Chapter 78: Louis Sacher on sideways stories from Salinger to Steinbeck

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I was a tiny and skinny kid with thick glasses at my public school in the suburbs of Toronto in the early 80s. I was pretty lonely and definitely hadn’t found my way. One day my librarian Ms. Ferrell handed me a book called Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar.

The book single-handedly turned me into a reader.

I had never read a book that was funny, absurd, choppy that just kept me flipping, flipping, flipping. I loved the book. I fell into the book. I read it again and again and again and still have multiple copies on my bookshelf today. (A small count towards the nine million copies sold.) In 2010 when The Book of Awesome came out I wrote in the Acknowledgements: “To Louis Sachar, for writing Sideways Stories from Wayside School and teaching a nerdy kid to to fall in love with reading.”

Louis Sacher was born in East Meadow, New York in 1954 and moved to California when he was 9. He liked school but was not much of a reader until he fell into the works of J.D.Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut. He started studying at Ohio University but left to go move back with his mom after his father sadly passed away in his first semester. Later on he enrolled at Berkeley majoring in Economics.

One day, on campus, he caught sight of a young girl passing out flyers. The flyers read: “Help - Teachers Aides Wanted at Hillside Elementary - Earn 3 course credits.” It struck him as a sweet deal. No homework, no term papers, no tests. He signed up.

He soon found himself both in the classroom and on the school playground, known to the kids as “Louis the Yard Teacher”. He loved it. And it ended up changing his life.

His time at the local public school inspired him to write Sideway Stories from Wayside School. He even named the kids in the book after real kids he taught. It published in 1978 though did not make a loud splash. No fanfare. So Louis went on to Law School and practiced law for 10 years — all the while writing children’s books on the side.

His writing finally took off in 1989. He quit law to write full time and is now one of the best known children’s authors in the world. (Although I’m a Sideways junkie he’s probably sold even more copies of Holes which won him both the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and the Newbery Medal and — no biggie — was made into a giant blockbuster film, too.)

I was delighted to sit down with a childhood idol. He called us up from the suburbs of Austin, Texas and we talked about absurdity, wooing readers, drinking urine, literary heroes, celebrity culture, writing structure, The Shawshank Redemption, wrestling with doubt, and how to live a quiet life.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 78 now…