finished and thought, holy smokes it looks like I wrote a story. There were some problems though because I liked it the way that it was but the way that it was ended without a clear resolution. The book didn’t end on the last page because the last page posed a question. That wasn’t a calculation on my part, that was just where I ended up. I liked it a lot, but I was also pretty sure that when I shared it with the editor who had encouraged me to write my own story, he’d force me to change it. Thankfully I was very fortunate to have an editor at Houghton Mifflin in Boston who said, if this is what you want that’s great, and they published it.  

It seems like they took a real chance on you. 

It was a risk because it also was in black and white and there weren’t a lot of children’s books in black and white then, there still really aren’t. It was a bunch of black and white drawings with a story that didn’t really have a clear ending and didn’t have talking animals or anything else. The story was really about encouraging kids to distinguish between stage magic and true miracles. That there is stage magic where you can very skillfully and artfully make people think that something magical happened then there’s the other kind of magic which is that someone really has the power to perform miracles. I was inviting kids to sort of compare the two and try to determine which they had seen or which they had read about in the book. I was very fortunate to have an editor, his name was Walter Lorraine, who never looked at the things that I gave him and wondered about their commercial potential. He never suggested that the art was a little too sophisticated for kids. He really allowed me to just do whatever I wanted, and we worked together on many projects after that. I would just tell him I’m working on something, and I think I’ll be done in, I don’t know July, and he’d just say okay can’t wait to see it and that’s the way it worked for a number of books. 

That first book, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, ended up winning the Caldecott Honor the next year. As a first-time published author who seemingly accidentally fell into the role, where was your mind at when receiving news that the book was well received? 

CVA: I wasn’t thinking about the book because it had been in print for a few months. I was surprised initially, not solely because of the Caldecott Honor but because the book was reviewed in publications like Time Magazine and the New York Times. I was incredulous that I had, in the privacy of my little studio and small apartment, written this book and the thing I had made had been found by a large audience. That was probably the most amazing part, that so many people had found the book and loved it. I do vaguely remember my editor calling me to tell me about the award and I thought that it was great, but I didn’t appreciate the significance of it. My editor had to explain it to me and I think he was disappointed at the lack of excitement on my end of the phone because I really didn’t know what it meant. He told me I had to get on a plane and fly to Chicago because they like when people who get the medal are there to accept it. That is sort of a nostalgic reflection of the good old days because I don’t think publishers are in positions now to buy a ticket for their writers to fly halfway across the country just so an author can stand up and accept an award. 

Did the reaction to that first book change the way you looked at the prospect of being an illustrator and writer? 

I took my possible career as an illustrator a little more seriously, but after initially finishing the book, I just went back to making sculptures and thought you know, that’s done. I had fun making the book, but I didn’t expect so many people to buy the book. My expectation at first was that at one point the book would be remaindered and I could buy a bunch of copies for like two bucks each and I’d have Christmas presents for the rest of my life to give out. It turned out much differently though. I started thinking ‘well I did an okay job on that book and I’m proud of it but because it was my first one I could definitely do something better if I tried again.’ So, I made a conscientious effort to develop my skills and made my second book, Jumanji.  

I want to just go back for a second. During all of this you are living in Providence still. After graduation, so many college students usually leave the area they went to school. What made you and your wife stay in Providence then and so many years after?  

I think people whose ambition and goal is to become a fine artist can’t do that without a gallery or dealer. If you were in RISD and you had that dream, it would almost certainly push you towards New York because that’s where you could establish those relationships. I’d been to New York a few times and I didn’t like it so I wasn’t drawn to that. At that point I still had no ambitions to be an illustrator but I did have ambitions to be a sculptor. Living in New York would probably be beneficial but because of obstacles like the cost it never was really considered. Because there are so many RISD people around the city, the city’s welcoming to artists. There are places to get the art materials you need and it was much cheaper to live than New York. My wife still had a job as a teacher in the school system so we had an income through that and assuming it ever happened that I’d be able to sell my art enough to support us, we stayed for that reason too. We lived on the East Side for around 40 years.  

You mentioned Jumanji a little bit ago. That was another wild success and was adapted into a feature film with huge names like Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt and Kirsten Dunst. How was that process going from page to screen, especially on such a huge scale?  

It was kind of exciting. I had an involvement with it that was actually somewhat consequential. They optioned the option book, which is what happens in Hollywood all the time, and means that a studio will option a literary property and see if it can be adapted into a film. They use that option as a way of being able to control the underlying rights because so often a book will be optioned but during the course of trying to get a script, they realize that they were wrong and it won’t be easily translated to film. You’ll read about an author who’s had this great excitement around their work and that its going to be optioned to be a movie. Frequently despite the best efforts of the screenwriters involved, they can’t really create something that will make a film. That actually happened with Jumanji. After about a year and a half there was a very good idea that interested the studio but the writers who finally prepared the script didn’t exploit the idea very effectively and the studio was going to pass on it. That is hard news for an author, but a greater disappointment can be they make a film which is so awful that you are devastated by it and it places a stigma on the book you wrote forever. I digress though. So, the studio is thinking of letting the option lapse but I talk to the producers. They say there’s just not enough there for them and they don’t feel like this idea that the original writers had was working well or being exploited as well as it could. So, I said let me give it a shot. I come up with a few core elements of the story that wouldn’t be there otherwise. The game’s ability to entrap the game player, Alan Parrish played by Robin Williams, wasn’t being used in a way that made an engaging film. So I had these ideas about how to bring together the idea that the town fell apart because the company that Alans father ran shut down after Alan went missing and the girl he had played the game with had become a basket of neuroses due to her witnessing Alan getting stuck in the game which further complicated the fact that the game was dependent on her engagement with it. I was trying to bring all these kinds of emotional notes to the story that grew naturally out of the premise. I had reached a dead end because there was not a way in the original script to redeem and reward the protagonist. That’s when I had this idea of a more careful reading of the instructions, which meant not only did the game end, but it actually wound back in time. It made it so the game never happened, like you go back to the moment before you roll the dice. It made it possible to give Alan his life back and in turn give everyone else their life back. So, these were ideas that I provided on my own and the studio loved them. They got a director who wanted it to be more of an action film so all of the action was added as a rewrite. The action wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t end up being the kind of film I imagined. They changed a lot of things in there like the dialogue but the character notes I had tried to establish survived which was a satisfaction to me. There’s a real incentive to have a screen credit because your compensation is based on the screen credit. I received a letter from the writer’s guild informing me that I would not be getting a screen credit, which was a puzzlement to me since so much of what’s on the screen was a contribution of mine. They explained to me that every idea that is in the underlining material belongs to the original writers. That means if you’re looking at the script, the fact that there’s a game that comes to life through a roll of the dice, that idea actually belonged to the original screenwriters who created the screenplay that the studio rejected.  

But it’s your book, this doesn’t seem fair.  

The author of the book doesn’t get any credit except for based on the book by. So, the screenwriters got the screen credit and I got a story credit, which means I was credited in the film for having created the story that is embedded in the screenplay which is a separate thing from the story that appears in the book.  

So, would you say it was a positive first experience working in the film world? 

CVA: Good question. It was positive in the sense that it made me understand that as a holder of underlying material, as a rights holder, you have nothing. You have no power or influence at all. The contracts will stipulate that you as the rights holder have consulting privileges, which means that the studio is obliged to show you scripts. But you don’t have approval over it. It will be what they want it to be, what they choose. So, you don’t have any real influence. The only way you can really have influence is to be a true producer. Acquire that kind of status in a project and you can have a real effect. If you’re just the guy or girl who wrote the book, you got nothing. It will be what they want it to be.  

It seems like they’re just using the bones of the story then the rest is up to them.  

 Exactly. Sometimes not even the bones. Sometimes they’re just going to exploit the title.  

Was Zathura a better experience seeing that you knew what to expect? 

I didn’t have much to do with that. I mean the screenwriter for that was an A list smart guy. I would have done things slightly different, but I thought Zathura was a pretty good, fun movie.  

As we’re talking about your works it’s truly mind boggling how many iconic children’s books you’ve created. In my eyes and many others, you’ve put out some of the most memorable projects, and they are written to be easily revisited. The Widows Broom during Halloween and The Polar Express during the holidays. What of your works do you hope gets remembered the most?  

Well, if I sort of did the same thing every time I sat down to make a book, I might be able to pick one out that I thought was the best of them. Because I’ve always used slightly different materials, I have slightly different approaches to the kind of story I want to tell. They’re not all apples; some are apples, but some are oranges and kumquats. So, it’s hard to pick out one that I hope is remembered. I mean, obviously I hope they all are. Bad Day at River Bend. You know, it’s a strange little book about the power of a child when they’re playing in a coloring book without an appreciation for what they’re doing to the characters book. I can make an argument for a couple that aren’t as worthy of being read by every child in America for eternity. Generally, I am always a little disappointed with a piece after finishing it because its never as great as I imagined it would be when I started it. In my imagination, its so much more. At first, the book is an ideal thing but when I get done with it, its no longer ideal. I see the ways in which I didn’t do it as well as I thought I could. Having said that, I’m never embarrassed by something I’ve created. I mean, some of them are pretty good and I’m happy they get taken out of shelves on the regular.  

It’s probably like picking your favorite child, but are there any standouts for you personally? 

I used to not answer that because it would indicate that I’m somehow disappointed with all the rest, but I’ve already confessed to that, so I don’t know. A lot of picture book makers body of work is basically doing the same book over and over. One might be a little bit better than the other and it’s perfectly reasonable to compare them to each other. But with me, as I’ve said, I always try to start anew. When I start again, I try not to do the same thing, though I know there’s a certain quality to my work that’s constant. I’ve done a nonfiction book which I think is pretty great in terms of how it uses book design to tell a story because of the way the pictures interact with the text. Queen of the Falls, which is about the woman who went over Niagara in the barrel, might be the best design book in terms of getting pictures and text to be side by side and enliven each other. I’ll say The Widows Broom is like an old fairy tale. Even though I don’t consider myself a wordsmith, the way it’s told is consistent with the feeling of an old folk tale, which is what I was trying to create on the page. It also has a slightly political note in it. This idea that people are prepared to think the worst of something that they don’t understand and prepared to burn it. It has a lot of strength so I would have to say that one as well.  

Going off that last question, you really do have such a legacy. When raising your children and now being part of your grandchildren’s lives, did you read to your children some of your books back then and do you read your books to your grandchildren now?  

I would read to my kids, and I read to my grandchildren now, but never my own books. It just feels awkward. When my children were young, they at one point just asked me to pick out a different book whenever I tried to read my own. I have a five year old and one year old for grandchildren, so they are a little young I think. One of the things that’s a little peculiar or unusual about what I’ve ended up writing and illustrating is that I never think about my audience really. I never think who I’m writing for. When I do look back or go into a bookstore and see what they’re selling, I can tell that the things I’ve done are really for kids who are sort of at the end of the picture book age. I think 8, 9- or 10-year-olds are ready to tune in. Writing for really young kids is a special kind of gift, one that I don’t know if I have.  

I do think that there is a sophistication with your books. The way you draw just has such a timelessness to it. Like in the Sweetest Fig, that could have been written really in any time period it seems through how its drawn. How’d you find that signature style?  

I don’t know really. When I first started thinking about drawing, I wasn’t interested in this kind of invention. I didn’t want to invent characters. Clearly, I wanted to make stuff up, but I didn’t want to make everything up. I thought my books would be more effective if I had drawings that tried to present the story that the children were reading as a reality. For that reason, I use a more presentational style of picture making. I’d done the Garden of Abdul Gasazi and worked in a very cartoony style. It was brightly colored and clear that the artist had taken the trouble to look at a model or look at a tree for reference. I mean, when you look at so many children’s books, it’s clear the only thing that was at work really was the artists imagination and they weren’t processing the real world and trying to reproduce it on a sheet of paper. I believe it must have occurred to me that if I was going to write these kinds of fantasies, that they would be more engaging and compelling if the artwork that accompanied them made it seem like it was more likely that the fantasy had happened.  

Did any areas of Providence influence your work? 

When I got to Providence, the abandoned industrial spaces weren’t like anything where I had lived in the Grand Rapids. Travelling around Providence and Fall River, I see these giant old industrial buildings, and I think they actually had a part in my imagining what the North Pole would look like in The Polar Express. When I wrote the Garden of Abdul Gasazi, I lived near Blackstone Boulevard. I actually spent a fair amount of time in Swan Point Cemetery because of its beauty. The illustration that I originally mentioned working off of for my first book was influenced by Swan Point Cemetery. It peaked my interest in those topiary garden pictures I was drawing so Swan Point had a huge influence on Garden of Abdul Gasazi.  

You mentioned it so let’s talk about it. The Polar Express has a keepsake edition complete with an Advent calendar and Christmas tree popup to decorate. Does it blow your mind a little bit that even after all these years The Polar Express is being reimagined and revisited in all these creative ways? 

The mind remains unblown. My wife has mentioned that I don’t seem to savor or delight in the success of the book in the way I should.  

You do seem very modest and humble. What do you think that is? 

 I’m not really a humbug but as I touched on, I’m always a little disappointed with the things I make once I’m finished with them because of the difference between what I wanted to do and what I ended up doing. As a result, there’s a fair measure of detachment between me and the thing I’ve made. I think at that point the detachment inclines me to think of the success as the success of the book and not the author. I don’t feel attached to it anymore. I’m really happy people love my books book, but I don’t feel like they love me.  

But you created it, you created the whole world they love.  

Yeah, but I just don’t feel the attachment to it that allows me to dip into it. I can’t overstate it, it’s an extraordinary thing in a writer’s life to have a book that finds such a broad audience. I go to book signings and hear the importance of the book from all these people and I’ve even been on The Polar Express rides on real trains. Those train rides aren’t just in America, they’re in Europe and so that I can freely admit is extraordinary. I just honestly don’t really know what to do with it. It doesn’t seem appropriate to savor it and gleefully say I did this and created this. It’s terrific that the books success happened, but I don’t feel connected to it like that. If it happened to somebody else’s life I’d say that that’s great, so I’m extremely fortunate it happened to mine.  

You are a very successful author and illustrator. Thinking back to that little Michigan boy making the model airplanes, what would you tell him about how his life turned out?  

I have a very literal imagination, so contemplating that question is hard. Revisiting my ten-year-old self, I might not tell him anything. The youngster might be freaked out by this old guy who pretends to know what his future is going to be and the old guy I think might not want to tell him because, spoiler alert.  

Well, there’s your next book right there. It’s funny you say that you have a literal imagination seeing that you’ve created all these magical worlds and characters. 

Once I embrace a fantastic premise, I restrict myself to that simple premise. Nothing else weird can go on, that’s that one single idea that I’m sticking with. I distinguish between the things I’ve done and fantasies that are entirely fantastic where they’re set in. To me, fantasies aren’t interesting in places where anything can happen. They’re the most interesting if they’re clearly set in the real world that we recognize, where every other law still holds true. 

I have some fun, not deep thinker questions to finish us off. Do you feel more East Coaster or Midwestern at this point in your life?  

Oh Midwestern. My older daughter lives in Michigan now so we go back to Ann Arbor fairly regularly. My wife and I moved to Providence when we were 21 and 22 so you’d figure enough time has passed to wash the Midwest out of us, but I think we’re still Midwesterners.  

Speaking of your wife, when you were living in Providence what was a go to date night spot? 

Even though we lived in Rhode Island for 40 years, its remarkable given how small the state is and how relatively close together things are, that we spent almost all 40 of those years on the east side. We’re in the North Shore now but we miss the culinary standards of Providence. We were regulars at New Rivers and Al Forno. Date night always included a good restaurant. We’d also frequent the Avon as well, which I hope is still there.  

It is still there, unfortunately the Cable Car is not.  

CVA: We did go to the Cable Car. I was always a little freaked out when the lights were on because you could see the condition of the sofa.  

Can I ask about your decision to leave Providence after so many years here? 

We were at a point in our lives where our kids were getting older, one was in boarding school and one was in college. When we had the opportunity to contemplate living elsewhere, we decided we didn’t want to leave New England. Even though we thought of ourselves as Midwesterners, we didn’t want to leave New England partly because we like living in a solid blue area. We like the landscape here and the age of the place, it’s the oldest part of America. We always lived in suburbs, I did, Lisa my wife did, and then we moved to the East Side which isn’t truly a suburb because it’s part of Providence, but it felt like a suburb. We were right off Blackstone Boulevard for majority of the time we lived in Providence. As we got older we decided, you know, it’d be great to live in a place where when you looked out your window, you couldn’t see any other house. We didn’t necessarily want to live in the country, but some privacy would be nice. We thought about staying in Providence, but the benefit of real estate searching now, or the way in which the internet empowers real estate searches is pretty phenomenal. You can do a deep search pretty much anywhere on the planet. So we looked at places in Little Compton and other areas but we were hit by a place up on the North Shore that was quite enchanting. It’s five and half acres and we can see the Atlantic from the windows. It’s an old granite carriage house which was very tastefully renovated about 20 years ago. 
 

Did you have a tough time saying goodbye to Providence? 

It doesn’t really matter what your feelings are about a place for 40 years, when you leave it you’re pulling up some roots. We definitely miss it, walking down Blackstone Boulevard and walking through Swan Point Cemetery. We explored a little when we first moved to the North Shore but it’s funny, we almost settled back into this tiny little world like we did in Providence. We live in this little enclave, and days go by where we don’t even leave it.  

It sounds like you’ve set down roots in a beautiful home and area. Has the newer location gotten the juices flowing for maybe a new book?  

It actually had the opposite effect because I underestimated the sort of importance in my own kind of artistic temperament of being in the place where I worked. Before, I knew the neighborhood and immediate area so well that I wasn’t distracted. I used to think, I’m not bored of where I am but I’m familiar with where I am so there was nothing else to do but make some work. When we got up here it was different. Being in a new environment was really distracting for me. Obviously I’ve been up here for 16 years and done some work.  

Are you working on anything right now that you can share? 

I’ve gotten a little bit more involved in some movie projects. Those are always risky to talk about because, as I described earlier, they can vaporize at some point because somebody changes their mind. But I’m working on a couple books for adaptation and a sequel to one of the films. It seems almost like begging for trouble to talk about the movie projects because it seems like I’ll jinx it.