My writing teacher in college highlighted the works of Dr. Seuss -- because Dr. Seuss understood story structure and because he had an eccentric relationship with the English language.
Seuss began his post-military life in advertising; his literary career seems to have been an accident. Although "The Cat in the Hat" was not his first book, it was certainly his "watershed moment." People approached him with a worry: "Little kids have small vocabularies, and they pick up books with unknown words, and they get discouraged. Can you write a book with a deliberately tiny range of small, small words?"
The novelist PD James talked about how "restrictions can set you free." It was the *confinement* of the murder mystery structure that inspired her. Seuss approached his assignment like a poet writing a sonnet; he allowed the "rules" to become a source of inspiration.
The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day.
Amazingly, in the very same year, Seuss also produced "The Grinch." Here's a case of a word whose "sonic" quality nicely matches the thing it describes. Grinch, scrunch, pinch, wince, scrimp, Scrooge. Seuss begins with total confidence:
Every Who
Down in Whoville
Liked Christmas a lot...
But the Grinch--
Who lived just NORTH of Whoville--
Did not....
I did not travel to Dartmouth with the purpose of seeing the Dr. Seuss Room -- stumbling on this room was a nice accident. You can spot a portrait of the eminence grise along with contemporary artwork inspired by the canonical picture books. I remembered Sandra Boynton's complaint about Seuss: When he is feeling lazy, he just makes up words. Thus, one of his less celebrated efforts: "The Zax."
Seuss kept writing almost until the end of his life. One of his final efforts was a picture book for elderly people.
He received his first honorary degree, a degree from Dartmouth, around thirty years into his career.
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