Liars and Saints

 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 ...

Some Dr. Seuss trivia: *There's a new biography out. Adam Gopnik, reviewing the book in the NYT, says that Seuss started strong and ended weak. In other words, the old books are better than the newer ones. *Gopnik suggests that, in his early work, Seuss conveyed a sense of devil-may-care breeziness. The stakes didn't seem terribly high. But, as Seuss advanced, and his reputation grew, he felt a need to be profound. To Make Statements. Paradoxically, the early works--where there was no obvious effort to Make a Statement--do in fact make the most successful statements. *Gopnik cites as a Major Achievement Seuss's introduction of Thing One and Thing Two in "Cat and the Hat." He says these characters have a "meta" quality. A work becomes meta when it comments on itself. And, with Thing One and Thing Two, Seuss *does* seem to be drawing attention to the artifice in the story. I also love that Seuss--working with easily decoded one-syllable words--recogn...

What happens if you argue loudly and consistently? Your opponent will relent and say yes to what you're advocating for, just as a means of getting you to go away. (All children know this.) Coaxed by his antagonist, "Sam," a narrator finally embraces life--in this case, typified by a meal of green eggs and ham--and he discovers that he has been missing out. Green eggs are, in fact, delicious. The world turned upside down. Happily reconciled, Sam and the narrator go off and eat more eggs together. This isn't--e.g.--"The Iliad," but it is at least a smart, idiosyncratic argument for welcoming the bizarre and apparently unappealing into your life. A few general notes: Dr. Seuss makes me think of Sondheim's Georges Seurat. Like Seuss, like the mischievous Sam, Seurat insists on seeing beauty where others see nothing. (Seurat's conventional girlfriend accosts him--"People are saying you drew the monkey cages"--and Seurat insists on accuracy...

One thing I loved about Amy Bloom was that she included, in her college syllabus, "The Cat in the Hat." You would read and discuss Alice Munro's works, and the sad, weighty fictional universe of Raymond Carver, but then you'd also spend time on Dr. Seuss. If I could have designed my entire college experience, there would have been a great deal of Dr. Seuss--generally. I hadn't really lived, in significant ways, so vast swaths of Tolstoy and Brecht and Tacitus were lost on me. The main thing about Dr. Seuss: A good piece of writing is as seamless and authoritative as a dream. It takes the reader from point A to point B. There doesn't have to be a moral. There doesn't have to be a grand statement about history. You just have to feel transported. And so "small," intense stories can sometimes seem more successful than "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or "The Help." What in the world are you meant to take from "The Cat in the H...