Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

Exciting news!

I have had the distinct pleasure of receiving a reply from Peter S. Beagle in response to my Non-review regarding The Last Unicorn which I sent to him for his approval. I have attached his response to the original Non-review and I post his response again here:

“Dear Chris:

Thank you more than I can tell you for your letter!

The key to understanding THE LAST UNICORN is that I was making it up as I went along.  Literally.  I have a very clear memory of the summer I spent somewhere in New England, sharing a cabin with my oldest friend, a painter I’d known since we were about four years old.  He came in from working about midday, looked over my shoulder and read, “‘The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone..,’  What’s a damn lilac wood?”

I looked up from my kitchen table and snarled, “What the fuck do I know?  Go paint, for heaven’s sake!”

He laughed, grabbed a snack out of the fridge, and went back to painting until dinnertime.  And in the evening we made some sort of dinner, and then we stayed up playing our guitars all night.  That was very long ago.

The movie was actually made as I wrote the script, which is something I’ve come to learn was a remarkable occurrence.  Both Alan Arkin and Christopher Lee (both astonishing, fascinating men and actors, as I came to know them) stayed friends of mine until they died, which is a wonderful thing by itself.

Thank you so much for your letter, Chris.  It brightened my day, and days beyond it, more than I can possibly ever tell you.

Yours,

Peter S. Beagle”

Obviously a very nice man. Such an honor this was. If you would like to read the original Non-review to which Mr. Beagle’s reply is referring, I welcome you to tap the link below and have a lovely eternity: