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Reviews Books
Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel: A Biography
By Judith & Neil Morgan
Random House, 1995
239 pages, $25 hardcover
Reviewed by Eric Jackson
AGENDA Associate Editor
The Morgans were friends and neighbors of Theodor Seuss Geisel for some 28 years. Theirs is an "authorized" biography. After a lifetime of telling outrageous tall tales to journalists curious about his life, the 87-year-old children's author (The Cat in the Hat, Yertle the Turtle, Green Eggs and Ham.etc.) told his story to the authors in the months before he died in 1991.
This sympathetic biography, however, is no fawning paen. The Morgans are veteran journalists, she a Latín America correspondent and travel writer, he a war reporter and editor with the San Diego Tribune. The Morgans interviewed friends, colleagues, classmates and relatives from throughout Geisel's life, and dug deep into many an archive to turn out a well-researched and thorough masterpiece. Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel may rightfully end up as a university text, either for classes on research and writing or for studies on the creative mind.
Such a work could only succeed by delving into the man's phobias, vices and defeats. Only by understanding the dark side is it possible to know the brilliance. But throughout his life Geisel, a shy man who prízed his privacy and was terrified of public speaking, had avoided discussing these aspects with reporters. For example, a "60 Minutes" segment about him never happened because Morley Safer wanted to discuss the suicide of Geisel's first wife (Helen Parker Geisel, an accomplished children's author in her own right), which took place in the context of marital troubles. The Morgans, who were among the first to rush to Ted Geisel's side in that time of tragedy, might have ignored the complicated affair that scandalized much of San Diego society. Or, more in keeping with today's usual voyeuristic style, they might have rendered a lurid blow by-blow account. Instead the Morgans took the middle path, quoting from the suicide note preserved in the medical examiner's file and laying out the essential facts as they affected the subject's life and work.
This book is the tale of a German- American brewer's son from Springfield, Massachusetts, who saw the family business destroyed by prohibition and his father forced to make a mid-life career change to the zoo-keeper's trade. It recounts an excellent but unremarkable education at the Springfield public schools, Dartmouth and Oxford, where the real career preparation was found in the doodles in the margins of his class notes and his work on Dartmouth 's Jack-O-Lantern humor magazine. It tells of a career that started off with a lot of rejections, but hit pay dirt early with a series of bug spray ads for Standard Oil of New Jersey.
The son of Republicans, Giesel was a moderate Democrat. Ultimately his fame made him the guest of seven U.S. presidents. One of these, Ronald Reagan, he had decades before rejected as a potential narrator for one of his World War II military instruction films.
Richard Nixon, logging executives, religious fundamentalists and authorítarians of every stripe disliked Dr.Seuss.The kids in his book disobeyed their parents and the strange creatures tended to behave badly. Seussian characters tended to defy classification by gender, ethnicíty or religion - a boon for those charged with teaching kids how to read (unlike the WASPish Dick and Jane), but a threat to those whose "back to basics" educational philosophies mask reactionary agendas. The Lorax was the classic environmentalist plea, and The Butter Battle Book the definitive put-down of arms races. A lot of people on the right were offended, and some of them lobbied to remove his books from elementary schools. But Dr. Seuss, who mustered out of Frank Capra's Hollywood army unit as Lieutenant Colonel Theodor S. Geisel, said "l'm not antimilitary - l'm just anticrazy."
An outspoken wet during Prohibition, Geisel drew anti-drug posters for the U.S. Navy in his old age. In the end, the man was felled by a lifelong tobacco addiction. The cancer was beaten, but the effects of the surgery and treatment did him in several years later.
Maybe the most useful part of this biography is the description of Geisel's creative process. And, though it may be heretical to say so, maybe the addiction that made him chain-smoke as he worked things over and over to the point of perfection was an indispensable element of his creativity.
The Morgans delved deep into the detail of the Seussian eye for color, quirky drawing style and amazing sense of rhyme and meter. These were the technical skills that set the man apart, the foundation on which he built his empire of nonsensical wisdom. The authors also noted the difficulty that this towering master of his craft had in editing the works of others. Writing and editing are indeed kindred skills, but just as great baseball players seldom make great managers, brilliant writers usually have problems passing their spark to colleagues of lesser talents.
Though the Morgans carefully recounted the business side of the Dr. Seuss phenomenon, they could have taken a broader view of it. Once the man became famous just about anything that he did sold well, and because of this he was able to negotiate almost complete artistic freedom and get all the promotional support he needed. But this is the exception in the publishing business, and commercial norms suppress many a worthy children's book and break many an artist's spirit. Though the authors mention Geisel's luck, they don't acknowledge how the corporate penchant for producing more of what sold in the past and ignoring good work by unknowns surely prevents others from attaining deserved greatness. If this is a fault in the book, it's a minor one.