Clive on Hermione And The Moon / The Departed

It's no accident we feel safe under the moon. We're like the moon. Reflecting the light of something living; something that loves us...
...The boy squinted. Then he smiled. "You're so bright," he said."I am?"She seemed to see her radiance in his eyes; touching his cheeks, his lips, his brow as lovingly as any hand. So this was what it felt like to be a moon, she thought; to reflect a living light. It was a fine condition.

[Re. constant return to the horrific] "This is not strictly true. I just published a story in The New York Times this Halloween called The Departed, which is completely without the grotesque or horr... Well...um, almost without the grotesque or the horrific. I'm an inclusionist, Tom. I make the distinction between writers who are inclusionist and exclusionist...
"It may not always make for the most smooth stew, but there will always be bits you'll like."

A Conversation With Clive Barker

By T Liam McDonald, Cemetary Dance, No 15, Winter 1993

"Also collected [in The Essential] is a short story called The Departed, which is one of the very few short stories I have written to commission. I was invited to create the story for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, at Hallowe'en. It's a ghost story, of sorts. In their wisdom, the editors retitled the story Hermione and the Moon, apparently finding my original title, restored here, too 'dark'. The story is in fact quite optimistic, in a bitter-sweet way, and at its heart is a philosophical nugget which I was delighted to slip into the minds of Times' readers while they drank their morning coffee."

Private Legends : Lives

By Clive Barker, The Essential Clive Barker 1999

...other comments

Cheryl Bentzen: "[The Departed was] the original name to the short story, it was changed by the New York Times because they thought the name The Departed was too depressing."

Clive Barker Uncollected

By Cheryl Bentzen, Lost Souls, Issue 9, November 1997

The Departed bibliography...