Is the 'Cat in the Hat' subversive?

National Review ^ | 11/21/03 | John Miller

[CIBvet]

Bump 4 later read

[gingerky]

I love both "The Lorax" and "The Star-bellied Sneetches". One book is about greed and a total disregard for the environment and it's inhabitants and "The Sneetches" teaches a lesson about how silly it is to hate others based on appearances. There is nothing wrong with either one of those books.

[dhs12345]

I'd be suspicious since it has Baldwin. Might be okay. However....

[gingerky]

I tear up reading "The Grinch".

[T'wit]

What's your question? Are you unfamiliar with the Hoover Institution?

[HitmanLV]

Hey friend,

My statements are only extreme because I am recounting what I consider to be extreme behavior! ;-)

I am pretty certain this aspect of the Geisel's love life (a love triangle that blossomed when his first wife became very ill, and with the good old Doc doing nothing to hide the affair from his ailing wife to the point that by accounts it was cruel) is detailed in one of the Geisel bios, or in a book that peripherally discusses Geisel. I'll do some legwork for you.

I was told about the situation by a senior member of the english lit (my major) department of my college alma mater.

I am sure you are an adept Googler, but I found a corroborating account (actually includes other details I didn't mention but knew - like the almost 20 year difference in ages between Dr. S and his 2nd bride - which is only peripheral to the story really) in about 60 seconds on Google, so I may just be lucky I guess.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=3A75F8A3.16548458%40uswest.net&rnum=4&prev=/groups%3Fq%3D%252BGeisel%2B%252B%2522first%2Bwife%2522%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26selm%3D3A75F8A3.16548458%2540uswest.net%26rnum%3D4

Now granted Amy's post in the link above in a celebrity's gossip newsgroup, but it fits the account I have known since the late 1980s when I was in college. I've also known folks who know the story also over the years. I don't think it is spoken of much. I don't have much time now but I'll try and find more links on the story. I am sure they are out there.

This could also be a myth or legend that has made the rounds too, but I can say I first heard of it from someone certainly not prone to that, and who may also, I confess, have personal knowledge of it, but I can't say.

[cornelis]

If biography can't move an inch closer to explaining the green of those eggs then I'm all for the New Critics.

Or in plainer language, just because I don't smoke doesn't mean it's not a pleasure in a story.

[HitmanLV]

No idea what you are talking about, corny, but I'll just nod my head and hope you move on... ;-)

[CobaltBlue]

I agree that by all accounts Geisel behaved poorly. One account I read was rather astonishing. The soon-to-be second Mrs. Geisel (Audrey) told her still-husband that she was going to marry Geisel. After thinking for a while, the husband asked her, "Who will do the driving?" Audrey said, "Why, me, of course!"

"That's ok, then," he said, "I just didn't want a wife of mine riding in a car with someone who drives like Ted does!"

Someone else I like very much as a thinker, Ayn Rand, behaved abominably in her marriage, but I don't let that turn me against her work.

One could say the same thing about a lot of people, for example, Pepys, who by all accounts screwed any woman he could get his hands on.

I don't condone the behavior but I don't let that stop me from appreciating the good things they did in their lives.

[cornelis]

Here's for starters: New Criticism Explained

The New Critics didn't think gossip had any centrality in literary evaluation, or at least, as T.S Eliot thought, that a measure of objectivity is inherently the goal of words: "The end of the enjoyment of poetry is a pure contemplation from which all accidents of personal emotion are removed." To be sure, the author above strays from this with biographical tidbits.

I'm not a purist, but then again, I think you are way off topic. : )

[LibertarianLiz]

Incidentally, the Cat in the Hat movie got a horrible review in the WSJ.

Just received my Entertainment Weekly and they gave it a D.

[HitmanLV]

Oh well, I was just explaining why I didn't care for Geisel personally. Since the thread is about Geisel and his work, it is on topic.

But I started my thoughts on this thread by saying kids enjoy his work and that's good enough for me.

Geisel the man, well, is more of a louse, best as I can tell. If gossip is a part of his legacy, well, it's a part of his legacy. That is all. ;-)

[HitmanLV]

I agree - I started by saying kids enjoy his books and thats was good enough for me.

You are correct about Rand, also.

I just like to get as complete a view of a person as I can.

[nickcarraway]

Yes, I have. But usually it is not associated with communists. Thomas Sowell is there. But apparently this Keresky wasn't as left-lwaning as the article implied.

[T'wit]

> Yes, I have. But usually it is not associated with communists. Thomas Sowell is there. But apparently this Keresky wasn't as left-lwaning as the article implied.

No, he wasn't, but it wouldn't have mattered that much. His political background, period, would have been useful in studying the Hoover archives of Revolutionary Russian papers. And that is the whole point of Hoover, its collection of historic records. Condi Rice was at Hoover before President Bush tapped her for National Security Advisor (college degree at 19, that lady is special!). Milton Friedman is still a Hoover fellow. Joshua Muravchik, another, recently wrote a very good history of socialism, I think titled Heaven on Earth.

The Institution was a sleepy old place until a Canadian scholar named W. Glenn Campbell was named director back around, oh, 1960. He made it what it is, with much help and advice from David Packard. Herbert Hoover was still alive to endorse these changes and improvements.

[cornelis]

Eric Voegelin was there, and he is incidentally mentioned in the article above: "My favorite Seuss book is one that many people don't know about: I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew (1965). . . In truth, Solla Sollew is a warning against what Eric Voegelin called immanentizing the eschaton. Put in plain English: Don't seek heaven on earth.

[Dajjal]

Incidentally, the Cat in the Hat movie got a horrible review in the WSJ. Apparently the movie took this mildly anarchic but generally entertaining and positive book, and made it gross, brutish, and cynical. Somehow the movie even injected a bit of sex into it. So be warned if you're planning on taking your kids to it.
9 posted on 11/21/2003 10:22 AM PST by livius

I did not see the movie or the WSJ review -- but I did see a commercial advertising it on TV. That was enough to convince me that Mike Myers was playing the Cat as though he were still in an Austin Powers movie.

Apparently the Cat is gay, however.
4 posted on 11/21/2003 10:10 AM PST by armadale

Not from what I saw! ...

One scene in the commercial had the Cat with the 2 kids on each side in the living room, standing in front of a small table with a framed photo on it (we see only the back of the frame).

The Cat excitedly picks up the photo and asks, "Whoooo is this?" Simultaneously, his large red-and-white hat has an erection and expands to about 3X its size! It does not go straight up, but inclines at about a 50-degree angle! The tip looked a little funny, too!

The camera does a close-up of a framed photo of a woman. The children, off-camera, both say "That's our mother."

The Cat's hat returns to normal as he puts the photo back on the table. I don't recall the snappy reply he makes to the kids, but it's something along the lines of "Wow! She's shagadelic!" or words to that effect.

I have a pretty low opinion of Hollywood, but even I was surprised both by the fact that they would insert sexual innuendo into a Dr. Seuss story, and then be proud enough about it to put the scene into a commercial supposedly aimed at motivating parents to take their children to see the film.

Had the film been a teen date movie comedy, the commercial would have been completely understandable. As a commercial for parents and kindergarteners, it made little sense.

[T'wit]

Thank you, I didn't remember that Voegelin was at Hoover. Oh, we had fun with that steamy, conspiratorial slogan: "Do not let THEM immanentize the Eschaton."

Good place for him. Only three people on earth could read his writing. I am not one of them :-)

[Land of the Irish]

@2003 Universal Studios and Dreamworks LLC

The WonderfulPerverted World of Disney.

[armadale]

I saw the same scene as a Queer Eye parody, but you could be right.