| Interviews: The Scribe of Shangri-La (1/10) | ||
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| by Debra J. Hotaling, LATimes Magazine, 11-14-1999 They face each other from across a card table, Francesca Lia Block and a jury of her protagonist's peers. The girls, all 12 to 15 years old, sit in folding chairs in the back room of the Midnight Special Bookstore in Santa Monica, paperbacks in hand.  Everyone looks shy. They've came across town on a school night to grill Block, the author of five below-adult-radar literary hits known collectively as the "Weetzie Bat" books. Sweet, angry, cool and always a back-handed celebration of L.A., her novels make you want to throw on a taffeta dress and drive to Pink's for a chili dog. But know this: Sex, AIDS, drugs, coming out, global warming and anorexia all figure into Weetzie Bat's world. And so do magic lamps, Tiny Naylor's, fairies, Burt Reynolds' toupee and the guilty pleasure of smoggy L.A. sunsets. Sarah: Do you write your books to be different? FLB: If you listen to your inner voice, the work is going to be different. I had to write a pitch for a movie adaptation of one of my books. The woman said, "Oh, this is very dark. Really, we want something lighter." (Laughter and shrugs) As my editor said, my characters go through stuff. But I also see magic in life. I totally believe in that idea. And I see the dark stuff. Both need to be there for the story to be complete. Forty years ago, coming-of-age novels were mostly formulaic morality tales meant to dampen unruly hormones. In the '60s, the so-called "young adult" publishing niche took off alongside divorce, drugs and experimental sex. S.E. Hinton's "The Outsiders" became a genre classic. Judy Blume and Richard Peck, among others, also nailed the adolescent point-of-view. Block clearly wants to move beyond the YA label. Her last "Weetzie Bat" title was published in 1995, and she released the more grown-up "Violet and Claire" this fall. Yet she cannot shake the skinny girl with the bleach-blond flat-top and sugar-frosted eye shadow. Weetzie Bat is a bona fide underground hero, the subject of countless zine articles, far-flung fan mail and plenty of pointed questions. |
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