Lisa, Bright and Dark
Page 11
That was ridiculous, and I said so. But on the way home, I started to think about it. My Joanne Woodward had been successful beyond the dreams of even my shyer self. Maybe I could try something else, something a little more drastic, a little more advanced, on Brian now. I reached back in my mind, and came up again with Paula Prentiss’s voice—deep, musky, seductive, with humor and a sense of breathless excitement. I had only used it once before, and that hadn’t been a really fair test since it was clutch-playing. Who knew what would happen if I had warm-up time?
Afterword
Recently I received an e-mail from a grandmother who wondered if Lisa was suitable for eight and nine-year olds.
In the past few years, most Young Adult books have slid down the age/grade scale so that, for example, Edgar Allan, a family story, has been read on Staten Island in grade three. That was certainly not my intention.
I replied to this concerned grandmother that I thought some of the references in Lisa would be over the heads of eight and nine-year olds, and suggested twelve as the perfect age for this book to be read.
Then I started to worry.
So I sat down and reread the book.
What I found was that it really is a good book. It has suspense, and mystery, and romance, and a story that grabs the reader directly and doesn’t let go until its very end. (By which time we’re all in tears.)
And I also discovered that I had been correct. Ages eight and nine are too young to get the most out of this novel.
In 1969, when the book was first published, Young Adult as a category was embryonic. There were perhaps a dozen of us writing in order to keep teenagers reading in spite of how much their own lives opened up, which is to say, in spite of the competition that was daily growing: films, television, sports. We all knew that younger children could be wonderful readers. What concerned us was the drop-off when wanting to be part of a crowd would grow, when proving how sophisticated you were to your friends came to be far more important than anything contained within pasteboard covers.
Happily for me, I was living in New York City then and working for various publishers. I had access to armfuls of free books. I traveled throughout the country promoting those books that (1) a current publisher needed to launch, and (2) those that I liked, regardless of publisher. My theory was that if I could present myself as an honest broker of good reading, regardless of publisher, when my own publisher had a particularly great book to hustle, people would believe me.
It worked.
As for my own reading, it extended from In Cold Blood to I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, and down into Caldecott and Newbery territory.
Edgar Allan, published in 1968, became an instant success. Meant for family reading and discussion, it was reviewed (very nicely) as a children’s book. I was suddenly a writer of children’s books, not what I had wanted or imagined, but then again why argue with Fate?
I stumbled onto Lisa, Bright and Dark one humid summer weekend in the country. I met a psychiatrist who was someone’s house guest. He had arrived Friday afternoon late, and he was steaming. It wasn’t the weather. That afternoon he had interviewed a young woman of perhaps fifteen who was slowly sinking into schizophrenia and who knew it. And he was certain that her parents would never again allow her to meet with a professional who might, just might, be able to deal with this mysterious disease and actually help her.
For me, this was a message from Above.
A few weeks later the psychiatrist and I had dinner in New York. He was very proper. He discussed this young woman and her history without specific detail, which is to say nothing he said could possibly have led me to her door. Actually, he didn’t need to: I was already on her “doorstep.”
Having read I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Go Ask Alice, Lilith, I knew I wasn’t smart enough or good enough to write this young woman’s story from the inside. But from the outside? What about her friends, her teachers, her own family members? After all, everything she experienced impacted them, some more than others.
I took a week off from work in late August and visited my family. I set up a card table on which I put a typewriter. I began every day at nine a.m. and worked until noon. Each evening I worked from nine p.m. to midnight. I put my head down and let fly. Within one week I had the first draft completed, a feat that has never (by me, at least) been equaled. (And while I don’t have to say this, when the book was finished, I was in tears; I was weeping with relief for my characters. When I reread the book in autumn of 2012, I wept again.)
The book was published later that year. Its success was immediate, and far greater than I had hoped.
But I also discovered we were in trouble. The first letter from a reader began, “How could you know about me?”
Of course, I couldn’t. But I also couldn’t stop readers from sympathizing or even fantasizing about themselves as Lisa. I wrote many very carefully worded replies.
Meg Wolitzer, a hugely accomplished American novelist, wrote a short piece for NPR radio this year.
You know how people talk about so-called gateway drugs—drugs that lead to harder ones? I think some books can be considered gateway books, because reading them leads you to start reading other books that are similar but more intense. Lisa, Bright and Dark, John Neufeld’s 1969 novel for young adults, is one of these.
Ms. Wolitzer read the book when she was thirteen. She could well have been one of the hundreds of readers who wanted to know how I knew so much about them.
I never forgot that glass. I feared that I, too, might go mad and do something equally shocking. I looked critically at my parents across the dinner table, wondering if they would take me seriously if I told them, as Lisa tells her parents, that I needed help. I think the fear of losing one’s mind is a pretty common one for a teenager, but I think the more important idea that this book brought out in me was that, if I did fall apart, I would be taken care of.
Life began to pick up speed. The book was bought by New American Library (now Penguin) for paperback. And Bob Banner Associates of Beverly Hills made a deal to film it for television.
Bob and his company, and his wife, Alice, treated me wonderfully. Although from signing a contract to actually appearing as a Hallmark Hall of Fame on television took four years, I was always “kept in the loop.” They also flew me West to watch the filming, and to meet the remarkable young people they had cast in my story.
The only difference between Hallmark and myself about what they were doing was that I purposely had never written that Lisa’s illness was caused by her parents’ neglect. Hallmark felt that it needed to identify a singular bird to lay this egg. My own feeling was far less precise and comforting: the causes of a disease like this could have been, and usually are, many. Besides, the cause of Lisa’s illness didn’t matter at all to me. What did, and what does in the novel, too, was that while this is a frightening experience for anyone, let alone a young person, with luck and determination people will gather to help.
I’ve often been asked which character I liked best in the story. You won’t be surprised to learn I liked them all. But the real protagonist, the real engine behind the action on the page, is M.N. Fickett. M.N. appears in Edgar Allan as well, and she is just as consistent there as in Lisa. Without her drive, her curiosity, her anger, and her sympathy, Lisa as a character would probably have gone on to become, simply, lost.
Elizabeth Frazer is a favorite because of her mystery. Also, because of her guts. Understanding what Lisa is experiencing, only Elizabeth has the power and character to reach out to her in a way others cannot. And when she and Mrs. Shilling exchanged instinctive blows, I was as astonished as anyone could be.
As a writer, I knew Lisa would have to take an active role in her battle. When she ducked her head and crashed through the plate glass door—in filming, this was done more than once! Poor Kay Lenz!—I understood how she had grabbed the moment, had acted in front of new and reliable witnesses, to get her message through.
Betsy Goodman is
a good and believable narrator, I’ve always thought. Her love affair with the movies entertained me greatly, which may be, today, a certain problem for young readers, since so many of the people and films she cites are from the past. References that come instantly to Betsy are simply no longer quite so vivid after so many years.
The value of Lisa, Bright and Dark has been retained through more than four decades now. Its story can happen any day to any person. Still. Remember, while we have wonderful drugs and miracle cures being developed almost weekly, in 1969 Lithium was only experimental. And the causes of mental distress are as mysterious as ever.
So, incidentally, are the reasons the adults in Lisa behave as they do. With few exceptions, the grown-ups in this story cannot focus on anything but themselves. They are too busy; they are too self-involved; they have their own sets of fears and doubts. Many would still have to be hit over the head to see a young woman’s distress as other than a phase. And while I am certainly critical of them, I liked each as a character as much as I liked the younger players. (You have to, you see. Each character needs to be loved in order to breathe on the page. Even the most evil of monsters has to be made sympathetic and human.)
John Neufeld
April 1, 2013
Lakeville
In addition to the best-selling Lisa, Bright and Dark, John Neufeld is also the author of many novels about social issues, including Edgar Allan, which features M.N.’s family, the Ficketts. He lives in Lakeville, Connecticut, and is the author of the very popular blog Tapdancing in the Hall.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to Dr. R. G., who works with “Lisas,” and who worked with me to maintain psychological consistency.
And to others who so generously helped the manuscript develop: Jean Craig, Alice Miller, Ray Roberts, Jacqueline Weinstein, Robin Green, and to a former single lady saxophone player from Fort Worth.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
First edition published by S. G. Phillips.
Copyright © 1969, 2013 by John Neufeld
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3298-8
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