The December issue of Notes usually just consists of Fanfare, an embarrassment of riches in itself. But we couldn’t be luckier — and we couldn’t be happier — to have a chance to interview longtime Friend of the Horn Book Gregory Maguire. Maguire wrote the 1995 adult book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Regan/HarperCollins), which was adapted as a stage musical in 2003 and again, in 2024, as a movie (heard of it?!). Mild spoilers below.

1. Your Wicked was inspired by L. Frank Baum’s Oz books and the Wizard of Oz movie. Now that you’ve been through it — twice — how, in your mind, does your story relate to subsequent versions?

Gregory Maguire: This question came up recently in a conversation with Casey McQuiston, author of Red, White & Royal Blue. Casey proposed that a film version of a novel is something like a fraternal twin, one who has been raised in another household. The family resemblance is apparent, but the upbringing has wrought discernible changes. Spot on! Now that there is a movie version of Wicked as well as the Broadway musical, I find myself the father of triplets. Identifiably distinct, rising from the same gene pool.

2. What about the very different audiences? Readers, in case you’ve missed it: Wicked is not a children’s book.

GM: I’ve been asked why there isn’t an adaptation of my novel to appeal to younger people who claw their way to see the film or, if they can afford it, the Broadway show. Lost commercial opportunity, I’ve been reprimanded. I reply that there’s no such adaptation because I won’t permit it. Let those who will enjoy the Broadway and film versions — as I very much do — decide for themselves if they want to read Wicked, an adult novel, when they feel ready. I prefer to consider such a serious, big, thick, moralizing book as mine a destination read. It’s not for everyone. But I won’t have it traduced. (Of those who watched the film or theatrical versions of Camelot, perhaps only one or two went on to find T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. But those who did were rewarded for their efforts.)

I will point out that Little Golden Books offers the Lost Front Teeth Club two starter volumes, called I Am Elphaba and I Am Glinda. These two books, I neither sanction nor oppose. They do make excellent extra coasters when a flash mob drops by unexpectedly for martinis.

3. Do you have a favorite character? Has that stayed the same across the years or has it changed?

GM: I find the film version of Fiyero, the Winkie prince as they call him, sharper, probably sexier, and certainly more complicated than the stage Fiyero, who needed to be merely pretty and blameless. I can’t say I was ever certain that Elphaba was making the right decision in leaving the stage with Fiyero at the bottom of Act Two instead of lunging into the air for the iron hem of Glinda’s mechanical bubble. I like that, in the film, Jonathan Bailey plays Fiyero as more clever, rebarbative, and alluring.

But, of course, Elphaba — whose name derives from Baum’s initials, L. F. B. — is my favorite. She is the me I would be if I had some strength of character. Though I pulled her out of my own creative subconscious, Elphaba is savvier and more obstreperous than I am. For those who know Liir from my follow-up novel, Son of a Witch, I am much more like the witch’s (probable) offspring. Confused, inept, frequently lost, often whiny, but carrying on like a foot soldier despite having none of Elphaba’s skills or keen discernment. Like most of us.

4. Do you have a favorite moment or scene (or song) from the various versions?

GM: A number of my friends insist that I must have given Stephen Schwartz the lyrics for the song “For Good,” because it is so like the way that I present myself at certain sentimental moments. But Mr. Schwartz derived the essence of that song out of the reduced stock of my thick, long-simmering novel. The eleven-o’clock number is a highlight for me, emotionally. So, too, is “No Good Deed,” for its melodic derring-do. (I’m always tempted to sing “No good deed goes unpunished” around the house as “No good deed goes unpublished,” while I think about what to offer in my next social media post.)

Nonetheless, the lyrics that haunt me — and in this cause the word “haunting” is accurate — are sung by the Wizard in Act Two. They are the heart of the matter, and why I wrote the novel. Schwartz boiled it all down into three lines:

There are precious few at ease
With moral ambiguities.
So we act as though THEY DON’T EXIST.

Words for 1995, when the novel was originally published. Words for today, alas.

5. What’s one extraordinary Wicked-related thing that has happened to you?

GM: While there are a thousand choices, I think the most wonderful thing related to Wicked happened in 2004, when I was with the original cast, signing the newly pressed recording of the musical. I left my station to hover behind Idina Menzel, the original Elphaba, and to eavesdrop, Harriet-the-Spy-like, on what people in line were saying to her. Idina kept bounding from her seat and leaning over the folding tables and hugging people — mostly younger women. One such fan came near—a woman in her thirties, I’d guess. Dressed in a ghoonghat or hijab, she leaned close to Idina. In thickly accented language, she haltingly brought forward a sentence she had clearly been rehearsing in English for a while. She spoke so softly, I could hardly hear her. “I have lived in this country for SEVEN YEARS and I have never before seen myself here.” She was talking to Elphaba as much as to Idina. I had to turn away.

I hope that woman is still among us. I hope that Elphaba is still among us. We have work to do.

From the December 2024 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.