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My Gay Hero

I'm happy (embarrassed?) to say that I've now covered thirty-four of thirty-five George and Martha stories in detail.

(Maurice Sendak says, in his James Marshall essay, "We don't really need to get into the plots." But I reject that. I've really enjoyed "getting into" the plots.)

The last thing to look at: "The Picnic."

Martha wants the picnic; George wants to sleep. Martha attempts a wake-up via sax-playing, via toe-tickling. Finally, she propels George to the picnic, using roller-skates, so that George does not have to leave his bed.

Situational irony: The teacher fails her own test. At the actual picnic, Martha now is exhausted. George, by contrast, has a great time.

A few stray thoughts: There are Lobel parallels here. In one Frog and Toad story, Frog wants Toad to get up and greet the springtime, and Toad won't get out of bed. In another, Toad wants a story while he is sick, and the act of telling the story actually makes *Frog* sick, and things become cyclical.

And just to say: James Marshall was a gay artist who died from complications related to AIDS. He worked in a tradition that doesn't seem as august as, say, opera-writing, or the crafting of a literary novel. But he was a genius. He made living, breathing characters on the page; he told their (bizarre, unpredictable) stories in very few, well-chosen words. After he died, the circumstances of his death became entangled in weird mysteriousness. Because he wrote about ostensibly silly subjects--and not, say, Abraham Lincoln--he was often neglected by prize-giving committees.

Marshall's work will endure. This guy is my hero. So many other writers--including celebrated writers of "adult" fiction--simply can't stack up.
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