Theodor Seuss Geisel: Lives and Legacies (review)
- Theodor Seuss Geisel: Lives and Legacies
A central strategy of Theodor Seuss Geisel is to separate his two names into two personalities, along the lines of the writer's respective father-images and mother-images. Much of Geisel/Seuss's creative energies are traced back to two humiliations: the collapse of the family brewery business with Prohibition, and the suspicion against the German-American community to which the Geisels belonged prior to World War II, both of which lost the Geisel family its social standing. Dartmouth emerges as a core resource of enduring fellowship, friendship, and business connection. The book pursues the gradual evolution of Seuss the children's writer from the insecure, complexed, loony Geisel, his business ventures and family configurations, against the background of the public events—mainly of prejudice during World War I—that framed the twists of his career. In the end, however, one longs for more Seuss and less Geisel, for Seuss's letter over Geisel's psyche. [End Page 541]
Shira Wolosky, professor of American studies and English literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the author of Emily Dickinson: A Voice of War; Language Mysticism; The Art of Poetry; The Riddles of Harry Potter; and the volume on nineteenth-century poetry in the Cambridge History of American Literature.
