coyote's corner

Good Morning,
As a follow-up to the "Cat in the Hat" posts...I thought I'd send this in.
It offers great information about the books and the author....
Peace,
Janis
Coyotes Corner
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Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 5:10 PM
Subject: [Stumps] Green Eggs and Subversion, Dr Seuss, Toronto
Globe,20031123


>
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031123.wseuss1123/BNStory/Entertainment/
>
> Green eggs and subversion
>
> By SARAH MILROY
> Globe and Mail Update
>
> POSTED AT 8:57 AM EST Sunday, Nov. 23, 2003
>
> Dr. Seuss. Even his name is a mystery. We all know the characters he
created:
> the Grinch (which he claimed was a self-portrait), Horton the Elephant,
the
> Star-Belly Sneetches, the Whos and, of course, his most famous creation,
the
> Cat in the Hat, who springs to the silver screen across North America this
> weekend in his newest, Mike Myers incarnation.
>
> But who the deuce was Seuss? Tell me, oh tell me, oh tell me, by Zeus!
>
> I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I'll tell you, by Zeus, in a way that I pray
> will be not too abstruse.
>
> Theodor Seuss Geisel, who died at 87 in his La Jolla, Calif., home on
Sept.
> 24, 1991, was born in Springfield, Mass., the son of a brew master of
German
> ancestry. With prohibition, his father lost his business and became the
local
> parks superintendent responsible for, among other things, the zoo. His son
> Theodor liked to hang about the cages, drawing the animals.
>
> Geisel went on to be educated at Dartmouth College and then at Oxford
(where
> he studied Voltaire and Swift), coming back to the United States in 1927
to
> work as creative talent in the advertising industry. Esso, NBC Radio and
Ford
> were among his clients. Later, during the Second World War, he also tried
his
> hand as a political cartoonist, publishing his rambunctious anti-fascist
> satires in Judge, Vanity Fair, Life and PM, the legendary left-wing New
York
> newspaper. In 1941, Geisel was conscripted to work in the U.S. Special
> Services Division's Signal Corps Unit in Hollywood, under Frank Capra,
> creating films such as Hitler Lives and Design for Death -- both of which
won
> Oscars.
>
> Meanwhile, back in 1937, he had launched himself as a children's book
writer
> and illustrator with the publication of And to Think That I Saw it on
Mulberry
> Street (which was rejected by 27 publishers before he found a taker). To
date,
> Geisel's 61 works for children have sold more than a half-billion copies
> around the world.
>
> Next year, their maker will be celebrated across the United States with a
> series of "Seussentennial" events marking the 100th anniversary of his
birth
> -- from touring theatre shows to art exhibitions -- all generated by the
> California-based Dr. Seuss Enterprises, a privately owned company headed
up by
> his widow, Audrey.
>
> Canada, too, is getting in on the act. This month, as theatre queues are
> forming across the land for The Cat in the Hat, the Art Gallery of Nova
Scotia
> is Grinching it up with their own Whoville extravaganza: elaborate stage
sets
> and murals of Seuss décor, which frame drawings borrowed from the
Mandeville
> Special Collections Library at the University of California at San Diego,
the
> repository of Geisel's drawings and papers.
>
> Despite all this attention, the author's motivations in writing the works
are
> still largely unexplored, or worse, dismissed as mere whimsy. We even
> pronounce his name wrong. Seuss, in fact, rhymes with "zoice" -- it was
> Geisel's mother's maiden name. (His outsider status as a child of German
> immigrant stock contributed, no doubt, to his lifelong shyness and
distrust of
> the limelight. During the First World War, he was nicknamed "the Kaiser"
by
> his schoolmates.) Geisel adopted the name Seuss when he was a student at
> Dartmouth, where he studied English and contributed to the Jack-O-Lantern
> college newspaper. Caught drinking in his room with his friends, he was
> suspended by the dean from the magazine as punishment, but he continued to
> work under his assumed name. The "Dr." honorific was adopted later, after
his
> departure from Oxford University, when he abandoned his academic career,
and
> his father's ambitions that he would become a Ph.D., to pursue his love of
> drawing and cartooning.
>
> The very name Dr. Seuss is thus a product of Geisel's disobedience and
refusal
> to conform, and this is important. Geisel was a genius, and the flavour of
his
> genius is iconoclastic, revolutionary.
>
> In the fertile garden of American childhood of the postwar period, Geisel
> quietly sowed the seeds of critique in works that champion justice, the
power
> of the imagination and the rights of the little guy, banishing conformity
and
> authoritarianism and even the conventions of language itself.
>
> While the earlier books have their adherents, most true Seuss connoisseurs
> agree that the "essential Seuss" is 1957's The Cat in the Hat, which can
be
> read as a general call to arms for creative anarchy and freedom. The cat
is
> the trickster, an agent of change who wreaks havoc in stultifying fifties
> suburbia.
>
> But Geisel's other works tackle a host of political issues with increasing
> explicitness. The Butter Battle Book, with its escalating, fear-driven
contest
> between the Yooks and the Zooks, is a cautionary tale about nuclear
> proliferation. Horton Hears a Who brings us a kindhearted elephant who
saves
> the kingdom of microscopic Whos from extinction. (Are the Whos the Jews?)
>
> Yertle the Turtle is, by the author's admission, a take on Hitler's rise
to
> power. (In early drafts, Yertle sports the Fuhrer's short-cropped
mustache.)
> And in The Sneetches, a capitalist named Sylvester McMonkey McBean profits
> from the trade in imprinting and erasing stars on the bellies of the
> trend-conscious bird-like beasts, manipulating their desire like the
expert
> Madison Avenue ad man Geisel himself once was. (These stars are also, for
many
> readers, an echo of the Star of David borne by Jews in Hitler's Germany.)
>
> Geisel's own favourite of his books, however, was The Lorax, in which the
> rapacious Once-ler discovers the profits to be made from chopping down all
the
> truffula trees, building factories and convincing the masses of the need
for
> thneeds (an ambiguous knitted garment), which he produces in his
> pollution-spewing textile factory. The Swomee Swans fly away looking for
fresh
> air, and the Humming-Fish die. At the end, just one seed is left from
which
> regeneration might begin anew, held aloft by the Lorax, a short and fuzzy
> prophet of environmental doom, and a repository of wisdom for the future.
>
> Readings of the book have taken place in anti-logging rallies from the
Pacific
> Northwest to Australia, and several U.S. school boards have been
petitioned,
> unsuccessfully, to censor the book, with Seuss detractors alleging that it
> misrepresents the forest-products industry.
>
> Together these works are delicately coded moral parables on the perils of
> capitalism, xenophobia and intolerance.
>
> Geisel's biographer, Neil Morgan (who wrote the definitive Dr. Seuss and
Mr.
> Geisel with his wife, Judith), insists on the central importance of
political
> ideas in Geisel's work, but says that the artist thought of it rather just
as
> ethics, as a case of teaching kids, and maybe their parents, what's right
and
> wrong.
>
> "I'm subversive as hell," Geisel declared in an interview decades earlier,
> shortly after winning the Pulitzer Prize. "The Cat in the Hat is a revolt
> against authority, but it's ameliorated by the fact that the cat cleans up
> everything in the end. It's revolutionary in that it goes as far as
Kerensky
> and then stops. It doesn't quite go as far as Lenin."
>
> The origins of The Cat in the Hat, too, are political -- in the broadest
sense
> of empowering the powerless. Geisel was of the opinion that "too many
writers
> have only contempt and condescension for children, which is why we give
them
> degrading corn about bunnies." Clearly, they deserved better.
>
> Responding to dropping literacy rates, his publisher Bennett Cerf
challenged
> Geisel to write a book using just 220 easy-to-read words, a book that
children
> could read on their own, and an antidote to the dreary wholesomeness of so
> much early reading. (Green Eggs and Ham, which followed it, was written
using
> just 50 words.) It was, as Geisel put it, "a way of kicking Dick and Jane
out
> of the school system."
>
> The result was a sensation and The Cat and the Hat has since been the
subject
> of many an academic foray. Heinz Insu Fenkl, director of creative writing
at
> the State University of New York at New Paltz, who has written on Seuss's
> relationship to alchemy and cabalistic thought, describes the way in which
cat
> (id) and fish (superego) battle for domination of the children. He notes,
as
> well, that the absence of the mother makes the story frightening.
>
> Fenkl points to the ending as particularly charged, with the reader asked:
> "What would you do if your mother asked you?" Would you disclose the truth
> about the day, or conceal it? "Children who read this understand
profoundly
> the nature of this transgression," he argues. "They understand that the
> culture of children is actually quite different than that of adults, that
> there are things that you keep from adults."
>
> Other interpretations are more political in focus. Art Spiegelman, in his
> essay accompanying Richard Minear's Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War
II
> Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel, posits the cat as a
permutation of
> Uncle Sam in his stovepipe hat. (In many of Geisel's earlier political
> cartoons, the U.S. is figured as a busted-down eagle in a high hat.)
>
> It's worth noticing that The Cat in the Hat was written not long after the
> Americans ended their peacetime occupation of Germany and Japan. Can it be
> read, one wonders, as a parable of American interventionism, with Geisel
> implying, albeit subliminally, that the United States always cleans up its
> mess? (Okay, so he had a few all-American blind spots.) Still, it's not so
> far-fetched when you consider that he declared Horton Hears a Who to be
> inspired by the plight of the Japanese following the war.
>
> The cat also serves as the distillation of a number of figures from
children's
> literature. He's a cousin of Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter, another famous
> subversive, but his oversized bow tie suggests Mickey Mouse, as do the
white
> gloves. (Or do we detect a touch of Al Jolson here?) Fenkl notes, too, the
way
> we read Geisel's stories differently as we age, with the narratives taking
on
> new meanings from our more adult perspectives. "Classic German fairy tales
> function in just this way," he says.
>
> The Cat in the Hat is not the only Dr. Seuss work to be subjected to close
> analysis. Philip Nel of Kansas State University is the author of the
> forthcoming scholarly book, Dr. Seuss: American Icon, cataloguing Geisel's
> accomplishments and analyzing his legacy. In the course of his research,
Nel
> has managed to scare up some exotic academic interpretations. Jonathan
Cott,
> for example, has compared And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street to
> Goethe's The Erl-King, an interpretation that Geisel evidently endorsed.
> (Goethe's story was a favourite of his in childhood.) There is also Mary
> Galbraith's Agony in the Kindergarten: Indelible German Images in American
> Picture Books, which, Nel says, "reads Mulberry Street and H. A. Rey's
Curious
> George in terms of intersections between the author-illustrators' lives
and
> German and American history and identity."
>
> Alison Lurie's The Cabinet of Dr. Seuss examines the negative image of
women
> in Seuss's books. (It's true -- they are usually the party poopers.) Naomi
> Goldenberg's lecture A Feminist, Psychoanalytic Exegesis of The Cat in the
Hat
> reads The Cat in the Hat Comes Back as a "masculine attempt to overcome
womb
> envy." And Shira Wolosky's Democracy in America: By Dr. Seuss interprets
> Geisel's work as endorsing "classic American liberal individualism while
> exploring the dangers of extreme individualism."
>
> How, then, does the movie measure up to this weighty legacy? Is it a
> desecration or a reconsecration of Seuss's masterpiece? It can't be as
bad,
> say, as the pseudo-Seuss books put out by Seuss Enterprises after Geisel's
> death, like Oh the Things You Can Do That Are Good for You -- with its
> encouraging words about personal hygiene and the benefits of healthy food
> choices. Infamy!
>
> The critical response to the film has been overwhelmingly negative. And it
> certainly fiddles a fair bit with Geisel's original plot: A love interest
is
> inserted for mom, who works as a real-estate agent. The daughter has an
> electronic day timer. There is a babysitter. One's initial instinct is to
bury
> one's face in one's hands and despair.
>
> Worse still, the essential ambiguity of the cat (is he friend or foe?) has
> been for the most part lost; he's now just a little too lovable. (Echoes
of
> the giggling Uncle Albert from Mary Poppins and Oz's Cowardly Lion inflect
> Myers's rendition.) In Seuss's original, the children never smile until
the
> very end, and we are never quite sure just whose side the cat is on. (His
own,
> actually.) This uncertainty lends the character much of its mystique.
>
> Still, all is not lost. Thing One and Thing Two are simultaneously horrid
and
> cute -- just as they should be. The fish is annoying and eminently
> dismissable. The sets and costumes are spectacular. And the major theme of
the
> work is preserved and amplified: the dichotomy between order and chaos,
and
> the need for both in everyone's life.
>
> What a movie can never do, however, is achieve all of this miraculously
with
> just a few sheets of paper and a pencil, the simple tools of language and
line.
>
> So go ahead and enjoy the movie, such as it is. What's not to love about
Mike
> Myers dressed up as a giant pussycat? "The problem is," as Nel puts it,
"Seuss
> is a genius. And you can't replicate that."
>
> More titles for fledgling dissidents
>
> The Rabbit's Wedding (1958) by Garth Williams. A tale of interracial
marriage
> between a white and a black bunny.
>
> The Story of Ferdinand (1936) by Munro Leaf. A pacifist bull defies the
> patriarchy by preferring shade and quiet to the heroics of the bullring.
>
> Spotty (1945) by Margret and H. A. Rey. A rabbit with spots stands out
from
> the crowd. Will he find acceptance?
>
> The Last Flower (1939) by James Thurber. Set after World War XXII, the
story
> contemplates environmental catastrophe.
>
> --S.M.
>
> Bell Globemedia
> © 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
>
> ====================================================================
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> Founder & President
> Native Forest Council
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>
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>

Jon and Rue Kream

>>Fenkl points to the ending as particularly charged, with the reader asked:
> "What would you do if your mother asked you?" Would you disclose the truth
> about the day, or conceal it? "Children who read this understand
profoundly
> the nature of this transgression," he argues. "They understand that the
> culture of children is actually quite different than that of adults, that
> there are things that you keep from adults."

**I've been thinking about this 'culture of children', and how out of it
Dagny and Rowan are. They see it, they know it's there, but they're so far
away from it.

Dagny had a friend sleep over this weekend. She's almost eleven - Dagny met
her in kindergarten. Today Dagny was telling me stories about how the
friend ended up with a boyfriend (he asked three other girls first but they
said no, so he asked them who else he could ask, and when he asked Dagny's
friend and she said yes she didn't even know him, but one of her friends had
told her he'd be asking her, and she 'needed' a boyfriend so said ok - is
anyone else having flashbacks to the school lunchroom ??), and the fight
she's in with her other friend at school and why (she said he said they
said...), and how the friend says she's in love but they don't really even
know each other, haven't been to each others' houses or seen each other out
of school. She's 'allowed' to tell me all this, even though the friend
won't tell her own mother, because her friend knows Dagny tells me lots of
things and doesn't get in trouble.

I told her about when I was in school, and how Danielle's stories of life in
fifth grade are at least as old as I am, and we talked about how incredibly
different life is for Dagny and Rowan. Dagny told me the stories in a kind
of amused, can you believe this stuff way. We sat together on opposite ends
of the couch with our legs intertwined and were quiet for a few minutes
thinking about who Dagny could be if she went to school, and how happy we
are that she doesn't. ~Rue


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