Harold taks his purple crayon to the walls of the Ben Franklin School, on Flax Hill, in Norwalk, Connecticut.  The school houses the Head Start program.  I’m told that the mural was painted by employees of Pepperidge Farm.

The photos are all courtesy of Jackie Curtis, a friend of Ruth and Dave — a.k.a. Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson.  Known as Dave to his friends, Johnson created Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) and its six sequels.  Krauss, author of A Hole Is to Dig (1952, illus. by Maurice Sendak) and The Carrot Seed (1945, illus. by Johnson), was married to Johnson. Both lived in Rowayton (South Norwalk), about three miles from the school where the above mural appears. And, as readers of this blog will be aware, Johnson and Krauss are the subjects of my double biography, scheduled to appear in September of this year.

I’d intended to post more of these in process, but literally had no time.  The manuscript was due back to the copy-editor yesterday — I mailed it today, and it will reach her Tuesday.  Some of her suggestions were dead-on, some were not, and others were somewhere in between.  I accepted the first type, rejected the second, and the third… required a lot of thought.  (The copy-editor was also charged with finding ways to reduce length.)  To help me evaluate my feelings about what to lose and what not to lose, I repeatedly asked myself: Does this change serve the story I’m trying to tell?

So. Here are some more things you will not see in Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (coming from UP Mississippi, fall 2012).

I kept coming back to this passage, but couldn’t come up with a way to restore it.  It was right near the beginning of chapter one, and uses a photo of infant Ruth Krauss to offer a glance forward at the woman she became:

She was an only child, and her parents doted on her.  In the above photo, six-month-old Ruth looks over her left shoulder at the camera, conveying the impression that she is in charge, and she wants you to know it.

The photo (of course) remains, the “doting” part has been worked into the previous paragraph, and the copy-editor did a nice job in condensing the family history.  I ultimately decide to let it go, since there are other moments in which an incident from her childhood permits us a glimpse of her future — which constitute some of my (clumsy, perhaps) attempts to create character.  Having no experience writing fiction but requiring the skills of a creative writer, writing this biography has pushed me more than any other project has.

Since this is a critical biography, I need to include some analysis of the creative works of Johnson and Krauss.  The final manuscript does indeed include a bit of this material, but some also got cut in this last round. Although analyses of Ruth Krauss’s verse remain, my thoughts on her poem “Yuri Gagarin and William Shakespeare” have been excised.  Here’s the beginning of poem (also quoted in the book):

Winnie: How sweet to be a cloud

W.S.: when daisies pied and violets

Winnie: floating in the blue

W.S.: and lady-smocks all silver-white

and cuckoo buds of yellow hue

Winnie: Iniquum fatum fatu

W.S.: Cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo

And here’s my analysis (which will not be in the book):

When a late sixteenth-century song about cuckolding encounters an early twentieth-century song of a bear pretending to be a cloud, we might be reminded that Winnie-the-Pooh’s song is also motivated by both desire and deceit: To get the honey he craves, he masquerades as a cloud.  Or we might not see it this way, having forgotten either Shakespeare’s song, or Milne’s, or both. Without the contexts of the originals, the combination may instead be whimsical, playful, and even lyrical.

I’m not conflicted about cutting this.  My other analyses of her verse are better than this, which is fine but not brilliant.  And so… it’s gone!

I did have a hard time excising narrative and, indeed, often resisted suggestions to remove narrative. The copy-editor, for instance, had a tendency to summarize a conversation.  But a conversation works better dramatically — it’s better for storytelling than a summary is.  So, here’s something I cut. Later in life, Crockett Johnson (known as Dave to his friends) grew interested in the Bible, and began reading it carefully:

Mischa Richter asked him, “Well, what about it?  Are you still reading the Bible?”

Dave responded, “I had to stop.  The begats got me.”

I permitted that cut because I have another similar conversation between him and Andy Rooney (which I restored). Also, Mischa Richter is well established in the book — he was a close friend of Johnson’s.  Rooney was not a close friend; they were acquainted, but that’s all.  So, this is a chance to give him a “walk-on” part, as it were.

Omitting examples of Johnson’s dry wit was particularly hard for me.  To offer another example, I ended up cutting this summer 1950 vacation that he and Ruth took with Gene and Marian Searchinger:

Back in Connecticut and unaware that they were under investigation, Dave and Ruth drove off for a brief summer holiday with their friends Marian and Gene Searchinger, a filmmaker who was then working on NBC’s Today show. Each couple in their own car, they traveled up to Nova Scotia. Planning to park the cars on the ferry, they were surprised to learn that one needed to reserve spaces well in advance.  Between two pillars, there was one very small space left on the boat, just large enough for Dave’s little Austin Tudor sedan.  They left the Searchingers’ car on the mainland, and the four of them toured Nova Scotia in Dave’s small car.

They didn’t mind the close quarters, but getting a decent cup of coffee was a challenge. Since all four travelers required regular doses of caffeine, they developed a system. When they came upon a promising restaurant or cafe, one member of the group would enter, and order a cup.  He or she would then signal to the others whether they should come in or not.  The signal was a fist with one finger, two fingers, or three fingers extended — depending on the quality of the coffee.  After the trip, Dave gave Gene a gift commemorating their Nova Scotia holiday.  On a piece of wood, Dave painted a hand rising out of an ocean of coffee: only one finger was sticking up.

I’m a little conflicted about having cut this, but how important is it to the larger narrative?  I ultimately decided that it wasn’t as important to keep as some other stories were, and (a bit reluctantly) let it go.

On the whole, the result of my collaboration with the copy-editor is a better manuscript. That said, I do wish I’d had more time with this. At the busiest time of the term, I’ve had to respond to a heavily-edited manuscript that represents a dozen years of my labor. On the other hand, there is almost no moment during this semester that would have been great timing. The past four months have been the busiest of my professional life.

But that’s always the way. Just when you think you couldn’t get any busier, you do. Or, at least, I do.  And the important thing is that the manuscript is better for this work.  I’m really looking forward to sharing it with the world — in the fall of 2012!

Should this post have proven even slightly interesting, then there’s a remote chance that posts tagged Crockett Johnson or Ruth Krauss or Biography might fail to bore you.  Indeed, if you have read to this point and do not find yourself slipping into unconsciousness, you might test your stamina with some of these related posts.

• Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss Biography: Final Cuts, Part 2: The Dog Problem (Dec. 2011).
• Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss Biography: Final Cuts, Part 1: What’s in a name? (Nov. 2011).
• Appendix A: American Committee for Spanish Freedom (July 2011).  I cut all four appendices.  This is the first one.
• Appendix B: We Are for Wallace (July 2011).  And this is the second one.
• Appendix C: Assembly of Men and Women in the Arts Concerned with Vietnam (Sept. 2011).  The third one.
• Appendix D: End Your Silence (Sept 2011).  The fourth one.
• Preview: biography of Johnson and Krauss.  First sentence and last sentence (Sept. 2011).
• Invent Title for My Book, Win Signed Copy of the Book (Aug. 2011).  Editor dislikes title.  I “crowdsource” it to readers, and get lots of suggestions.  Have submitted leading contenders to editor.  No decision as yet on final title.
• Crockett Johnson and the Purple Crayon: A Life in Art (Aug. 2011).  My 2004 Comic Art article on the life of Crockett Johnson.  Now available for free as either pdf or a series of jpgs.
• Going Back to High School — 90 Years Back (Aug. 2011).  A glimpse into Crockett Johnson’s high school days.
• He Was a Teenage Harold: Crockett Johnson’s High School Cartoons (Aug. 2010).  Johnson’s earliest work, published under his given name of David Johnson Leisk.
• The Text’s in the Mail (June 2011): in which I send the final version of the manuscript to my editor.
• News, Thanks, and Apologies (May 2011): in which I apologize for the post below, and indicate my current plan of action.
• Update, Featuring First 5 Paragraphs of the Book! (May 2011): ill-advised post, in which I express irritation and conflicting signals from editor.  I shouldn’t have posted this.
• On a First-Name Basis with People I’ve Never Met (Jan. 2011): early version of bit I added to intro.
• biography outtakes, part 8 (June 2011): now featuring despair!
• biography outtakes, part 7 (June 2011): killing my darlings.  Some bits that I like but that do not need to be retained… and thus have been cut!
• biography outtakes, part 6 (May 2011): some of the notes removed from this current round of editing.
• biography outtakes, part 5 (Dec. 2010): this and those below are from the round of edits I did in the fall.  In that round of editing, I removed 10,000 words.
• biography outtakes, part 4 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 3 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 2 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 1 (Nov. 2010).

Immersion in the thoroughly copy-edited manuscript has prevented me from getting more cuts up here, but there are plenty to share.  As noted in the post from earlier in the week, the copy-editor was also charged with reducing the length of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How An Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (coming from UP Mississippi in September 2012).  So, the editing is quite… extensive.

She’s very thorough and, while I do not agree with all of her suggestions, our collaboration is producing a much stronger manuscript.  It forces me to reconsider each choice, every word, everything I’d decided to include.  Sometimes, a cut is easy to make.  For example, I had no trouble following her recommendation to cut this paragraph from a chapter on Crockett Johnson‘s (a.k.a. Dave’s) childhood:

The Queens of Dave’s youth strained under its rapid growth.  Between 1910 and 1925, Corona experienced a housing boom that ended only when there was no more land on which to build. Public School 16 opened in 1908, was already overcrowded by 1911, and siphoned off its excess population when Public School 92 opened in 1913 — about a year after Dave began attending P.S. 16. Although the development was great news for someone in the lumber business (as Dave’s dad was), the unpaved streets were treacherous for automobiles, and the absence of both speed limits and mandatory drivers’ licenses made crossing the road dangerous for pedestrians.

Other examples convey the urbanization of Queens; this one is less interesting than the others.  So, away it goes.

What I find most difficult are those I’ve come to think of under the heading “The Dog Problem.”  These are examples that, while still somewhat contextual, nonetheless inform our sense of who Crockett Johnson or Ruth Krauss were, or of what their work meant.  I call them the “Dog Problem” because the copy-editor has thrown out all stories concerning Johnson’s dogs — or, at least, all of them through Chapter 17 (I’ve not finished going through all of the manuscript).  He was a dog person, and so dogs were a major part of his life and hers.  As a result, I’m uncomfortable with these omissions.  It’s not enough to note that they had dogs (a fact which she does retain).  On the other hand, how many of these dog stories does the book really need?  My compromise, at this point, has been to restore the 1947 dog story, to relocate the early 1940s story to The Complete Barnaby Vol. 1 (coming from Fantagraphics, June 2012), and to omit this one, from Johnson’s first marriage:

Mary Elting and Franklin “Dank” Folsom found them great company, full of humorous stories. Dave and Charlotte had two dogs, one smart and the other not. They used to leave their screen door unlocked (“nobody locked doors in the Village in those days,” Mary says), allowing the dogs to go out into the garden when they pleased. The smart dog figured out how to open the door to come back inside, but the dumb dog did not. When it was raining, the smart dog liked to dash inside, and close the door behind him, leaving the other one out in the rain. Dave chuckled at the antics of his pets.

Johnson’s experience with dogs inform the creation of Gorgon (Barnaby’s dog), Barkis (from his short-lived, single-panel comic), and other dog characters.  They’re less of an influence on Krauss’s work, but very much a part of her daily life.  So, the book ought to have at least one dog story… and now it does!

One “Dog Problem” I’m struggling with right now is from Chapter 17.  She’s marked this paragraph for deletion:

Ruth and Dave also befriended psychiatrist Gil Rose, his wife Ann and their children, after they moved to Rowayton in 1955. An aspiring writer of children’s books, Ann admired Ruth’s work.  Gil enjoyed talking about psychology with Ruth, and often went sailing with Dave on the Five Mile River. One day, as they set out on the river, Dave said, “You know, this river is exactly five miles long.”  Gil, thought, ah, what a wonderful congruence of truth and language: the river is named Five Mile River because it’s five miles in length. After a few moments, Dave added, “Of course, that wasn’t the original name. The original name was, after the fact that there were five mills on the river, it was called the Five Mills River.” In other words, Gil says, “so much for language and truth.”  That, he notes, was typical of Dave’s sense of humor — “iconoclastic, pithy.”

The book contains other examples of Dave’s wit.  Does it need this one?  Well, in the sense that there are other examples, no, I don’t suppose it does need it.  On the other hand, in the sense that it sets up a later sailing story (that I’m definitely going to retain), it is important.  The anecdote also helps create character, which is good.  Dave’s reticent tendencies have made him particularly hard to bring to life.  Ruth was much more outgoing, outspoken, lively.  As a result, she’s much easier to animate on the page.  So, I’ve marked this one with a post-it note.  I’m thinking about it, and will return to it later.  Should you have any thoughts on whether or not to retain it, do feel free to share them in the comments section, below.

If you failed to find this post unbearably dull, you might also enjoy posts tagged Crockett Johnson or Ruth Krauss or Biography.  Indeed, if you have read this far and yet remain conscious, why not try reading some of these related posts?  Go on.  I dare you.

• Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss Biography: Final Cuts, Part 1: What’s in a name? (Nov. 2011).
• Appendix A: American Committee for Spanish Freedom (July 2011).  I cut all four appendices.  This is the first one.
• Appendix B: We Are for Wallace (July 2011).  And this is the second one.
• Appendix C: Assembly of Men and Women in the Arts Concerned with Vietnam (Sept. 2011).  The third one.
• Appendix D: End Your Silence (Sept 2011).  The fourth one.
• Preview: biography of Johnson and Krauss.  First sentence and last sentence (Sept. 2011).
• Invent Title for My Book, Win Signed Copy of the Book (Aug. 2011).  Editor dislikes title.  I “crowdsource” it to readers, and get lots of suggestions.  Have submitted leading contenders to editor.  No decision as yet on final title.
• Crockett Johnson and the Purple Crayon: A Life in Art (Aug. 2011).  My 2004 Comic Art article on the life of Crockett Johnson.  Now available for free as either pdf or a series of jpgs.
• Going Back to High School — 90 Years Back (Aug. 2011).  A glimpse into Crockett Johnson’s high school days.
• He Was a Teenage Harold: Crockett Johnson’s High School Cartoons (Aug. 2010).  Johnson’s earliest work, published under his given name of David Johnson Leisk.
• The Text’s in the Mail (June 2011): in which I send the final version of the manuscript to my editor.
• News, Thanks, and Apologies (May 2011): in which I apologize for the post below, and indicate my current plan of action.
• Update, Featuring First 5 Paragraphs of the Book! (May 2011): ill-advised post, in which I express irritation and conflicting signals from editor.  I shouldn’t have posted this.
• On a First-Name Basis with People I’ve Never Met (Jan. 2011): early version of bit I added to intro.
• biography outtakes, part 8 (June 2011): now featuring despair!
• biography outtakes, part 7 (June 2011): killing my darlings.  Some bits that I like but that do not need to be retained… and thus have been cut!
• biography outtakes, part 6 (May 2011): some of the notes removed from this current round of editing.
• biography outtakes, part 5 (Dec. 2010): this and those below are from the round of edits I did in the fall.  In that round of editing, I removed 10,000 words.
• biography outtakes, part 4 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 3 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 2 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 1 (Nov. 2010).

I know. You thought that me posting omitted portions of the biography was over months ago. So did I. Thing is, the copyeditor for Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How An Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (coming September 2012) was also charged with getting the manuscript shorter still.  And so… there are further cuts.  On the mistaken assumption that two or three people might find these interesting, I’ll share a few.  Today’s concern the derivation of surnames — Krauss and Leisk (Crockett Johnson‘s real name was David Johnson Leisk).  I find this sort of information interesting, but there are other proposed cuts that I find even more worthy of keeping.  So, these items (formerly of Chapters 1 and 2, respectively) are cut.

Derived from the German kraus, Ruth’s surname means “curly” — and her hair was curly.  Though it probably originates in Bohemia, Krauss and its variants also appear in neighboring countries Austria and Germany.

The name Leask may derive from the Norse or Danish word for “a stirring fellow,” or it may be a diminutive of lisse, Anglo-Saxon for “happy.”  Johnson’s ancestors spell the name Leask until the latter half of the nineteenth century, when they also spell it Leisk. These two spellings may explain the name’s variant pronunciations — “Lihsk” or “Leesk.” Johnson pronounced it “Lihsk.”

Are there more cuts to share? you ask.  (Or, possibly, you don’t ask.)  Yes.  Yes, there are.  Plus there’s lots more on the bio, stored away in various corners of this blog.  Posts tagged Crockett Johnson or Ruth Krauss or Biography are probably going to lead you to something connected to the biography.  OK, a few won’t  But most will.  Anyway.  Here are some related posts:

• Appendix A: American Committee for Spanish Freedom (July 2011).  I cut all four appendices.  This is the first one.
• Appendix B: We Are for Wallace (July 2011).  And this is the second one.
• Appendix C: Assembly of Men and Women in the Arts Concerned with Vietnam (Sept. 2011).  The third one.
• Appendix D: End Your Silence (Sept 2011).  The fourth one.
• Preview: biography of Johnson and Krauss.  First sentence and last sentence (Sept. 2011).
• Invent Title for My Book, Win Signed Copy of the Book (Aug. 2011).  Editor dislikes title.  I “crowdsource” it to readers, and get lots of suggestions.  Have submitted leading contenders to editor.  No decision as yet on final title.
• Crockett Johnson and the Purple Crayon: A Life in Art (Aug. 2011).  My 2004 Comic Art article on the life of Crockett Johnson.  Now available for free as either pdf or a series of jpgs.
• Going Back to High School — 90 Years Back (Aug. 2011).  A glimpse into Crockett Johnson’s high school days.
• He Was a Teenage Harold: Crockett Johnson’s High School Cartoons (Aug. 2010).  Johnson’s earliest work, published under his given name of David Johnson Leisk.
• The Text’s in the Mail (June 2011): in which I send the final version of the manuscript to my editor.
• News, Thanks, and Apologies (May 2011): in which I apologize for the post below, and indicate my current plan of action.
• Update, Featuring First 5 Paragraphs of the Book! (May 2011): ill-advised post, in which I express irritation and conflicting signals from editor.  I shouldn’t have posted this.
• On a First-Name Basis with People I’ve Never Met (Jan. 2011): early version of bit I added to intro.
• biography outtakes, part 8 (June 2011): now featuring despair!
• biography outtakes, part 7 (June 2011): killing my darlings.  Some bits that I like but that do not need to be retained… and thus have been cut!
• biography outtakes, part 6 (May 2011): some of the notes removed from this current round of editing.
• biography outtakes, part 5 (Dec. 2010): this and those below are from the round of edits I did in the fall.  In that round of editing, I removed 10,000 words.
• biography outtakes, part 4 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 3 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 2 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 1 (Nov. 2010).

One of the great things about working on the biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (due out in the fall of 2012) is getting to talk to interesting people.  One of the sad things is that many of them pass away.  I just learned that Andy Rooney died last night, at the age of 92.

His was one of my earliest interviews.  I’d heard that he knew Crockett Johnson, and so I wrote him a letter.  On the morning of Monday, October 16, 2000, the phone rang.  On the other end of the receiver was … Andy Rooney!  I couldn’t believe it.  Here’s an extract from our conversation, with apologies for my poor interviewing skills. (I talked too much in the early interviews. Later, I became a better listener.)  The “Dave Johnson” to whom Mr Rooney refers is Crockett Johnson — his friends called him “Dave” (his given name).

Philip Nel: So, you were saying that he had a wide range of interests and was a good conversationalist, too.

Andy Rooney: Oh, yeah, he was great.  He got into — the last years of his life — he got into geometry.  I don’t know what that was all about.  He got –

PN: Paintings.

AR: Yeah.  And to his philosophy, how that connected…  (Laughs.)  But one of the things I remember most about Dave.  I was coming out of the post office in Rowayton, and I met him.  I hadn’t seen him for a couple months, and I wondered where he was.  And I said, “Where you been?”  He said, “Well, I’ve been reading the Bible.”  Well, you know, he was such a student.  I mean, boy, if he said he’d been reading the Bible, he’d read the Bible.  I mean, he spent about six months on it without letting any reference that he could track down go by him without his understanding it.

PN: Do you remember when this was, that he was doing this?

AR: Oh, it was two years before he died — what year did he die?

PN: ’75.

AR: Yeah, it was in the early ’70s.  And, I said, “Oh, I’ve never known anybody who really read the bible.  How is it?”  And he said, “Well, there’s a lot of good stuff in it.  [Pause.]  But it’s a mess over all.”

PN: (Laughs.)  That’s great.  When did you meet Dave?  Right after you moved to Rowayton or…?

AR: Yes, we moved there in 1951.

PN: He was living there then.

AR: Yes, he had this great house down on …

PN: On Crockett and Rowayton there.

AR: Yes, it’s right across the road from the harbor.  It was a great house.  Ruth was moderately crazy.  She was a nut.  But interesting.  She would come to your house and, more often than not, fall asleep on the couch.

PN: (Laughs.)  That’s what a lot of people have said –

AR: Have they?

PN: Yeah, a lot of people have said that about Ruth — that she’d come over.  About half an hour later, fall asleep.

AR: That’s right.  And I knew never much about Dave’s professional football career, but I always admired him for it.

PN: Yeah, I haven’t been able to dig up much on that either.  I think he may have played semi-pro, because I haven’t found a trace of professional….

AR: He was big.  I don’t know what his dimensions were, but he must have been 6’ 4”.

PN: That sounds about right.

AR: A big, imposing person.  He had a big head, bald.  But still good looking in his own way.  I mean one of the great things that anyone can possess is enthusiasm.  Dave Johnson just was enthusiastic about anything he got into.  He was just amazing.  I was a great fan of “Barnaby” before I ever knew him. …

Later in our conversation, we returned to the example of Johnson reading the Bible:

AR: Yeah.  But, it was so typical of his enthusiasm for something — getting into it.  I’m certain that when he was wrapped up reading the Bible, he went to all the libraries, he would come in to New York and look up anything that he couldn’t find out there.

PN: Yes, you see that throughout his life, I think — a wide-ranging interest in a lot of different things.

AR: Yeah.

PN: It shows up in the references in the “Barnaby” strips, there’s just a wide range of knowledge that shows up in there.

It was a brief conversation — only 15 minutes.  Andy Rooney (and his wife Marge, whom I also interviewed) did not know Johnson and Krauss well.  They lived in the same Connecticut town.  They were acquainted.  Rooney clearly admired Johnson, and was kind enough to help out an aspiring biographer.  While his TV persona may lead you to think of him as a cynic, to me (in our very brief conversation) he was not cynical at all.  He was generous.  He was kind.  And I am grateful.

Thank you, Mr. Rooney.  Godspeed.

In honor of what would have been Crockett Johnson‘s 105th birthday, I can exclusively reveal both the title of the book and the name of the winner of my Invent Title for My Book, win a Signed Copy of the Book contest.  Yesterday (Wednesday), my editor emailed the title that he and his colleagues liked best:

Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature

So… that’ll be the title.  How did we arrive at this title?  Back in late August, Walter (my editor) wrote to me: “I talked to my colleagues about it, and most of them find the main title problematic. It’s lengthy and isn’t evocative to anyone who isn’t already familiar with Johnson or Krauss, and so doesn’t draw the lay reader into the text. What other possibilities are there?” I posed the question to all of you, and thanks to your generous suggestions, we had a lot to choose from.

Since he wanted something that might be evocative to someone not already familiar with Johnson and Krauss, I was most struck by these suggestions, which came from my colleague Dan Hoyt, via email:

The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How One Couple Found Lefty Love, Dodged the FBI, and Re-Invented Children’s literature

The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How One Couple Gave Birth to Harold, A Hole to Dig, a New Strain of Children’s Literature, and even a Purple Crayon

I liked the narrative impulse — each title tells a story that might pique your curiosity even if you’re not already familiar with the work of Johnson or Krauss.  So, inspired by those suggestions, I sent Walter the following (with the top one as my top choice):

Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Changed the Future of Children’s Literature.

Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Reinvented the Modern Picture Book.

Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Re-imagined Children’s Literature.

Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature.

As you can see, he and his colleagues chose the final one above.  As you might also notice, these are all rather long — and he was worried about length.  So, I also picked a few “runners-up.”

The first one comes from cartoonist Paul Karasik (via the blog):

…And The Purple Crayon: Crockett Johnson, Ruth Krauss, and the Reinvention of the Modern Picture Book

You’ll note that I borrowed “the Modern Picture Book” for one of the rejected titles above.  I liked this one.  I liked the suggestiveness of the ellipses.  Also, I liked the fact that beginning a title with ellipses is rather unusual.  Off the top of my head, I can think only of …And Ladies of the Club (though I’m sure there are others).

The second runner-up comes from Dean Jacoby (via Facebook):

Two Crayons, One Art: The Children’s Literature and Marriage of Crockett and Krauss

I liked what comes before the colon, but I’d have changed what comes after the colon.  Maybe borrow from Karasik‘s suggestion for the post-colon part.  For the record, a version of this was also nearly the winner.  Before his colleagues persuaded him to go for what became the winning title, Walter was leaning towards “Two Crayons, One Art: Crockett Johnson, Ruth Krauss, and the Reinvention of Children’s Literature” or “Two Crayons, One Art: A Biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss.”

Since his suggestion came closet to the title that was ultimately chosen, our contest winner is Dan Hoyt.  Congratulations, Dan!  A profound THANK YOU to everyone who participated.  I really enjoyed reading your suggestions.  You helped me arrive at a solution to a problem that has remain unsolved for a decade — what to call the book?!?

I’ll conclude with a hearty happy birthday to Crockett Johnson!  This time next year, we can celebrate by reading his and Ruth Krauss’s biography… because it’ll be out!

As we await a verdict from my editor on the official title of the book formerly known as The Purple Crayon and a Hole to Dig: The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (forthcoming 2012), I thought I’d share a few tips with any aspiring biographers out there. Since I’ve only written one biography (albeit a double biography), you should of course feel free to take this advice with a grain of salt.

1. Seek counsel from experts.  Biographers Leonard Marcus (Margaret Wise Brown), Michael Patrick Hearn (L. Frank Baum, forthcoming), Judith Morgan (Dr. Seuss) all kindly answered my questions.  For instance, Michael introduced me to editor Susan Hirschman, who knew (and edited) both Johnson and Krauss.  In addition to putting me in touch with HarperCollins’ archivist, Leonard also told me that scanning city directories (the predecessor to phone books) can help you track down where people lived.  I’ve spent an unusual amount of time at a microfilm reader, perusing city directories for Manhattan, Queens, and Baltimore.

2. Ask lots of questions.  You’ll need to learn much about subjects in which you’re not an expert. So, for instance, Mathematics Professor Emeritus J. B. Stroud explained the math behind the paintings to which Johnson devoted his final decade.  In addition to venturing beyond your areas of expertise, you’ll also learn of research methods you didn’t know existed. For example, my former neighbor Jerry Wigglesworth (a lawyer) told me that any probated will would be on file in probate court.  Acting on his advice, I obtained copies of Johnson’s and Krauss’s wills from the probate court in Westport, Connecticut.

3. Pick a subject who had a brief but interesting life.  During the dozen years I worked on my bio., I’ve often thought: “ah, how wise of Leonard Marcus to write about Margaret Wise Brown.  She only lived to be 42!”  In contrast, Crockett Johnson lived to be 68.  Ruth Krauss lived to be 91.  That’s a lot of years to cover!  Of course, I’m partially kidding about the age of your subject (and I know that Brown’s early death had nothing to do with Leonard’s decision to write her biography).  It’s most important that your subject be interesting to you: you’ll likely be spending a decade of your life getting to know him or her.  The length of a person’s life is less important, though it will affect how long it takes you to complete the book.

4. Are there any autobiographical records? Choosing someone who wrote some autobiographical narrative of her or his own will make your life a lot easier — even if the account proves only partially accurate, you would at least have something to go on.  Crockett Johnson lacked any autobiographical impulse; apart from occasional remarks in interviews (of which there are very few), he left no first-person accounts of his life.  Ruth, on the other hand, did write about herself.  She never wrote a full-length autobiography, but left a number of autobiographical fragments.  For this reason, it’s much easier to access a sense of her inner life.

5. Don’t delay! Start today! If you are serious about writing a biography, stop reading this post and start working on it right now.  I’m not telling you this because the process is going to take about ten years.  I’m telling you this because people are going to die.  Of course, if you’re writing about someone who died 100 or more years ago, the likelihood of finding living witnesses is rather slim. But, if you’re writing about someone born more recently, then get started!  I was very fortunate to talk with Mischa Richter (New Yorker cartoonist and good friend of Johnson), A. B. Magil (one of New Masses’ editors in the 1930s, as was Johnson), Syd Hoff (New Yorker cartoonist, children’s author, and New Masses cartoonist in the 1930s), Mary Elting Folsom (children’s author, member of Book and Magazine Union, also knew Johnson in the ’30s), Else Frank (Johnson’s sister), and many other folks who have since passed on.

But I narrowly missed talking with Kenneth Koch (whose poetry class Krauss took) and Hannah Baker (PM’s comics editor, who worked with Johnson on Barnaby).  Immediately after receiving a reply from Ms. Baker, I tried phoning her — she’d invited me to call, but included no number.  My attempts failed.  I immediately wrote again. A month later, a kind reply from her niece informed me that she’d passed on.  My letter to Mr. Koch arrived the day he died.  Shortly thereafter, I had such a vivid dream that Mr. Koch was talking with me (from beyond the grave!) that I got out of bed, ready to take notes on our interview… and then realized, ahhh, right, I was dreaming.  And I went back to bed.

6. Organize! In the dozen years I worked on this, I interviewed 84 people, investigated over three dozen archives and special collections, read everything written by or about Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss, and consulted additional hundreds of articles and books.  I looked at birth certificates, marriage certificates, census data, property deeds, wills, century-old insurance company maps, FBI files, photographs, and city directories for Baltimore, New York, Darien, Norwalk, and Westport, Connecticut.  That’s a lot of information to keep straight.  Two parallel systems evolved.  (1) Lots of file folders — both on the computer and in the physical world.  In the physical world, for instance, a separate folder went to: each interviewee or otherwise important person, reviews (this was actually two folders), biographical profiles and interviews, draft materials related to individual books, uncollected works (many file folders of Barnaby strips), census data, wills, and many more.  I’ve 6 file drawers full of materials.  And another three shelves full of printed work (books, magazines, etc).  Oh, and a box full of cassette tapes (containing interviews).  (2) A document I called “chronology.”  It has three columns: Year, Life, Published Work.  Here, for instance, is an unusually brief entry (for the year 1937):

I didn’t put everything in each year, but what I did put in there helped me locate events in time, gave me a sense of sequence.  Some items are approximately located — the manuscript reflects the fact that the break-up of Krauss’s first marriage likely occurred in 1938, but I neglected to correct that on the chronology document.

7. Leave No Stone Unturned…  As you interview more people and visit more archives, you’ll build up a vast network of contacts, and a rich nexus of information. Pursue those leads! I drove to Denmark, Maine’s Camp Walden, an all-girls camp where Ruth Krauss spent two formative summers: there, I found her first published writing in the 1919 issue of Splash, the camp yearbook. I went to Staten Island to meet 67-year-old Thomas Hamilton, who as 7-year-old Tommy Hamilton starred as Barnaby in the 1946 stage production of Crockett Johnson’s comic strip. He had clippings and the entire unpublished script for the play, all of which he let me copy.

8. … Except for the Stones That You Leave Alone.  At a certain point, you have to stop researching so that you can finish the book.  The research can be endless unless you make a conscious decision to curtail it.  One way to help contain the research process is to start writing while researching.  Doing so will help you get a sense of the shape the book will ultimately take.  As you start to glimpse the contours of the final volume, you’ll come to realize that — although interesting — there are some leads that can be put aside.

9. Learn to Write Narrative.  Read a lot of biographies.  Read “how to” books like Nigel Hamilton’s How to Do Biography: A Primer.  Talk to creative writers and, if you can, take a creative writing course.  (I was unable to take a class, but I did consult creative writers.)  I have no training in writing narrative or character … or creating any of the features of literary fiction.  I did my best to write a book that was both scholarly and told a good story, but this was very challenging.  Reading other non-fiction (especially biographies) and talking to my creative-writing colleagues helped me figure out how to do this.

10. Leap Before You Look. Finally, it may be helpful to forget much of what I’ve written here, and approach your task with a certain degree of ignorance. If you begin with a full awareness of what you are getting into, you might not start in the first place. Fortunately, if you are serious about writing a biography, nothing I’ve said here will deter you — because (1) difficulty is but a welcome challenge to the determined scholar, and (2) only by writing a biography can you truly appreciate how enormous the project is.  Even after reading this post, aspiring biographers should still be sufficiently unaware and thus able to approach their task with optimism.

Writing a biography is a painstaking, challenging, often plodding process.  As the narrator of Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers laments, “It is to be regretted that no mental method of daguerreotype or photography has yet been discovered, by which the characters of men can be reduced to writing and put into grammatical language with an erring precision of truthful description.” However, as he also notes, “such mechanical descriptive skill” would yield only a “dull, dead, unfeeling, inauspicious likeness.” In other words, difficulty is a necessary part of rendering a life: “There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any valuable art. […] There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.”¹  But, to end on an upbeat note, while the biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss has certainly been the most difficult book I’ve written, it has also been the most rewarding.  It’s pushed me, forced me to develop intellectual muscles I didn’t know existed, compelled me to improve my writing.  It’s the best book I’ve written, and may well be the best one I ever will write.

Although I wouldn’t argue that once upon a time “illustrators were celebrities,” it’s definitely true that they were once more celebrated than they are now.  Predictably, one illustrator who comes to my mind is Crockett Johnson (my biography of Johnson and his wife Ruth Krauss will be published in the fall of 2012).  In 1947, Johnson’s casual remark during a visit to the offices of William Sloane Associates struck Sloane — who founded the publishing company the previous year, after leaving Henry Holt (where he had been Vice President) — as interesting enough to use in an advertisement.  (Click on the image to enlarge.)

The book to which Johnson refers is Ward Moore‘s Greener Than You Think (1947), a science-fiction satire about a mutant strain of crabgrass that ultimately takes over the world.  Even by the standards of science fiction, it’s an unusual novel.

I know this because, when I found this advertisement (thanks to ProQuest’s Historical New York Times database), I sought a copy of Moore’s novel and read it. I wondered: Why would Crockett Johnson be drawn to such a curious book?  Or, indeed, was he drawn to it at all?  One should not take advertisements at face value, and, in any case, Johnson had a wry sense of humor.  Perhaps this off-hand quip was nothing more than just that.  Or, it may have simply been one of the many things in which he was interested.  Johnson’s curiosity covered a wide array of subjects; in his intellectual interests and abilities, he was very much a renaissance man.

Turns out that, in its claim of Johnson’s interest in the book, the advertisement appears to have been telling the truth.  In some 1947 notes written in an attempt to overcome writer’s block, Ruth Krauss mentions her husband’s interest in this book — which, she suspects, derives from his lifelong aversion to crab grass.  Though Johnson later gave up on gardening, in the 1940s he was an avid gardner.

I ultimately did include a few sentences on this book in the biography.  I did so because it illuminated an aspect of Johnson’s character, spoke to his wide-ranging interests, and located him in the offices of a publisher during a rough patch, professionally.  I speculated that he might have been in the offices of the former VP of Holt (which published his two Barnaby books) in order to discuss the planned but never published third Barnaby book.  It’s also mentioned in the bio. because it tells us that, in 1947, Johnson carried enough cultural caché to be quoted in a New York Times advertisement.

This little episode is but one of many reasons why this biography has taken so long to write. (I began working on it in the waning days of the Clinton Administration.) It’s also why, although I’m tempted to undertake another biography, actually doing so seems less likely.  Undertaking another one is likely another decade’s worth of commitment.

Posts tagged Crockett Johnson or Ruth Krauss or Biography will all send you to something connected to the biography.  If you’d like a more directed reading experience, here’s an incomplete list of other posts:

• Appendix A: American Committee for Spanish Freedom (July 2011).  I cut all four appendices.  This is the first one.
• Appendix B: We Are for Wallace (July 2011).  And this is the second one.
• Appendix C: Assembly of Men and Women in the Arts Concerned with Vietnam (Sept. 2011).  The third one.
• Appendix D: End Your Silence (Sept. 2011).  The fourth one.
• Preview: biography of Johnson and Krauss.  First sentence and last sentence (Sept. 2011).
• Invent Title for My Book, Win Signed Copy of the Book (Aug. 2011).  Editor dislikes title.  I “crowdsource” it to readers, and get lots of suggestions.  Have submitted leading contenders to editor.  No decision as yet on final title.
• Crockett Johnson and the Purple Crayon: A Life in Art (Aug. 2011).  My 2004 Comic Art article on the life of Crockett Johnson.  Now available for free as either pdf or a series of jpgs.
• Going Back to High School — 90 Years Back (Aug. 2011).  A glimpse into Crockett Johnson’s high school days.
• He Was a Teenage Harold: Crockett Johnson’s High School Cartoons (Aug. 2010).  Johnson’s earliest work, published under his given name of David Johnson Leisk.
• The Text’s in the Mail (June 2011): in which I send the final version of the manuscript to my editor.
• News, Thanks, and Apologies (May 2011): in which I apologize for the post below, and indicate my current plan of action.
• Update, Featuring First 5 Paragraphs of the Book! (May 2011): ill-advised post, in which I express irritation and conflicting signals from editor.  I shouldn’t have posted this.
• On a First-Name Basis with People I’ve Never Met (Jan. 2011): early version of bit I added to intro.
• biography outtakes, part 8 (June 2011): now featuring despair!
• biography outtakes, part 7 (June 2011): killing my darlings.  Some bits that I like but that do not need to be retained… and thus have been cut!
• biography outtakes, part 6 (May 2011): some of the notes removed from this current round of editing.
• biography outtakes, part 5 (Dec. 2010): this and those below are from the round of edits I did in the fall.  In that round of editing, I removed 10,000 words.
• biography outtakes, part 4 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 3 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 2 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 1 (Nov. 2010).

The final appendix omitted from my forthcoming biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (2012) also chronicles their early opposition to the war in Vietnam and — unusually — has Ruth’s name on it as well.  Why did she sign this one?  I think because she particularly abhorred violence.  One of her friends told me that even cartoon violence upset her.  As the previously posted Vietnam petition did, this one includes friends of Johnson and Krauss: Ad Reinhardt, Kay Boyle, Remy Charlip, Herman and Nina Schneider.

Appendix D

End Your Silence

[April 1965]

We are grieved by American policies in Vietnam.  We are opposed to American policies in Vietnam.  We will not remain silent before the world.  We call on those who wish to speak in a crucial and tragic moment in our history, to demand an immediate turning of the American policy in Vietnam to the methods of peace.

A Protest of Artists and Writers

Many other signatures were received too late to be included

This statement was formulated three weeks before the President annoucned that he was willing to begin “unconditional discussions” with “the foe.”  Will his speech be followed by action? — peaceful, responsible action, NOT the further use of force?  The American people have begun, in letters to Washington and in the statements published by other concerned groups, to voice their horror at a policy of violence.  The President has replied to this expression of public opinion.  Let us not now relax our insistence on the immediate cessation of bombings in North Vietnam.  Let us support that part of Mr Johnson’s speech which seems to offer hope of negotiations, and at the same time let us persist energetically in expressing our opposition to any but peaceful policies.  WRITE TO THE PRESIDENT.

Co-secretaries: Denise Levertov : Mitchell Goodman : WRITERS AND ARTISTS PROTEST Post Office Box 1356 Church St. Station New York NY 10008.

Source: “END YOUR SILENCE,” advertisment, New York Times, 18 Apr. 1965, p. E5.

Posts tagged Crockett Johnson or Ruth Krauss or Biography will all likely lead you to something connected to the biography.  Trust me.  If you don’t trust me (and why would you?), here’s an incomplete list of other posts:

• Appendix A: American Committee for Spanish Freedom (July 2011).  I cut all four appendices.  This is the first one.
• Appendix B: We Are for Wallace (July 2011).  And this is the second one.
• Appendix C: Assembly of Men and Women in the Arts Concerned with Vietnam (Sept. 2011).  The third one.
• Preview: biography of Johnson and Krauss.  First sentence and last sentence (Sept. 2011).
• Invent Title for My Book, Win Signed Copy of the Book (Aug. 2011).  Editor dislikes title.  I “crowdsource” it to readers, and get lots of suggestions.  Have submitted leading contenders to editor.  No decision as yet on final title.
• Crockett Johnson and the Purple Crayon: A Life in Art (Aug. 2011).  My 2004 Comic Art article on the life of Crockett Johnson.  Now available for free as either pdf or a series of jpgs.
• Going Back to High School — 90 Years Back (Aug. 2011).  A glimpse into Crockett Johnson’s high school days.
• He Was a Teenage Harold: Crockett Johnson’s High School Cartoons (Aug. 2010).  Johnson’s earliest work, published under his given name of David Johnson Leisk.
• The Text’s in the Mail (June 2011): in which I send the final version of the manuscript to my editor.
• News, Thanks, and Apologies (May 2011): in which I apologize for the post below, and indicate my current plan of action.
• Update, Featuring First 5 Paragraphs of the Book! (May 2011): ill-advised post, in which I express irritation and conflicting signals from editor.  I shouldn’t have posted this.
• On a First-Name Basis with People I’ve Never Met (Jan. 2011): early version of bit I added to intro.
• biography outtakes, part 8 (June 2011): now featuring despair!
• biography outtakes, part 7 (June 2011): killing my darlings.  Some bits that I like but that do not need to be retained… and thus have been cut!
• biography outtakes, part 6 (May 2011): some of the notes removed from this current round of editing.
• biography outtakes, part 5 (Dec. 2010): this and those below are from the round of edits I did in the fall.  In that round of editing, I removed 10,000 words.
• biography outtakes, part 4 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 3 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 2 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 1 (Nov. 2010).

A month or so back, I posted the first and second omitted appendices from my forthcoming biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (2012).  At the risk of trying your patience, here is the third.

Its importance is Johnson and Krauss’s early opposition to the war in Vietnam.  Krauss’s name is not on this petition, but she’s on another one from 1965.  (This fact is especially notable because she was less likely to sign petitions than he was.)  Below, you’ll see other like-minded people, some of whom — Kay Boyle, Ad Reinhardt, Antonio Frasconi — were friends of Johnson and Krauss.

Appendix C

Assembly of Men and Women in the Arts, Concerned with Vietnam

723 ½ North La Cienega Boulevard – Room 203   657-2854

National Initiating Sponsors (Incomplete List)

[c. December 1964/January 1965]

Source: reel N/69-101, Frame 82, Ad Reinhardt Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian.

My goodness.  Look at all these other posts concerning what is currently called The Purple Crayon and a Hole to Dig: The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss!  Or don’t look.  That’s up to you, really.

• Preview: biography of Johnson and Krauss.  First sentence and last sentence (Sept. 2011).
• Invent Title for My Book, Win Signed Copy of the Book (Aug. 2011).  Editor dislikes title.  I “crowdsource” it to readers, and get lots of suggestions.  Have submitted leading contenders to editor.  No decision as yet on final title.
• Crockett Johnson and the Purple Crayon: A Life in Art (Aug. 2011).  My 2004 Comic Art article on the life of Crockett Johnson.  Now available for free as either pdf or a series of jpgs.
• Appendix A: American Committee for Spanish Freedom (July 2011).  I cut all four appendices.  This is the first one.
• Appendix B: We Are for Wallace (July 2011).  And this is the second one.
• The Text’s in the Mail (June 2011): in which I send the final version of the manuscript to my editor.
• News, Thanks, and Apologies (May 2011): in which I apologize for the post below, and indicate my current plan of action.
• Update, Featuring First 5 Paragraphs of the Book! (May 2011): ill-advised post, in which I express irritation and conflicting signals from editor.  I shouldn’t have posted this.
• On a First-Name Basis with People I’ve Never Met (Jan. 2011): early version of bit I added to intro.
• biography outtakes, part 8 (June 2011): now featuring despair!
• biography outtakes, part 7 (June 2011): killing my darlings.  Some bits that I like but that do not need to be retained… and thus have been cut!
• biography outtakes, part 6 (May 2011): some of the notes removed from this current round of editing.
• biography outtakes, part 5 (Dec. 2010): this and those below are from the round of edits I did in the fall.  In that round of editing, I removed 10,000 words.
• biography outtakes, part 4 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 3 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 2 (Nov. 2010).
• biography outtakes, part 1 (Nov. 2010).