They say, or someone said, that a writer is
formed in their childhood. Which makes me worry, as my childhood was safe and
happy. Where’s the capacity for art in that? Darn my parents for being reliable
and loving.
Mind you Ted Geisel’s parents were loving
and reliable too. His family went broke when Prohibition destroyed their
brewery business, and he was once publicly humiliated by Teddy Roosevelt of all
people. Being of German descent, he was chased by other kids during the First
World War, yelling ‘Kill the Kaiser!’’ with real violence on their mind. So he
had enough. Enough to make to make him the greatest children’s author of the
modern age.
Ted Geisel is better known as Dr Seuss
(which I believe he pronounced to rhyme with ‘voice’ rather than ‘juice”. Ah
what would he know about pronouncing his own middle-name?) Dr Seuss
revolutionised childhood literature and as such may be one of the great
influences on modern western society. Not to blame him – many of us old children
have forgotten his simple, powerful and sweet messages or imagine they cannot
be applied. Dr Seuss is a force for good, more power to his work. He makes
children want to read, and nothing can be better than that.
Anyway I don’t have to tell you about Dr
Seuss, or Ted Geisel for that matter. The quality of his work and its
importance (and continuing popularity) are a given. His life is of interest
though. I’ve just read Theodor Seuss Geisel by Donald E Pease.
As the title might imply, this is a simple and straightforward telling of his
life and work, engaging without
being compelling. There are other, bigger, biographies extant but this is a
satisfying way to start.
Lewis Carroll’s childhood, according to Virginia
Woolf, lodged in him entire. Dr Seuss’ did something similar. His first
children’s book And to think I saw it on Mulberry Street was named for a street from his hometown. If I ran the circus takes place on a
vacant block in the same town. But Seuss’ world was wilder and more
wide-ranging. He created a character, the Grinch that for Americans and others
I suspect is as big a part of Christmas as Santa. How many writers have pulled
that off? Dickens may have been the last. He took on prejudice, politics, war,
the environment, personal responsibility, society, aging, even death itself,
and made them whimsical, lovely and memorable.
His adult life is not without interest
either. He worked as a propagandist during WWII and some of his later work he
said was to counteract the racist slurs he made against the Japanese and the
Germans in that time. He then worked in advertising before finding his milieu
in children’s literature. His relationship with his first wife Helen is an
extraordinary story, ending in tragedy.
The other day I was reading this book and
someone asked me if it was true that Dr Seuss hated children and only wrote
books to shut them up. She was quite serious. I said no, he wrote books because he thought children needed
better books to read. But why would such a story start? I can only put it down
to modern cynicism. It’s a cynical idea, and it allows those that have heard
the story to ‘know something you don’t know’. It made me sad to think of it. Trying to find pictures for
this entry I came across pictures of the Cat in the Hat doing bongs and so on.
Who are these people that feel that is funny? Or in any way needed?
They have yet to make a good movie from a
Dr Seuss book and why would they? They have to expand a simple but powerful
story and so fill up with fluff, poor slapstick and poobumwee jokes, because
that’s all kids get. That’s where the cynicism is.
As long as we persist in having children,
and expect them to read, so long will we need to put the call in for the good
Dr.
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