Mentor was the inspiration for a lifetime of memories

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

I met Bob Cormier in the fall of '81, nearly 20 years ago. Hard to believe. I drove to his house in Leominster to interview him, not knowing how to interview, winging it, freelancing for The Patriot Ledger, but what did I know? I wasn't a real writer. Bob Cormier was. I'd spent the summer reading his books, one right after the other, while my kids played, while my husband drove, while whatever was cooking on the stove burned. I loved his work. Could I come and talk to him? I wrote.

He answered on the thin, shiny, erasable bond paper that I will always associate with him. "I'd be happy to meet you and talk and be interviewed. I write at home. My telephone number is" and there it was.

He was that accessible.

He sat in a rocking chair and I sat on a green and gold couch, my tape recorder between us on a gray October day that seemed torn from a page of one of his books. And he talked to me about his writing and his life. And we became friends. And he became my mentor. And because of him, I do what I do.

He gave me a short course in writing and in life that afternoon and showed me how you could combine the two, and how it didn't matter if you had a degree in English or journalism.

He never had any formal writing classes. "More important than talent is discipline," he said. "I had rejection after rejection. I'd set a goal. Collier's magazine. I sent them stories. They sent me rejections. This went on for a year and a half."

He was a newspaperman for 25 years. He wrote 1,100 columns about ordinary life. He wrote his first book nights and weekends. "One thing that Connie (his wife) has always done is create an atmosphere in which I can write. But I've always been aware of being a husband and a father before being a writer because those things are important to me." He never had a door on his office. His office was a small room off the dining room. He said he never wanted to shut his family out.

"I used to think writers were on pedestals and for years I was inhibited. When I was a kid, I used to think I could never be anybody. I could never be Thomas Wolfe."

He told me: "When you're a writer, you keep your pores open. You never look at a movie and just enjoy it or take a bus and relax. The bad times you accept because they're grist for the mill someday."

He said: "I call myself a writer but I'm really a rewriter. I do two things when I rewrite. I cut and cut and then I search for the perfect word. The reader doesn't see all the stuff you throw away. But I get joy out of writing itself."

"All my ideas come from emotions," he said. "Emotions are timeless and they bind us together. I've seen my children on a rainy day sitting at the window looking out feeling lonely and I think it's the same loneliness that an 85-year-old woman feels in her room downtown looking out on Main Street."

"I write for the ear as well as the eye."

He liked the word cellophane. And yearn.

"I never have writer's block. The words always come, but sometimes they're awful," he said.

They were never awful. I have pages of his words in books and in letters. They have entertained and enlightened and encouraged and comforted me. And not just me. He answered every letter everyone wrote. Kids wrote to him from all over the world and he wrote back. They called him - he put his phone number in one of his books - and he talked to them.

"They want me to explain things or they want to be writers and ask if I can give them advice. It's terrific, really."

He loved old movies and bad puns and all people, his wife and children most, and his children's children passionately. He wrote about the dark side of human nature but always saw the good side. He suffered losses, but appreciated all he had.

"I don't want to die tomorrow," he said the day I met him. "But if I die tomorrow it wouldn't be with that much regret. My life has been full. I've been married, I've had children, the affection of friends, I've written what I've wanted. I've been fulfilled."

My last letter from him was an e-mail. He wrote it from a summer place he and his wife had built a few years ago. It was full of happy talk about his "cozy" quarters and "what Connie calls 'playing house,' " and about the joy of becoming even closer to all his children and grandchildren. "Things were fine before," he wrote. "But somehow it all deepens."

Robert Cormier died Thursday. He was 75.