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Best-selling author talks about ‘The Cardturner’

handout Author Louis Sachar. Contributed photo

ENLARGE PHOTO

handout Author Louis Sachar. Contributed photo

ENLARGE PHOTO

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By Lauren Karch, Staff Writer Updated 5:03 PM Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Louis Sachar, best-selling and Newbery award-winning author of “Holes,” “Small Steps,” “Sideways Stories From Wayside School” and a host of other children’s books will visit Books & Co. at The Greene on Saturday, May 15. We talked to him in advance of his trip to Dayton about his connections to the area, his writing career and his new book, “The Cardturner.”

Q You briefly attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs. How does it feel to return to the area?

A Yes, I attended for a quarter. Then, when my father died, I transferred closer to home. It’s still kind of nice to return to the place where I was a struggling student, now somewhat of a success.

Q Your newest novel, “The Cardturner,” focuses on Alton Richards, a teenager who is told by his parents that he must accompany his rich great-uncle, Trapp, to bridge club four times a week. Over the course of the novel, Alton picks up the basics of bridge. When did you learn to play?

A I learned from my parents when I was 10 or 12 years old, and didn’t play until my early 40s. I never knew anybody who played. I don’t think of it as an old person’s game. People used to play it in their 20s; it just hasn’t been passed down to the next generation.

Q So you’re now quite practiced in bridge?

A I play probably four days a week, and I go to tournaments as well. It’s a game that has new challenges popping up in every new hand. Some of the bigger challenges you can face through experience, but each game is different.

Q What lessons do you think readers can learn from bridge?

A It changes your mind to think logically and to plan ahead and be flexible. What I like most about the game is that it’s a partnership game; you and your partner cooperating and exchanging cards, working together to solve a puzzle.

Q You’ve said that you start each book with a “very small idea.” What was the small idea for “The Cardturner?”

A It was just the basic concept that a 17-year-old boy would basically have this job of taking this 75 or 80-year-old blind man to the club and turning the cards. Just the dynamics between those two people was a starting point.

Q Where do you find inspiration for your characters?

A Mostly it comes from me just sitting at my desk and trying to come up with something. I think I tried a number of different things. I wrote one piece that isn’t in the book any more, it was the main character talking about his uncle. I liked that tone; he was a 17- year-old kid, but, when he wrote, he didn’t write like a 17-year-old talks. I think most people are like that, they have a different voice when we talk. Especially with young people. Young people have a pressure to act a certain way, but, I think alone, they’re much more reflective than they let on.

Q Was any one person the inspiration for The Cardturner’s main character?

A A lot of it is thinking back and imagining myself as I was at 17. After I wrote it, I let my 21-year-old daughter read it. After she finished, she said, “He’s just like you, isn’t he?” I was surprised that she’d seen how much of myself I’d put into Alton’s character. I said, “You mean Alton?” She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “No, Trapp.”

Q In the book, Alton, the narrator, uses a whale symbol to denote areas that will be heavy in bridge. How did you decide how much bridge to include in the story?

A That was probably the hardest part. To me it was all very simple. I’m used to reading bridge columns and bridge books. It was hard to figure out what would be readable to the reader. Fortunately, I had an editor who had never played bridge before, she was able to tell me what parts were readable, and what parts had too much.

Q What were you able to try in “The Cardturner” that you hadn’t tried before?

A Quite a lot. It’s the first book I’ve written in first-person. I took on what seems like the impossible task of having bridge be an important part of the book, knowing that most players hadn’t played the game or maybe even heard of it. So I had to figure out how to make bridge interesting and readable.

Q You previously worked as a lawyer while writing children’s books. How did you switch from lawyer-think to author-think?

A I never worked full-time as a lawyer, which I think is fortunate. I may have found it harder to make that switch if I did. I passed the bar in California, but was always interested in writing. I looked for law jobs, but my heart wasn’t in it. I ended up in part-time jobs I found through friends. For the first four years, every night, I would agonize. I’d think, tomorrow I’m going to go out and get a job. After four years I thought, look, you’ve obviously made a choice, so quit kicking yourself about it. I continued doing law work part-time for four more years until my writing took off enough that I could do it full time.

Q Anything else you’d like to say about your upcoming tour?

A For the last six months, I’ve been working on a play based on the book “Small Steps.” In the book there are songs, so I’ll play some of the music from the play for those who always wondered what those songs sound like.