The universe speaks
From the start, Rich was trying to depict how the child’s imagination takes control of the mind and creates an alternate reality.
“My determination to do this was greatly influenced by Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, which I read for the first time during my college years and has continued with me ever since. While I was working on Too Far, I visited Ibsen’s home in Oslo. I was walking back to my hotel. I stopped, parked on some steps, and re-read the play while the sun set over the harbor.
“Ibsen has the forces of the universe speak to Peer through fantasy characters. One of the wonderful things about the play is that it turns reality inside-out. All of the things that happen to Peer in the real world are less important than his interactions with the fantasy characters, drawn from Norwegian folklore. It’s in those scenes that his crises and decisions occur. The play isn’t about Peer’s struggle with other humans. It’s about his struggle with the forces of the universe and with his own character.
“Robbie and Fristeen live in a world born from their minds. But that world includes characters that say things to them that they can’t fathom. That no child could fathom. I love that idea, and I believe it expresses a fundamental truth about the power of the imagination.
Writing Too Far was also an opportunity for Rich to be six again:
“I lived in an imaginary world when I was that age. Later, when I was 18 and 19, there were moments on LSD when I felt like I had recaptured that same boundlessness. When my imagination is burning hottest, I feel like I’m six again. So casting myself into the minds of six-year-old characters was a treat.”
Not kids' stuff
Despite the age of the protagonists, and the fact that it reads like a parable, Too Far is decidedly not for kids.
“There are books for children that work for adults. And there are books that seem to be for children, but are really for adults. Too Far belongs to the latter group.
“The Wind in the Willows is a good example of a book that seems to be for children, but isn’t. It starts to work when you’re an adolescent, I think. Rat’s encounter with Pan—that’s not kids’ stuff. And all the commentary on Toad—his materialism and type–A obsessions. You need to be older to understand most of that.
“Likewise with Platero and I, which found its way into my hands when I was very young. My understanding of the book has grown over the years, but it still has a lot to teach me. The language and the vignettes are so simple that it’s easily mistaken for a children’s book.”
“There are books for children that
work for adults. And there are
books that seem to be for children,
but are really for adults. Too Far
belongs to the latter group.”
