Founders - #161 Dr. Seuss

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey 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.

Starting point is 00:00:22 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 postscript feed, just email me, david at founderspodcast.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

Starting point is 00:01:00 out an added benefit because annual plan 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.

Starting point is 00:01:46 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 troupe 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.

Starting point is 00:02:47 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, Theodore Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination, and it was written by Brian J. Jones. So this is another example of a book they didn't even know existed, and shame on me for that because Brian J. 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 Number 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 J. 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 that was very interesting what they did. And there's just some really good ideas that positively influenced his life. So his mother's name is Nettie.

Starting point is 00:03:50 His father is going to be referred to as T.R. 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.

Starting point is 00:04:21 That'll come into, that's important for the 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. I underline that second part twice, the urgency with which I do it. And I underline that second part twice, the urgency

Starting point is 00:05:06 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. I looked at data for a few years ago, as of I think 2018, he was still selling about 4 million books a year, which is just insane when you think about it. But let me go back to, before I lose my train of thought here, the urgency with which I do it.

Starting point is 00:05:57 So not only his schedule, which I'll go into later on, is he'd work eight hours a day every day, no matter what. But he also took him in an unbelievable you know you pick up a dr seuss book and it seems like oh i could write this in an you know it seems really simple it's not he would write a thousand pages just to get a book down to 60 pages this editing and this constant revision i think is one key insight to the biography of dr seuss is how he approached his work, because we could take that same idea that he took for children's book, children's books, and apply it to whatever it is that we're doing today. So we go back to this, both Nettie and

Starting point is 00:06:34 TR, that's his father, would inspire and encourage Ted's love for books. Now remember what he said on the back cover, his main goal, when he fully finally fully embraced being a children's author, is to get people excited about reading. It's something that he was, he was an introvert by nature. One of his true passions was reading. He'd sit in his office and read constantly all day long. He loved history. He loved biographies, of course. And he was distraught at the idea at the time he was writing, when he was writing, I think he's almost 50 years old, maybe over 50 when he writes Cat in the Hat. And the main goal, the main motivation behind that book is the fact that the literacy rates for American children were plummeting. And he thought that was a tragedy.

Starting point is 00:07:18 And the reason I bring that up to you is because his parents instilled in him as a child the importance of reading. I think this is a good idea. So it says, they both inspired and encouraged Ted's love for books. Reading was a pastime the entire family took seriously, leaving well-thumbed books casually on side tables and the pages of the newspaper folded carefully over the arm of a chair. Teaching a child to read is a family setup, Ted said later. It's the business of having books around the house, not forcing them. Parents should have 20 books stacked up on tables or set around the living room. I have way more than that. The average kid will pick one up, find something interesting, and pretty soon they're reading. And this is also an idea that I've intuitively picked up because I've read,

Starting point is 00:08:09 my favorite way to read a book is obviously a physical copy. There's nothing that can beat that. But I've read entire books, some of which for this podcast, on my phone through the Kindle app. And that's actually an idea I got from Elon Musk because that's the way he's busy all the time. He says he's read entire books on his iPhone. So I started doing that. And when you're highlighting and taking notes, it's extremely fast. But then I realized like from my daughter's perspective is what does she see? She sees her father sitting there looking at his phone and kids naturally imitate what their parents do. So then what, she's just going to look at a device? No, I'd much rather have her pick up a book. All right. So let's get back to his father. So it says he was a level-headed man who imparted to his son both a sense of discipline and a foundational decency.

Starting point is 00:08:45 This is a really important idea that Ted's about to share with us, something that he reflects back on. He lives, I think he's 87 years old. He gives this long interview right before he dies. In his office, this idea from his father, which he's learning, what is he, 5, 10 years old maybe at this time? Younger than 10. It's still with him.

Starting point is 00:09:05 So it says, while Ted would never be a good shot with a rifle or even fully understands his father's obsession with marksmanship. So his father worked all the time in the brewery. The one thing he would do when he wasn't spending time with his family is he would compete in, he was in like this club for marksmanship. He liked to shoot guns and show how precise he could be, but this is the part. So it says,

Starting point is 00:09:27 Ted came to appreciate the considerable discipline and commitment it took for his father to hone such an expertise. Ted remembered, oops, I skipped a page. Let me read that again. Ted, Ted remembered watching each morning as his father held his rifle steadily

Starting point is 00:09:45 over his head for 10 minutes, strengthening his arms and shoulders and thus ensuring the barrel of his rifle never faltered in the slightest when he aimed and shot. He was an inspiration, Ted said warmly. Later on, he dedicated one of his books. I think he wrote, what is it, 60 books, 40, a lot of books. One of his books he dedicated to his father, said it's the finest man he ever knew, echoes what we learned from that biography of Teddy Roosevelt I did a few weeks ago. He said the same thing about his father. All right, so he says he was an inspiration, Ted said warmly. Whatever you do, he taught me, do it to perfection.

Starting point is 00:10:22 That's a direct quote from his father. Decades later, even after he had become one of the most famous and successful writers in the world, Ted still hung one of his father's paper shooting targets in his office. Check this out. With multiple bullseyes shot out at its center, a constant reminder to do the work necessary to achieve excellence, regardless of the task. So that last line there says, a constant reminder to do the work necessary to achieve excellence, regardless of the task. When I read that, the note I scribbled down is this quote that I listened to over and over again, comes from Kobe Bryant, it's one of the last interviews he gave before he

Starting point is 00:11:01 passed away. And he says, whatever you do, do it to, excuse me, that's a quote from Ted's dad. This is Kobe. No matter what discipline you're in, there's a common denominator in how we approach our craft. The attention to detail, the level of commitment, those things are the same across the board. That's my message. Don't look at what I did, but how I did it. The how. And then you can transfer that over to any profession and any discipline. And what Kobe is saying, you know, 40 years or maybe was that 30 years after Ted, after Dr. Seuss dies, is the same thing that Ted learned from his father in the early 1900s. A constant reminder to do the work necessary to achieve excellence regardless of the task. I love

Starting point is 00:11:51 that. Going back to another really smart idea that his mother had is just she pumped him up. And she says, my mother overindulged me and seemed to be saying, everything you do is great. Just go ahead and do it now take a think about that perspective of a mother when you see a lot of dysfunctional families it's the opposite they tell their kids how stupid they are how they're never gonna uh they're never going to uh like live up to their expectations this is terrible terrible parenting and i think about that all the time because when you read biographies, many, many decades after usually their parents have passed on, they still talk about their parents.

Starting point is 00:12:29 Right before they're dying, their memories are a lot. Not only are they looking back at their own life, but they talk about their parents over and over again. It's extremely important. And then when I read that, I have a series of quotes, videos, some clips from podcasts I always reference over and over again. Sometimes you need extra motivation. You want to draw strength. Maybe you're experiencing periods of doubt like everybody does. And one of this, when I read this sentence,

Starting point is 00:12:52 it made me think I have a clip of Kanye West I think of all the time that I love, even to the point where I can imitate what he says. And in the clip, I think he's on like a night, like a Tonight Show kind of interview. And he's going off on one of his crazy rants like he always does. But he says, my mother made me believe in myself. No matter how many people tell me, stop believing in yourself. That's how like his annotation as well.

Starting point is 00:13:15 And I think what Kanye's mother did for him is the same thing that Dr. Seuss's mother is doing for him that did for him. Everything you do is great. Just go ahead and do it all right so more memories and advice from his father when he wasn't tailing along after his father in the workshop ted just plain loved listening to his father talk whether he was dispensing advice or telling stories ted remembered the two of them lying on their backs in the field directly behind their house on the night of april 20th10, talking in hushed tones as they scanned the sky for Haley's Comet. Other times, they would take long walks together

Starting point is 00:13:49 while T.R. entertained his son with stories of life in a brewery. This is hilarious. T.R. would get considerable mileage out of a story about a local attorney he had hired to collect brewery debts. The man was a modest and quiet young man was a he was a excuse me. He was a modest and quiet young man named Calvin Coolidge. How funny is that? Perhaps some of Coolidge's famously silent demeanor had rubbed off on T.R. as well. This is advice he gave to his son. You will never be sorry for anything you never said. I don't actually know that's true, but I understand. I understand what he's trying to

Starting point is 00:14:23 teach us on there. So now this is about Ted in high school. He's like a lot of people we study on the podcast, self-taught. He's not really interested in formal education. He's a terrible student. For Ted, school was something to be endured, not mastered. So he had a love of drawing. His mother let him draw on the walls. She encouraged him to pursue things he was interested in.

Starting point is 00:14:47 So he's submitting a lot of cartoons to the high school newspaper, says he would submit several cartoons to the recorder, and most of which are unremarkable. Now, why are they unremarkable? Because like everybody else, he's influenced and he copies the people around him, especially when he's first starting out. Everybody does this. So it says Ted seemed to be aping the styles he saw in comic strips his drawing would improve over the next three years though ted would have very little formal and formal art instruction as his work

Starting point is 00:15:15 evolved ted would continue to be more influenced by the comic pages than by formal instructions so to say that over and over again ted's high school art while competent is so, of course, no one starts out being really great at what they do. You have to work at it, right? Ted's high school art, while competent, would give very little indication of the unique and whimsical style to come. So it's around this time Ted's a teenager, and this is when they lose the family business. On January 17th, 1920, prohibition officially went into effect under the sledgehammer weight of the 18th Amendment. For his efforts to keep Springfield Breweries solvent, T.R. was promoted to president of the company, occupying his new office the very week the sale of intoxicating liquors became illegal. That was it for Springfield Breweries.

Starting point is 00:16:02 My father was rather angry about that turn of events, Ted said, with considerable understatement. For weeks, T.R. sat in the in the living room, head in hand, muttering, son of a bitch, son of a bitch. He became very cynical, said Ted. He didn't know what to do with himself. For more than a year, T.R. would mourn the loss of the industry he had grown up in. His father was so T.R.'s father. Ted's grandfather was also in the business. He actually sold two breweries and then started investing in real estate as well. The grandfather, T.R. would mourn the loss of the industry he had grown up in, dutifully reporting to work and sitting at his desk in his offices, even as the company was picked to pieces around him, its assets slowly

Starting point is 00:16:40 liquidated. OK, so even though his family was having financial trouble, it was very important for them to send Ted to college. So he goes to Dartmouth. This is really, this is the beginning of something that's really, really surprising when analyzing the career, soon to become, well, not soon, because it's multiple decades of what will become one day the career of Dr. Seuss. And the note I left myself is finding his true passion yet not doing it for a living question mark and it's something he loved to do and yet it was it's like it's sitting there right in front of your face i guess the lesson here is like analyze how you like spending your time and then maybe you can find a profession and discipline in there because ted loved what he was like he's going to find his true love of writing cartoons. He did not think he was going to be a children's author.

Starting point is 00:17:28 I'll tell you the surprising reason he picked that genre in a little bit. But he loved cartooning. He loved writing, writing humor. He wanted to be funny. And yet he thinks he's going to be an English professor and he hates the subject. It's very bizarre. So let me get into that in a little bit. It was a floor mate, meaning somebody in the dorm, who helped Ted find his true passion. So they start working at this college. It's like a humor magazine called Jack-O-Lantern. Sometimes they refer to it as Jack-O. Ted knew where his people were and what he wanted to do. I think my interest in editing the Dartmouth Humor Magazine began that week. Ted began submitting cartoons to Jacko, and when the

Starting point is 00:18:12 first issue of the fall semester was published in late October, Ted found to his delight that he had four cartoons featured inside. And before I go into this next paragraph, remember that idea of something smacking you right in the face and not even realizing it or sitting right before you, not even realizing when he meets his wife. Because the statement that she makes may be the most important advice he ever gets from another human being in his life. I'll get there in a minute. Going back to this, he starts freelancing for Jacko. And then he's so good at it. He does so many of them.

Starting point is 00:18:44 They invite him to be on the staff. So it says the work was good enough that in January 1923, Norman McLean, the editor at the time, offered Ted an official spot on Jacko as a member of the art staff. Ted's name would now officially appear in the magazine's masthead. And as far as Ted was concerned, he was on his way to the editor's chair. And this is where we get his dedication and professionalism, his work ethics. As a result, he's just outworking everybody else in the staff.

Starting point is 00:19:12 He found, Ted is talking about the editor, what the editor's opinion was of him. He found that it was a workhorse, Ted said later. And so we used to write practically the whole thing ourselves every month. And so let's go back to this idea about this is so important because think about he's graduating from college. Just point the story. And he's not sure what he wants to do in life. He becomes one of the most iconic writers in history, one of the best selling writers that is so far in the future. But at the present day, it's unsure. I don't know what I'm going to do. The thing he loved in college, he was a terrible student, a terrible student. The thing he loved most was cartooning, writing humor.

Starting point is 00:19:57 And he still thought, oh, no, you know, this is just like a side thing. I'll just, you know, this is not really this is not going to be my career. So it says on June 23rd, 1925, Ted graduated from Dartmouth. Unlike many of his classmates, Ted wasn't entirely certain what to do next. He had no family business to return to and wasn't sure his English degree would be good for much of anything. With a shrug then, he decided to head for graduate school to get his doctorate in english a subject he didn't even like how many people do this now the good thing is ted eventually writes this this course right the reason i bring this to your attention is think about all the people you know in your life look around so many people just they don't they don't like what they're doing

Starting point is 00:20:39 maybe they were influenced by parents maybe they're copying other people around them whatever it was but this idea is like with a shr, he decided to head to graduate school to get a doctorate in English. Why would you do that? You hate it. With a vague ambition of becoming an English professor, the story right there, the important lesson is, he winds up, later in his life, there's a fork in the road, and he decides to go straight. Most people just pick, they sit on the well-worn tracks. OK, I can go left or right.

Starting point is 00:21:07 No, there's unlimited opportunity in front of you. You just can't copy what everybody else is doing. And again, Ted doesn't get there on his own. His wife, Helen, winds up being, like I just said, she gives him the most important advice. She's like, you're not even paying. They're going to go to Oxford. That's where they meet. I'll get there in a minute.

Starting point is 00:21:24 But she's like, you're not even paying attention to the lecture. All you do. That's where they meet. I'll get there in a minute. But she's like, you're not even paying attention to lecture. All you do is draw these cartoons all day in class and you're really good at it. Why aren't you doing this? And then the light bulb goes off in his mind. Oh, I don't know. That seems to be a good idea. Maybe I'll do that. And it still takes multiple decades to get there. So, again, very a lot of surprising things in this book. One of the surprising things is on the very next page. He's at Oxford. One of his professors is J.R.R. Tolkien. Unfortunately, it didn't take Ted long to realize that he was in over his head. As a mediocre student who had struggled to attain a C in general English at Dartmouth,

Starting point is 00:22:00 a deep drill into Germanic, I don't even know what that word is, at Oxford, even if taught by the brilliant new professor J.R.R. Tolkien, was bound to be a struggle. So it's at one of these classes that he meets Helen and he says, this is Ted talking about, he says, he's talking about, you know, instead of taking notes, the pages are full of, you know, these weird creatures. You've probably seen a Dr. Seuss book. You know, they don't look like they're animals. They don't look like animals, how animals look in real life, right? It says, I think this demonstrates I wasn't very interested in the subtle niceties of

Starting point is 00:22:32 English literature. As you go through the notebook, there's a growing incidence of flying cows and strange beasts. And finally, at the last page of the notebook, there are no notes on English literature at all. They're just strange beasts. In fact, the flying cow and strange beasts were what caught the eye of a young woman seated next to him in a lecture who watched closely as Ted did everything in class but take notes

Starting point is 00:22:53 you're not very interested in the lecture she told him plainly then lean in and pointed at one of his drawings I think that's a very good flying cow and now we get to the point where I wrote maybe this is my own note, maybe the most important thing anyone ever said to him. What Helen saw in Ted was both talent and potential, both of which, as far as she was concerned, were being wasted on English literature. You're crazy to be a professor, she told Ted flatly. What you really want to do is draw.

Starting point is 00:23:26 Now, this is Ted at 23. Going back to this, he's terrible at being a student, so he drops out, does not get his graduate degree. His year at Oxford had been a bust, and his plans for a teaching career had dissolved with his unattained doctorate. His future was uncertain, and his prospects for employment were cloudy at best. Helen, however, typically thought she knew exactly what Ted should do. Ted's notebooks were always filled with these fabulous animals, she said. So I set to work diverting him. Here was a man who

Starting point is 00:24:01 could draw such pictures. He should earn a living doing that. Okay, so after he leaves Oxford, he has to go back home. No money, no prospects, doesn't know what to do. He's still 23 years old. This reminds me, if you remember, if you've read Shoe Dog, and if not, if you've listened to, I think it was Founders number 10, when I covered Shoe Dog. This is very similar to Phil Knight. He gets back from the army. I think he's 24. You know, he's looking, he's sitting in his childhood room. He's like, this is my life. I should be a man now, a full adult. Why do I feel this way?

Starting point is 00:24:31 Why am I so unfulfilled? Why am I full of uncertainty and doubt? And he goes from this run. And during this run, the opening of Shoe Dog is one of the best openings of any book I've ever read. Because it's the inner monologue of Phil Knight deciding, I'm going to pursue my crazy idea. And his crazy idea was the thesis he wrote at Stanford Business School about, hey, why are we letting Adidas and other German companies or dominating athletic shoes?

Starting point is 00:24:58 What if I can import Japanese running shoes as a way to compete with them, as they did with, I think, cameras and other electronics at the time. Anyways, it's fantastic. If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it. Just one of the best autobiographies you're going to find. But anyways, Ted's feeling the same way. Again, if Ted didn't know Phil Knight, they're separated by half a century.

Starting point is 00:25:21 And yet this is why I feel so many historical figures in history also did what we're doing, which is reading and studying biographies, because it yet the same this is why like i feel so many historical figures in history also did what we're doing which is reading and studying biographies because it's the same feelings we all go through the same same things right so says ted was back living under his parents roof again and he wasn't happy about it you can switch out ted for phil in that picture or in that sentence rather well with no job no teaching certificate and prospects. Ted really had little choice but to return, bunking in his second-floor bedroom and setting up a drawing board and a typewriter. At age 23, he certainly didn't want to be there.

Starting point is 00:25:54 He was determined to make it as an illustrator, and that meant pounding out endless letters to book and magazine publishers in New York, sending around samples of his work, and endlessly pitching one idea after another. Very similar to the book. This is very similar scenario to what we just covered a few weeks ago. Charles Schultz, the cartoonist of Peanuts, doing the same thing. And he also experienced exactly what Ted's going to experience here. Ted explained that he'd been tossed out of

Starting point is 00:26:21 the offices of two publishers, two movie studios, three advertising agencies, and the offices of Life and Judge magazines. While he was in the city, he had dinner with five Dartmouth classmates. This is like he's already being stabbed in the chest, right? Now somebody's turning the knife. This is the dinner. A gathering that depressed him as all five had real jobs and appeared to be on their way to real careers. As for his own prospects, he was playing it by ear. What comes up will come up and will determine my future life, he said.

Starting point is 00:26:54 I'd rather think it will be freelancing for a while, he continued. I don't know, but I know one thing. My policy is to laugh my goddamn head off. Occasionally, now these are heavy sentences here. Occasionally, I depress myself and work myself into one of those delightful funks. And I seek out subway tracks on which to toss myself. And then it strikes me as very comical and I laugh instead. Despite his darkening spirits, and I laugh instead.

Starting point is 00:27:27 Despite his darkening spirits, his persistence paid off. In early summer, an editor of the Saturday Evening Post purchased one of his cartoons. They gave him $25, which would be equivalent to about $350 today. It wasn't a princely sum, but when pooled with his savings, it was enough that he could announce to his parents that he was moving immediately to Manhattan. Okay, so he's freelancing. He also starts doing works for Judge Magazine. Now, this is another surprising, like I said earlier, there's a bunch of surprising things I didn't know going into the book. This is another surprising thing.

Starting point is 00:27:58 His first career is in advertising. He works in advertising for 17 years it gives him the financial freedom to pursue cartooning and writing his own books on the side and it comes and it happens uh it's like a lucky break um it wasn't something he was expecting to do i guess is a better way to put it our cartoon appeared in the january 14th 1928 issue of judge that ted would rightly say changed my whole life in the cartoon a knight sits both uh sits upright in a canopy bed armor stacked on the floor next to him as a susan dragon pokes his head menacingly under the canopy very nearly in the knight's lap darn it all another dragon says the. And just after I'd sprayed,

Starting point is 00:28:45 the whole castle was flit. So I guess flit was a very successful insecticide company at the time. And as an insecticide joke, it was hardly a thigh slapper. But while writing the gag, Ted had fussed over which of the two major brands of insecticide to use for his punchline. In the end, he had simply flipped a coin. It came up heads for flit, said Ted. It would be the luckiest coin toss of Ted's life. That issue of Judge was picked up in a beauty salon by the wife of Lincoln Cleaves, who was the executive in charge of the flit insecticide account for an advertising firm. Mrs. Cleaves brought Ted's cartoon to the attention of her husband

Starting point is 00:29:27 and suggested they should bring Ted in to talk about creating more flit ad campaigns. In an era where most print ads were heavy with text or featured large photographs of the product, Ted's flit advertisement didn't look like any other ad. There's a lesson there. They were intentionally funny, a nearly foreign concept in advertising at the time. Now, Standard Oil owns the company that produces Flit, the insecticide, right?

Starting point is 00:29:57 So it says, the Flit campaign would prove so popular, in fact, that Ted would work for them for the next 17 years that toss of a coin determined my whole career he said later more important the money ted earned through his advertising work would buy him his artistic freedom what would eventually become the dr seuss empire would be laid on a foundation built and paid for with standard oil money so he says he can do like his advertising work i think it's like in three months he can do a a foundation built and paid for with standard oil money. So he says he can do his advertising work. I think it's like in three months he can do a year's worth of work. They have the same tagline.

Starting point is 00:30:38 We learned this with the two books I did on David Olgrafy, that if you have a campaign that works, don't change anything. I think he was running the same Dove soap campaign at the time he published one of the books for like 20 something years. So Ted benefited from that in his spare time. He starts writing. He starts illustrating books. And this is his first book. But he learns a very, very important lesson here. He is the illustrator, not the writer. Now, why is that important? So it says February 1931 would also be to see the publication of Boners, the first mainstream book to feature cartoons by Dr. Seuss. Boners was a collection of unintentionally funny bits of student writing,

Starting point is 00:31:09 featuring nuggets like a polygon is a dead parrot, lifted from the real exams and term papers. Ted was brought in by Viking Press to produce 20 cartoons and given prominent credit on the book's cover and spine, a sure sign of his growing name recognition. To Ted's surprise, Boners was an immediate hit, selling out of six printings in four months and pushing its way onto the New York Times bestseller list. This inspired them to do a follow-up, only two months after the release of

Starting point is 00:31:36 the first volume. Sales were brisk and reviewers were particularly effusive about Ted's cartoons. The drawings by Dr. Seuss are hilarious, wrote the New York Times, while another reviewer called the cartoons simply swell. Now here's the important lesson, though. Ted saw none of the profits from it. As the artist for the book, Ted had been worked for hire, and he'd been paid a flat fee.

Starting point is 00:32:00 In most cases, it was the writer with his royalties who made far more from a successful book than the work-for-hire illustrator. It was at this point Ted later explained that he came to realize there was no sense in just illustrating books. That's what he thought he was going to do his whole life. I'll just be the illustrator. This changed that. To make any real money in publishing, he'd have to be both the writer and the artist.

Starting point is 00:32:23 So he makes a decision. Okay, I'm going to be a writer. Now, why children's book? This is another surprising thing. The exclusive nature of his contract with Standard Oil, he explained, forbade me for doing an awful lot of stuff. Writing and illustrating children's books, however, wasn't a forbidden activity. I would like to say I went into children's book work because of my great understanding of children, Ted said. In truth, I went in because it wasn't excluded by my Standard Oil contract. So think about how crazy that is.

Starting point is 00:32:53 He's by far, I would say, the most successful children's author in history, right? And yet he fell into it by accident. Now here's another crazy thing. No one wanted to publish his first book. To his increasing distress, the responses were all negative. Ted would later recall being rejected by 27 publishers. No one was biting. While editors knew the Dr. Seuss name, it wasn't enough to overcome some initial skepticism.

Starting point is 00:33:19 Think about why he's being rejected. This is a crazy sentence. The main reason they gave was there was nothing similar on the market. So, of course, it wouldn't sell. Can't get to the top by trying to fit in. Of course, it can't be like everything else. Come on. Ted decided he was done with it.

Starting point is 00:33:39 After one last rejection, he was walking up Madison Avenue with his book tucked under one arm. Another strange twist of fate here. Determined to burn the book in the incinerator when he got home. The walk back uptown would lead to one of the luckiest breaks of his career. I'm a great believer in accidents, Ted later said. Everybody gets into things accidentally. He certainly did, right? He ran into Mike McClintock, a fellow Dartmouth man, who asked him what he was carrying. Oh, just a book no one will publish, Ted told him. I'm lugging it home to burn. Mike told Ted he just started a job as a juvenile book editor for Vanguard Press and asked Ted if he'd like to come inside to show his

Starting point is 00:34:19 book to the Vanguard president, James Hienel. This is happening right in front of the office. They just happen to run into each other as this guy's coming into the office, right? So he went inside, Ted said, and he took me to the president of Vanguard Press. That guy, I'm not going to, James, I'm just going to call him James because I probably pronounced his last name wrong.

Starting point is 00:34:37 James was a publishing crusader, unafraid to embrace one of Vanguard's founding philosophies of publishing unpublishable books. Right place, right time, right person, right? The entire meeting from first hello to the signing of the contract took 20 minutes. Now, how did his first book do? He is 33 years old by the time he publishes this first book. The story of Dr. Seuss' career is one of patience.

Starting point is 00:35:03 And the note I left myself here is he could have quit here. There's so many times where Ted just deciding, hey, I'm going to give up. Why is John Rockefeller, Steve Jobs, they talk about the importance of persistence. I think Steve Jobs says something, I don't have the quote in front of me, but it's like, I'm convinced half of what separates

Starting point is 00:35:19 the successful entrepreneurs from the unsuccessful ones is just pure perseverance. Half, he's saying half of what makes you either successful or unsuccessful is just, are you going to give up or not? Ted doesn't give up. He attempts to at some, in many cases, but he just keeps going along. Uh, it would take a while. The name of the book is, uh, I saw it on mobile street. Uh, it would take a while before Mulberry Street would sell through its initial print of 15,000 copies. By 1943, it had sold 31,000 copies. A respectable number to be sure, but that would only earn about 3,500 royalty.

Starting point is 00:36:00 So let me put this into proper scale and perspective here, right? So it takes several years to sell 31,000 copies. His big break is Cat in the Hat, which I think happens about 17 years after where we are in the story. That sells 3 million copies. I think, I want to say either in the first year or the first three years, you know, sells tens of millions total. So orders of magnitude larger and more successful than his first book. Right. And this is thirty five hundred dollars he made in royalties over seven years. Can't support himself on that. Right. It was clear he hadn't yet found a new full time profession. But even Ted wasn't sure he wanted to be seen solely as a writer for books for children.

Starting point is 00:36:42 Writing for children, he said, was not a sign of going forward. This was a step down, a loss of face, literary slumming, he said. Most children's books, which he's credited with changing, he continued, insulted the intelligence, not only of the child, but also the people who wrote them. And yet Ted was on the leading edge of authors creating a new generation of respectable children's books, moving away from generic books heavy on morality

Starting point is 00:37:04 or steeped in fairy tales. This is both of, he was very explicit about wanting to avoid both moral tales and fairy tales. He did not want to, another smart idea he has

Starting point is 00:37:14 is I'm just not going to, I'm not going to go into a new profession and just do what everybody else does. It doesn't make any sense. They're already doing it. And toward creator-driven stories centered on character and identified with an

Starting point is 00:37:26 author's particularly artistic style or point of view now here's the crazy part I keep saying that but his whole life is crazy it takes he's almost 50 years old before he can do it Cat in the Hat is what allows him to work as a child's author full time

Starting point is 00:37:42 he's been drawing cartoons since he was a child. When he's 23, his wife, Helen, pushes him in that direction. He's not allowed to do it full-time for almost three decades. In the interim, he has this advertising career. He makes a ton of money doing that. Don't get me wrong. Then he's so distraught at what he's seeing happen in World War II, even though he's in his late 30s at the time, he tries to join the army. And they're like, no, you're dude, you're way United States. So they move him out to California. And this is the reason I included this in the podcast. It's extremely important because he starts working under this guy named Frank Capra.

Starting point is 00:38:34 He won a bunch of Academy Awards. I think he was a director. Frank Capra was in his 40s at the time. And so even when Ted's about to die, he says, like, you know, what do you credit? Like, how did you learn to write books and do everything you're doing? He's like, what was the most important part of your life? He's like working under Frank Capra because Frank taught him storytelling. So this is what he learned from serving under Frank Capra during World War II.

Starting point is 00:39:01 Ted was in awe of Capra's ability to distill a script down to its essence. Remember, he read a thousand pages just to get down to 60, right? He would bring Capra his first draft of a script for a film. This is such a good idea. Then watch with near reverence as Capra slowly went through it with a pencil. The first thing you have to do in writing is find out if you're saying anything, he told Ted. And Capra would carefully go through Ted's script, underlying the places where he advanced the story. The rest he left unlined. Most of the first draft would be returned to him with little or no underlying. But Capra taught me conciseness,

Starting point is 00:39:47 said Ted. I read a lot of books. There's a lot of people that could benefit from what Capra is teaching Ted here. Think about that. I'm only going to underline where you're actually advancing the story. Conciseness. I just got done reading two books that are 100 pages, and you wouldn't believe how much information is in them. And it's by Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History, and I think The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time. They're on the Founders Postscript feed. But this idea that you don't need, you know, there's some books. One of my favorite books I've read for the podcast, Enzo, the Biography on Enzo Friars,

Starting point is 00:40:22 I think is 900 pages. It's either 700 or 900. It's the longest book, not including all the Warren Buffett shareholder letters. I don't, you know, that's not a biography. So I'm not going to, I'm going to exclude that. That was much longer. It's like reading a textbook, but it's a fantastic book. But there's, my point here is I think, especially with people being more reluctant to read because reading is now competing with so many other things for your attention, is there's a ton of – there's a market for 100-page books, 200-page book. You know, it doesn't have to be – for some reason, they all seem to settle in this area of like 300, 400. Probably my guess, just based on my own experience, probably 300 to 500 pages is the most common length of a book. But this idea of conciseness, I think part of what makes books so valuable is the fact that, you know, go in the back, look at their selected bibliography.

Starting point is 00:41:14 They read 15, 20, 30 books to put into a single book. Right. They're distilling down the main ideas into their essence. I love this idea. I guess this is my long-winded way to tell you is like there's a lot of value in distilling and condensing ideas down so we can actually carry these ideas with us throughout our entire lives. And that's what Capra is teaching Ted with the art of storytelling.

Starting point is 00:41:39 Get rid of the stuff that's not advancing your story. Most of his drafts would, first drafts would be returned to him with little or no underlying, but Capra taught me conciseness. I learned a lot about the juxtaposition of words and visual images. The tight storytelling discipline

Starting point is 00:41:54 instilled by Capra would be formative in shaping Ted's future art. Tight storytelling discipline. That's a great few words there. And I'm surprised that ted now knowing what i know about him used the word juxtaposition there he hated again i think this had to do with uh he said he took some classes at oxford where you know they'd spend uh two weeks on the first two pages of a book um and you know you have to go through what does this word mean and they'd

Starting point is 00:42:23 have to figure they have to look it up in the dictionary and then they'd go to the source and it's like use simple language why are you making the reader do more work than they have to it's a genius idea there let me let me clarify not genius and just the statement it's the application it's simple but not easy right so i'm going to fast forward he learns a ton through the cap or the war is over but this is is the sentences. I read the sentence, you know, read my interpretation of why it's so important for us to understand this. Dr. Seuss was home from the war and very uncertain about what to do next. He is 41 years old and he's still not successful, like he's moderately successful in the sense that he can provide for his family. He never has kids of his own. His wife has she had polio when she was younger she has health

Starting point is 00:43:09 issues and i'll get to just this shocking way her life ends um but she had to have her ovaries removed so there's no children and of his own um but you know he can still support himself his wife uh but he's not you know he's not anywhere close to Dr. Seuss at all. And he's 41. And so, of course, if you feel that you're muddling around, what's going to happen? You have uncertainty creep in and you're going to start to doubt that you're on the right life path. And this is what I meant earlier when I said the path of Dr. Seuss, he kept trying to have other careers, sometimes out of necessity. So he had to be an advertising person because that's how he paid his bills. Right. But he's

Starting point is 00:43:47 like, hey, I'm going to he made a bunch of movies with with experienced Hollywood people. He's already out in L.A. Let me start writing movie scripts. I'm going to get I'm not going to do children's books at all. This is he says Ted thought he might perhaps quit writing children's books altogether in order to reinvent himself as a film writer director editor and the academy award won by hitler lives did much to make him attractive to more than a few movie studio executives so this is very funny they do a movie as part it's funded by the u.s government i think i can't remember the name of it now and i should know oh it's your job in germany is what it was so because you couldn't copyright that somebody else some other movie makers took the film even though it was great they took they hired their

Starting point is 00:44:32 own actors added a little bit but essentially it's the same film they rebranded and reshoot it as hitler lives and it wins the academy award but ted couldn't get any credit from that because it's something the government uh then he didn't work on the Hitler Lives movie. So he's like, wait a minute, my work I just did just won an Academy Award under some other name. So maybe I have some talent here. He winds up writing a bunch of scripts. I don't know if he's a producer, but the first three projects he works on, they wind up winning Academy Awards, which is also surprising. But again, I want to reiterate my main point so I don't go off on tangents here. He's very uncertain about what he wants to do. He winds up talking to a publisher and this is how he's 41 years old. This is what he tells her. We can live on $100 a week.

Starting point is 00:45:15 If I could get $5,000 a year in royalties, I'd be set up for life. So he still has not hit that. He's been trying to pursue this career as an illustrator or writer for, let's see, 18 years at this point. And that's it. I just want to earn a living doing what I love. I want to be in my studio all day. And this is just $100 a week. Can I do that? And he still hasn't achieved that.

Starting point is 00:45:38 So he's like, okay, well, maybe I can do movies. Now, here's a problem, the flaw that he didn't see with it. He is not meant, he's like a solo person. You know, he could sit in his office all day or his studio all day, write, draw, make his own books, send it off to his editor, his publisher. You know, he works with people, but on very little basis. He's an introvert at heart. He eventually quits, even though he had a success in Hollywood. He quits because he'd set a story up. This reminds me of, you know, George Lucas, especially, um, why he did the crazy things he did in his life. If you read the book or listen to the podcast is because he was, he was obsessed with control and he wanted independence. He hated executives taking a story and just saying, you know, you have to cut four minutes

Starting point is 00:46:18 here. He's like, why? Cause I said, so that's not going to work for personality types of people like George Lucas does not work for Dr. Seuss. They up mutilating one of his uh one of his movies he's like that's it I'm done working I can't work they were you guys move too slow and then there's 17 people making decisions and there's nobody that has ownership of it um so I'm going to skip over a lot a lot of part of that randomly in the book uh he's got a good idea. Again, going back to the Kobe idea, don't study what, study how. So he says, if you want to write, this is Ted's advice for us.

Starting point is 00:46:52 If you want to write good books for children, spend a little time studying the bad ones. And that's a main idea we've seen throughout these books that you can learn a lot by seeing something done the wrong way. So one thing I also enjoyed about this book is we see Ted, he thinks a lot about why he's doing what he's doing. And in that he reveals some, I would say some flaws in human nature that are almost exclusively relegated to

Starting point is 00:47:19 adults. And so this is Ted on what kids get right. And I think there's some good lessons in here for us. Ted informed his readers that he was writing for kids by choice and for a very good reason. This is a direct quote from him. There's something we get when we write for the young that we that we can never hope to get in writing for ancients. Have you ever stopped to consider what has happened to your sense of humor? Now going back to the author. Adults, Ted argued, had not only lost their sense of humor, but their sense of wonder and their giddy love of nonsense. Children, he maintained, never let their laughs go out on a string, worrying about what their employers or

Starting point is 00:47:58 neighbors or critics might think is funny. Back to Ted. Your capacity for healthy, silly, friendly laughter was smothered. Ted said, admonishing adults everywhere. You really, you really grown up. You had really grown up. You had become adults. Adults, which is a word that means obsolete children. Okay, so now I'm fast-forwarding in the story. This is so important. Ted is 48 years old, and yet Dr. Seuss is still not convinced this could be a career. He winds up getting with his, I guess, manager agent is the role she plays. Her name is Phyllis Jackson.

Starting point is 00:48:44 She becomes very important to his career. Ted settled into a seat across from Jackson and went into his spiel. It had been seven years since I gave up being a soldier. Now I'd like to give up movies and advertising and anything that means dueling with vice presidents and committees. What he really wanted to do, he told her, was stay in San Diego and write children's books full time. All he needed to earn, he assured her, was five thousand dollars a year. But was such a career even possible, he asked.

Starting point is 00:49:17 And she she's one. She she helps influence him. So, yes, it's very possible. She talks about, you know, everybody's coming home from the war. They're having a bunch of kids. The market for children's books is about to expand rapidly. So he says after nine books, Ted still wasn't earning enough from them to make a living. Again, I go back to the importance of perseverance that all the founders and people on the podcast that we study, how important they constantly talk about perseverance. He could have gave up after nine books and we would have never known his name. There would be no biography about him,

Starting point is 00:49:48 no success, nothing. His life is completely different, but he didn't. It's very important to understand these people were not, he's not born Dr. Seuss. He had multiple decades of transforming himself into it. That's why I love the title, Becoming Dr. Seuss. I've read what, four biographies on Steve Jobs by now? If you could only read one, I'd read the one with theographies on um Steve Jobs by now if you could only read one I'd read the one

Starting point is 00:50:06 with the title Becoming Steve Jobs very similar to what Brian J. Jones did here the author of that book and I can't remember I think there's two authors I just can't remember them at the time at the moment they did they tell how Steve Jobs became Steve Jobs this book is how Dr. Seuss became Dr. Seuss. It's so interesting and important. And they're able to do it in just a few hundred pages. Let me go back to this. After nine books, Ted still wasn't making enough money. What he really needed was a blockbuster, a book that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was popular enough to send readers looking through his entire work. Now, that's what Phyllis Jackson's telling him, right? You need to have a

Starting point is 00:50:42 breakout hit because that breakout hit will sell. So you get more royalties. But more important, what do people do? And this is something I failed to do on this book. I can't believe I read George Lucas's, the biography of George Lucas and didn't order Brian J. Jones. He wrote a book on a biography on Dr. Seuss, obviously, I don't want to hold him in my hand. Jim Henson, the creator of Muppets, I'll probably read that book too. But what people normally do is they find a writer and they go through their back catalog, right? So that's what her point here is like, you need a breakout hit and then it's going to, the rising tide is going to lift all boats. And that's exactly what happens when, when he writes Cat in the Hat. So now this is Dr. Seuss

Starting point is 00:51:17 at 50. Ted turned 50 years old. Looking back over his half century, Ted was generally preached. He and Helen were living a good life in their handpicked location um in that's in southern california they still enjoyed each other's company after nearly 27 years of marriage there had been some bumps professionally but all in all he was having a respectable successful career he was one of the best known children's authors working and remained hopeful he was only a book or two away from being able to write children's books full time. Think about that. 50 years old. I'm still hoping I can do this full time. Before I get to the cat in the hat,

Starting point is 00:51:52 there's just a random quote from him that I just think is a good idea. It says, Throughout his life, Ted would maintain a regular work schedule, sitting at his desk all day even if stuck for an idea. For me, success means doing work that you love regardless of how much you make. I go into my office almost every day and give it eight hours, though every day isn't productive, of course. This is very similar to what George Lucas did when he was writing Star Wars. He didn't enjoy the process of writing Star Wars. He said, okay, you have to work eight hours.

Starting point is 00:52:20 You can sit at your desk and you can do two things. You can write or you can do nothing, but you're not going downstairs. You're not going to watch TV. You're not going to, you're not doing, you're doing, you're writing or you're doing nothing. Now here, here's what's interesting. We're getting into the cat and hat. There was a prompt for the cat and hat. There was a guy who was designing, he wanted to sell books to schools to increase literacy, right? And the way to do that is for when you're designing books for young you

Starting point is 00:52:46 have to use very simple words so this is very interesting he says but there was a catch to write a book for first graders ted would be restricted to a word list of 350 words or less and the preferred number was closer to 225 so this is the prompt he originally wrote the cat in the hat for schools his publisher is going to give the rights to schools to the guy that gave Ted the prompt. Right. But he's going to reserve the right to sell to bookstores, which is where Cat in the Hat becomes more successful to his publishing firm, which is Random House. Right. that they couldn't put down using a vocabulary of 225 words or less. So it has to be like very common, eat a cat hat, right? It winds up being extremely agonizing and very difficult. He winds up doing this later for, I think, somebody bet him that he couldn't do it with 50 words.

Starting point is 00:53:37 And he did for green eggs and ham. Okay, so it says, Ted left without making any promises, but he told Spalding this is the person giving a prompt he would take the wordless home and play with it so that book obviously becomes massively massively successful that is the first time he's able to say okay i'm doing this full time from there he starts writing one dr seuss book per year so he starts being way more productive because he can do it full time right um? So he's writing, while he's writing, he just published one of his books called On Beyond Zebra.

Starting point is 00:54:09 He makes up like a bunch of alphabets. Anyways, that's not the point. The reviewer is talking about what he doesn't like about Dr. Seuss. And this is Dr. Seuss's philosophy and it's something I love. He is a misfit through and through. And I love what he says here. So the reviewer is saying, you know, you're adding a letter, you're making up letters to the alphabet. Stop doing that. You know,

Starting point is 00:54:28 and says, Dr. Seuss, stop doing it. He's going too far. He's subversive. Ted gleefully agreed. I'm subversive as hell. He roared. I've always had a mistrust of adults. And one reason I dropped out of Oxford was what I thought was i thought they were taking life too damn seriously concentrating too much on non-essentials so first subversive let's let's go to the dictionary for that seeking are intended to subvert an established system or in institution so he flipped the right he talks about you know that time, he's when he was writing children's book. It was like the see Jane and Dick books. It's like Dick hits a ball. Jane runs fast. He's like, you're treating you're treating kids like they're stupid, like you're talking down to them.

Starting point is 00:55:21 They don't want to read about that. They want to read fantastic, crazy stories is what I'm doing. But I love this. What he says is like, I thought they were taking life too damn seriously concentrating too much on non-essentials okay so he's he becomes world famous over the next few years uh he starts his own imprint under random house uh takes on a partner winds up it's actually the founder uh one of the founders of random house's wife they try to start an imprint that's just not a good idea because ted's not the founders of Random House's wife, they try to start an imprint. That's just not a good idea because Ted's not the kind of person where he can work like he has to. He's very he has to have things his way. And he thinks, you know, I know about writing children's books. So my opinion is more valuable. That partnership is going to dissolve. But here's this is where the story turns. Right. And, you know, you don't read books just like an academic, at least I don't.

Starting point is 00:56:05 I don't read books in like an academic sort of way. Just like, yes, there's information in there that's useful, that's going to be helpful in my life, right? But I enjoy it. You get into the story. You relate to the characters in the book, right? This is not bland stuff we're reading here. And so this is where my impression of him turns, and it's personal reasons. And again, I don't think I should judge people, especially if they're much older and further down the line than I am.

Starting point is 00:56:34 But his wife is very sick. She winds up – she's got all kinds of health issues. She winds up being temporarily paralyzed. Remember, she had polio when she was younger. She had a bunch of issues. She gets diagnosed with another rare disease later on where she becomes paralyzed. Remember, she had polio when she was younger. She had a bunch of issues. She gets diagnosed with another rare disease later on where she becomes paralyzed. And from the neck down, it takes three years of physical therapy to be able to walk, talk, and think again and communicate. And Ted, they wind up meeting and becoming really good friends with another married couple.

Starting point is 00:57:05 And Ted calls this guy his best friend friend and he starts sleeping with his wife. And there's like hints that stuff is going on. People talk about it. But look, this is just a bit dirty. This is he publishes a book, right? He says most readers, however, paid scant attention to Ted's dedication page, which which proclaimed the book was for his neighbors mitzi long and audrey diamond of the mount soledad that's where he lives lingual laboratory so it's like a tongue-in-cheek joke there right ted and audrey's devotion audrey diamond is the one he's having an affair with

Starting point is 00:57:40 ted and audrey's devotion was there in plain sight if one knew where to look. Now, why am I bringing this up? Because when his wife is 69 and Ted is 64, Audrey's like in her 40s. She's much younger. His wife finds out about the affair and she kills herself. So it says, Helen was dead at the age of 69. Before going to bed the night before, she had downed a handful of barbiturates. The bottle was still on the nightstand. Then penned a final note, which she placed neatly on the bedside table. Her final suicide note is just a letter to Ted.

Starting point is 00:58:19 I'm going to read it to you here. I cannot believe this was published in the book. I think of like, what do you do when you're watching a great movie, reading a great book, you put yourself in the character's shoes, right? Like, what would I do if that happened to me? There's no way in hell, if my wife ever committed suicide, because I was threatening, I guess, leave her. And they've been married for 40 years at this point. Would I share that note with anybody? I just can't believe that we're privy to this information. Okay, so it says, Dear Ted, what has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral going down, down, down into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, failure, failure, failure.

Starting point is 00:59:07 I love you so much. I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are that I cannot conceive of life without you. My going will leave quite a rumor, but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed sometimes think of the fun we had through the years and ted didn't see this coming uh he was distraught he said i didn't know i think the quote at the time was like i didn't know if I should kill myself, burn my house down or or go away somewhere far and get lost.

Starting point is 00:59:51 And this winds up fracturing their their friend group. A lot of people blame him for his wife's death and partly because he gets remarried really rapidly. And so this is this is Ted writing to a friend around this time. Writing to his friend in late May 1968, Ted assured his old friend that, quote, I have not flipped my lid. Let me put it out, flat on the line, without any comment or begging for understanding. On the 21st of June, Audrey is going to Reno to divorce her husband. Audrey and I are going to be married about the first week in August. I'm acquiring two daughters, ages nine and 14. I'm rebuilding

Starting point is 01:00:32 the house to take care of the influx. I'm 64 years old. I'm marrying a woman 18 years younger. This is not a sudden nutty decision. This is an inevitable, inescapable conclusion to five years of four people's frustration. All I can ask you is to believe in me. So the four people being obviously the two married couples. All right, so let me go back to his professional life because I find personal life obviously very distasteful. It's definitely a plot twist there. So this is how Ted ran his business's imprint. He says, there was many times that, it's called beginner books, that beginner books

Starting point is 01:01:10 authors didn't or couldn't maintain the high standards he expected, severely testing his patience and forcing him to limit the imprint to four books a year so he could spend more time with each. I know that I'm not going to get more than four good ones, he said. I take my four authors and my four illustrators and push them and push them and push them. We really had to beat up on them to get things to the kind of quality that you wanted. And of course, from a multi-decade career, he's going to have a lot of interesting ideas. This is one of them. I'm going to paraphrase.

Starting point is 01:01:45 I decided to be a child. Still, he understood why kids tended to gravitate towards him. My books don't insult their intelligence. Maybe it's because I'm on their level. When I dropped out of Oxford, I decided to be a child. So it's not some condescending adult writing. When when warmly reminded that Bennett Cerf, or I think it's Cerf, that's the founder of Random House, had once declared Dr. Seuss to be Random House's one true genius. And they had an all-star cast of writers when he said this, Truman Capote, all these people. But he says, you know, there's only one genius on our staff, one genius that we have signed, and that's Random House. That's Dr. Seuss. So he says, when warmly reminded that Bennett Cerf had

Starting point is 01:02:28 once declared Dr. Seuss to be Random House's one true genius, Ted was typically dismissive. If I were a genius, why do I have to sweat so hard at my work? He mused. I know my stuff always looks like it was rattled off in 23 seconds, but every word is a struggle and every

Starting point is 01:02:44 sentence is like the pangs of birth. He continued to work at his desk eight hours a day, seven days a week. If I didn't, I'd become a bum. Retirement's not for me. For me, success means doing work that you love, regardless of how much you make. I go into my office almost every day and give it eight hours, though every day isn't productive, of course. So then it talks about his motivation, and it's just a very simple sentence. All he wanted was for people to read. And I just wrote my note, one word note on that page, same. And he gives his reason in one of, I mean, it's in a bunch of his books, but this is from his book, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut. He says, and again, same as what I wrote on this page too, the more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you'll go.

Starting point is 01:03:35 And in this part, note to self, you need to avoid this mindset. Despite all his success, even despite a Pulitzer Prize, Ted still believed his work wasn't being taken seriously. He badly wanted to be regarded as a great artist on the same level as Picasso and not a novelty act relegated to the realm of children artists or entertainers. And he as he would oftenly derisively remark, he wasn't Walt Disney. I don't know how you could possibly diss Walt Disney either. That's that's insanity. Still hanging on the wall of Ted's studio is one of his father's target-shooting bullseyes. Put there, he said, to remind me of perfection.

Starting point is 01:04:13 Ted is in his late 70s now. He would never feel he had achieved such a state, largely because criticism from highbrows devastated him. He scarcely realized that in the long run, their opinions mattered little when it came to artistic legacy. So the note I love is you need to avoid this mindset. Instead of focusing on the millions of people who love his work, he focuses on those that don't do the opposite. And this is a little bit about his last book, which I didn't know. It's one of my favorite. I didn't know this was his last book. He's in his 80s, I think 85 when he finishes his book. It's remarkable.

Starting point is 01:04:48 Ted would spend much of 1988 and early 1989 at his desk working slowly on the book he would come to call Oh, the Places You'll Go. And then I just want to, it's amazing how he stuck to this idea over a long period of time. And he says, you have to put in your hours and finally make it work. And I'll close here. In the last few months of his life, he knew he was dying. He refused, he had cancer. He smoked every day. It was spreading everywhere.

Starting point is 01:05:21 He's like, I'm not doing any more treatments. Put a bed in my studio. He's surrounded by his work. He has this beautiful view of the Pacific oceans and the mountains in Southern California. And it says, Dr. Seuss had taken his own unique blend of discipline and coordinated chaos to create something entirely new. Books that not only help kids read, but were also books they liked to read and wanted to read. For Ted and for Dr. Seuss, that love of reading would always be more than enough. I think I proved to a number of millions of kids that reading is not a disagreeable task, he said. I think I've helped kids laugh in schools

Starting point is 01:06:01 as well as at home. But the best thing about my books might be that I've never found a child who felt compelled to read them. Ultimately, said Ted, I'd prefer they forgot about the educational value and say it was a lot of fun. And as for becoming Dr. Seuss, Ted was content with his legacy. Dr. Seuss, from the moment of his inception, had always been there for one reason. Just to spread joy, said Ted, who then broke into a wry smile. How does that sound? That sounds good to me. That is a life well lived. That is 161 books down, 1,000 to go. If you want to buy the book, if you use the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time.

Starting point is 01:06:48 Thank you very much for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon.

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Founders - #161 Dr. Seuss

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