Excerpt from ABOUT
ALICE, A RABBIT, A TREE...
(New York Times Book
Review, September 9, 1973.)
by William
Cole
"Look Shel," I said, "the trouble with this ‘Giving Tree' of yours is that it falls
between two stools; it's not a kid's book -- too sad, and it isn't for adults -- too
simple." This was in 1963; I was working at Simon & Schuster; Shel was Shel
Silverstein, and the manuscript was "The Giving Tree," which Harper & Row
subsequently published, and which has sold over 150,000 copies. Kurt Vonnegut
must have some kind of philosophical saying for the way I feel now.
Shel Silverstein first came to prominence as Playboy's roving cartoonist. He
published a number of children's books and the outrageous "Uncle Shelby's ABZ
Book," and just a few years ago turned up as a song-writer with Johnny Cash's hit
"A Boy Named Sue." Even more recently, he had a hit, singing in his
own raucous voice his "Freakin' at the Freaker's Ball," and we'll soon see in
November a large collection of his poems for children, "Where the Sidewalk Ends."
When I called this paper and said I'd like to do a piece about "The Giving Tree,"
they said, fine, but would I also look into two other surprise sellers, "The Velveteen
Rabbit," and "Go Ask Alice"? Very good.
"The Giving Tree" begins, "Once there was a tree..." (Dots are Shel's) and goes on
for 50 more pages with a simple tale, illustrated in graceful cartoon style by the
author. There was a boy who played in the tree, gathering its leaves, swinging on its
branches, eating its apples. When the boy grew older he lay in the shade of the tree
with a girl and carved initials in a heart. Yet older, a young man, he took the tree's
branches to build a house. As an old man he needed a boat to get away from it all, so
the tree said cut me down and make a boat. So we have a stump. Along comes the
boy, now an old, old man, and the ex-tree says, "Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and
rest." And the tree was happy.
My interpretation is that that was one dum-dum of a tree, giving everything and
getting nothing in return. Once beyond boyhood, the boy is unpleasant and
ungrateful, and I wouldn't give him the time of day, much less my bole. But there's a
public out there who think otherwise, and Harper & Row expects to sell another
100,000 this year. And this
month they are bringing out a version in French, "L'arbre au Grand Coeur." I called
Ursula Nordstrom, who has been Shel's editor at Harper & Row, and asked how this
all came about. Ursula, noted for finding and encouraging such artists as Maurice
Sendak and Tomi Ungerer, had long ago noted Shel's "simple and direct drawings" in
Playboy, and tried to get him to do a book. Shel, the hardest man in the world to pin
down, didn't react until Tomi Ungerer said, "Go see Ursula." There was tremendous
disagreement in the office over "The Giving Tree," one editor saying "That tree is
sick! Neurotic!" They did a small first printing in 1964. Nothing much happened.
Then, as Ursula says, "The body twitched". Apparently, it had been taken up by the
great word-of-mouth underground with an assist from the pulpits; where it was
hailed as a parable on the joys of giving, and from Shel's disk-jockey friends, a
strange pairing. The book, to me, is simply a backup of "more blessed to give than to
receive." My wife's interpretation, not surprisingly, is that the tree represents a
mother, giving and receiving with not expectation of return. Whatever it is, it
touches a sensitive point clearly and swiftly, as do other recent phenomena of
Segals and seagulls.
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