Medieval Fantasy and a Spot of Tea

Brian Jacques’ right hand was killing him. It was wrapped in an ace bandage as he sat at the table, signing his name over and over again. Yet the line of people who had come to see him at Borders Books in Torrance still wound its way past the sports section and into self-help.

Most of those in line were youngsters, with a sprinkling of parents and adult fans. They were waiting for their moment with the man who had brought them the world of Redwall, with its mice and rats, shoats and weasels, hawks and moles, anthropomorphized forest creatures constantly flung into battles of good versus evil.

As each fan reached the front of the line, Jacques (pronounced “Jakes”) would glance up from the table and his eyes would crinkle as he espied the next autograph hound.

“Hello, lad,” he said to one nervous boy in his deep, stentorian voice. “Too shy for a photo? Come on around. Now make a big [muscle]. There you go, lad.” And then, “Cheers, mate,” after a picture had been snapped and the boy was leaving, beaming at his good fortune.

The scene went on for an hour and a half as more than 400 people made their way to the table for the autograph of the most famous children’s storyteller this side of J.K. Rowling. When the last book was signed, Jacques happily retreated to the store’s loading dock for a cigarette and a cup of tea before moving on to San Diego.

The Torrance stop was part of a grueling 36-city tour of the United States to promote his new book, this one featuring real people but still retaining the air of magic and mysticism that characterized the 14 books of the “Redwall” series.

Inside the store, Madrona Middle School English teacher Sally Jackson was rhapsodizing about the luck of finding out weeks earlier that Jacques would be on hand. A small army of her students had made posters and participated in “Redwall” book talks in anticipation of the big day when they would get to see the man himself at this signing. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Jackson. “They’ll never forget this.”

Such is the mystique of Jacques, who grew up poor in Liverpool and wasn’t much better off as he entered middle age. Yet at 61, he has 3.5 million books in print, a televised series based on the books for PBS, and he’s squired about on tour in a stretch limousine.

For the uninitiated, the “Redwall” series is populated by robed forest creatures constantly locked in mortal and very bloody combat. Mice, moles, otters, hares and badgers are the good guys. They are, without fail, brave, true and kind. Rats, foxes, snakes, ferrets and the like are evil, cunning and depraved. They also are predictably vanquished by the end of each book.

In the inevitable comparison between himself and Rowling, a bemused Jacques likes to point out that he arrived on the scene first. And that before Rowling became immensely popular, he was often compared to J.R.R. Tolkien.

In Jacques’ latest effort, “Castaways of the Flying Dutchman,” the protagonists are a boy and his dog who wander through the centuries without aging, righting wrongs in places an angel tells them to go. Though a departure from the “Redwall” menagerie, the formula is the tried-and-true good versus evil. In “Castaways,” it’s the greedy land developer versus the aging, defenseless widow who is about to lose everything.

And, like Jacques’ other books, “Castaways” is filled with riddles and puzzles that have become part of his trademark, one that has won him legions of young readers.

“They don’t desert me, you know,” said Jacques, while sipping yet another cup of tea at a nearby restaurant. On this day, he was dressed completely in black, with a thick gold chain adorning his neck. Gold rings flashed on both hands, and a pricey gold watch was affixed to his wrist. At home in Liverpool is a Lexus that cost more than his first home. On the night he bought the car, Jacques awoke several times to look out the window at it, as if it were an improbable vision.

“I was a poor man until 15 years ago,” he said. “I had very little to look forward to. Sometimes I’d wake up at 3 in the morning wondering how I was going to pay a bill. And the great thing is that I don’t have to do that anymore.”

There may be some storyteller’s exaggeration in Jacques’ poor-to-rich saga, but not much. Raised around the Liverpool docks, the son of a truck driver, he left school at 15 and went to sea with the merchant marine. His list of jobs for the next 25 years was a long road of drudgery rather than a track toward authordom--railway fireman, longshoreman, long-distance trucker, logger, bus driver, policeman and postmaster. Along the way, he fathered two sons, now a bricklayer and a muralist, but beyond that he demurs in discussing his private life, the inference being that it has been a rough road at times.

The only hint of fun is two entries on the informal resume: folk singer and stand-up comic, both of which he borrows from to entertain his young audiences, who giggle with delight at his humorous monologues and expressive face.

Two stories worth telling about Jacques (and they are told often) are these: When he was 10 years old and a new student at St. John’s School in inner-city Liverpool, he was assigned to write a story about animals. Jacques turned in one about a bird that cleaned a crocodile’s teeth. The teacher accused him of copying the story and caned him. The caning was meant to punish young Jacques, but because the work was actually his own, it instilled in him instead a confidence about his ability to write.

The second is about the beginnings of the first “Redwall” book, written when Jacques had already reached his mid-40s. While he was working as a milk deliveryman, one of his stops was the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind in Liverpool. He began volunteering to read stories to the children there, which made him think that perhaps he could spin a better tale.

For that first effort, Jacques chose animals to be his characters, though each one was modeled after a human he knew. Jacques produced an 800-page, handwritten manuscript in seven months, which he turned over to a friend in a grocery bag.

In one of those moments that has been added to literary lore, that friend, a retired teacher, sent the manuscript to several British publishers without Jacques’ knowledge. “Redwall” was purchased in 1986 for little more than $4,000, but Jacques also was given a contract to write four more books, and thus a series was born. From that first sale until now, Jacques has produced roughly a book a year. They have been published in 16 languages, and all are still in print, now published by Penguin Putnam.

Though “Redwall” has made Jacques a wealthy man, he retains a nervousness about his work, a feeling that what he does for a living is not real toil. “I still have that Catholic guilt,” he said. “In the morning when I hear the car doors slamming as people go off to work, I say to myself, why aren’t I doing that?”

For all the success, Jacques is not without his critics. He has been variously described as someone whose stories are altogether predictable, whose style is riddled with narrative cliches and whose characters are stereotypes. Critics also have taken him to task for his long, overly detailed descriptions of sumptuous feasts that turn up time and again in his books.

From the original “Redwall”: “Brother Alf remarked that Friar Hugo had excelled himself, as course after course was brought to the table. Tender freshwater shrimp garnished with cream and rose leaves, deviled barley pearls in acorn puree, apple and carrot chews, marinated cabbage stalks steeped in creamed white turnip with nutmeg. . . .”

Jacques shrugs it off, saying it’s a casualty of growing up poor during World War II, when food was rationed and money was in even shorter supply than usual. “So then I’d be reading and the book would say something like, ‘The king had a great feast.’ And I’d say to myself, ‘Hang on, man. What did they have to eat? What did it look like? How did they make it? Was there plenty for everybody?’ It’s as much a part of the adventure as the battles, the riddles and the rhymes.”

These days, Jacques’ life follows a fairly set pattern. Eight or nine months a year are spent writing the next book. He has a Sunday radio program in Liverpool called “Jakestown,” in which he shares his views of the world while playing operatic favorites. Once a book is published, the publicity tour begins. On this round, Jacques even visited a Florida prison where part of the inmate rehabilitation program is mandatory reading of the “Redwall” series, for its clear-cut good-versus-evil themes.

Jacques said the secret of his popularity is telling a good story with simple virtues that are easily understood. “I always say to the kids, ‘I’ll write you a good yarn. You look for that name Brian Jacques, and you’ll know it’s a good yarn.’ ”

The other part of his success, he said, is not writing down to children, but giving them credit for their ability to enjoy thick books with big words. Jacques said he occasionally is questioned by editors about words in his manuscript that children might not readily know.

“I always say, ‘Let the children get out the dictionary or a thesaurus.’ Once they’ve learned the word, it’s another one in their vocabulary.”