#161 Dr. Seuss

**David Senra** (0:00)
Hi there, real quick update before jumping into today's episode. As a way to incentivize people to switch to the annual plan, I actually have another podcast feed that I'm calling Founders Postscript. It's a feed for all the books that I read that don't fit on Founders. So any book that's not a biography basically, those are obviously going to stay on this feed. It does not cost any additional money. I am not selling it. I'm merely using it as an added benefit for those that are either already on an annual plan, or are willing to switch from the monthly option to the annual plan. The annual plan is the best way to support founders. If you're already on the annual plan and you want access to the founders post script feed, just email me david at founders podcast.com and I'll get you access. If you switch, if you're on the monthly plan, if you switch to the annual plan, I should get an email indicating that you switched. And in that case, I will email you. If you don't hear from me within let's say 48 hours, feel free to email me as well. This is optional. You do not have to do it if you don't want to. I'm just trying to figure out an added benefit because annual plans is the best way to support founders. So it's in my interest to incentivize you to do so. And if I can give you a little bit of extra work for doing so, I think that's a good trade. I will probably add a book or two a month on the feed. Right now, there's already two books on that feed. I'm working on two other ones. That's it. If you have any questions, obviously email me. Thank you very much for listening and thanks for the support.
Dr. Seuss is a classic American icon. Whimsical and wonderful, his work has defined our childhoods and the childhoods of our own children. The silly, simple rhymes are a bottomless well of magic. His illustrations are timeless favorites because quite simply, they make us laugh. The Grinch, the Cat in the Hat, Horton, and so many more are his troop of beloved and uniquely Seussian creations.
Theodor Geisel, however, had a second, more radical side. He had a successful career as an advertising man and then as a political cartoonist, his personal convictions appearing not always subtly throughout his books.
Geisel was a complicated man on an important mission. He introduced generations to the wonders of reading while teaching young people about empathy and how to treat others well.
Agonizing over word choices and rhymes, touching up drawings, sometimes for years, he upheld a rigorous standard of perfection for his work.
Geisel took his responsibility as a writer for children seriously, talking down to no reader, no matter how small.
And with classics like Green Eggs and Ham and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Geisel delighted readers while they learned. Suddenly, reading became fun.
That was from the back cover of the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Becoming Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination, and it was written by Brian Jay Jones. So this is another example of a book that I didn't even know existed, and shame on me for that because Brian Jay Jones actually wrote one of my favorite books that I've read for the podcast, and just in general, it's the biography of George Lucas. It's called George Lucas, A Life. I think I covered it back maybe on Founders No. 35, in case you haven't already listened to that. Fantastic book. I highly recommend reading it as well. But a listener actually is the one that told me about this book, and I immediately, once I realized it was written by Brian Jay Jones, ordered it, and I grew up on Dr. Seuss. So it was just a perfect way to figure out the man behind, the person behind the author. And I want to jump right into the book. There's a lot to cover. I want to talk about the influence of his parents, because I thought it was very interesting what they did, and they're just some really good ideas that positively influence his life. So his mother's name is Nettie. His father is going to be referred to as TR throughout the book. But this is about first the influence of his mother, then I'll get to the influence of his father. So it said, Nettie, too, would directly influence Ted's ear for the beat and annotation of words. As she put her son to bed each evening, Nettie would chant a refrain she had often used to sing behind the counter at the Seuss Bakery to inform patrons of the day's pie flavor. So let me stop right there. On her side of the family, they owned a bunch of bakeries. On his father's side, they were German brewers. That will come into, that's important for the story later on because his father was running a very successful brewery, and then prohibition took effect in the United States and that he had to change careers when Ted was a child. All right, so it goes back to her coming up with a song at her bakery so they could tell the customers the pie flavors, and it says, Apple, mince, lemon, peach, apricot, pineapple, blueberry, coconut, custard, and squash, at which point she would playfully squash a giggling Ted down into his mattress. Now, this is the important part. This is the reason I'm reading this paragraph to you. Ted later credited his mother for the rhythms in which I write and the urgency with which I do it, and I underlined that second part twice, the urgency with which I do it. Ted is a workaholic, as we'll see later on. He fell into the career of Dr. Seuss rather reluctantly. There's a lot of surprises in the book. That's probably the biggest one. It took him an extremely long time, multiple decades, and at the same time pursuing other careers before he finally discovered and had his monumental success of becoming Dr. Seuss, which is interesting to me, is the last numbers I've seen, he sold something like 600 million copies of his books.