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Peter S. Beagle
By Daniel LichtermanPhoto By Dan Monick
Peter S. Beagle seems to recoil at the notion of being considered the iconic American fantasist. The idea that he has become an established fixture in the American cultural memory makes the author feel like a living anachronism. “I was just about getting used to the 20th century when they rang the 21st in on me.” With the exception of his passion for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Beagle feels himself at great distance from the visual overload of American pop culture. He recalls a clerk at his local Safeway confronting him for his failure to recognize the celebrities featured on the checkout literature, mockingly asking, “Do you realize that you’re completely out of your time?”
Born in 1939 and raised in the Bronx just one block from the expansive Woodlawn Cemetery, Beagle already knew he would be a writer by the time he was 10. As a 19-year-old undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, he wrote his first novel, A Fine and Private Place, a tale of the intertwined existences of the living and dead, set in a New York cemetery much like the one where he played hide-and-seek as a child. He followed that up with what is widely considered his masterpiece and one of the greatest fantasy novels of all time, 1968’s The Last Unicorn, which has sold over six million copies worldwide since its initial publication.
Throughout the ‘70s and early ‘80s, Beagle published several short stories and nonfiction works, and began dabbling in screenwriting. He penned screenplays for the animated renditions of The Lord of the Rings (1978) and The Last Unicorn (1982). He went on to publish four more novels from 1986 to 1999, along with several collections of short stories, essays, and other works. In 2005, Beagle published a coda to The Last Unicorn, entitled “Two Hearts,” which won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Novelette and is in the running for fantasy fiction’s two other highest honors, the World Fantasy Award and Nebula Award.
Beagle occasionally refers to himself as “the last pterodactyl” for his longstanding interest in the frequently belittled genres of fantasy and fairytale. He is quick to point out that there was a time not too long ago when everything was fantasy. Perhaps in keeping with this identification with the past, he requests that his fans write to him via snail mail—that is, unless they can find him doing what he loves second-best: performing songs in English, Yiddish, French, and German at science fiction and fantasy conventions as well as other venues near his Oakland, California, home.
Beagle himself was raised on fairy tales, and can’t remember a time when they weren’t present in his imagination. A passionate storyteller from very early on, he even made up tales while still a pre-schooler sitting in on his mother’s elementary school class. “I once told a story with unicorns in it. Then I finished up by telling the class, ‘I’ll come back sometime and tell you more about unicorns.’ I like to think that with The Last Unicorn I kept that promise.”