PETER MATTHIESSEN: SEAL POOL

IN THE AUTHOR BIO for his only children's novel Seal Pool (1972), Peter Matthiessen thought it important to mention where he went to school (Yale and the Sorbonne), his "much acclaimed novel" At Play In The Fields Of The Lord, and that he used to be a commercial fishermen. He neglected to mention that he was one of the founders of The Paris Review or that he secretly worked for the CIA at the time. (See my earlier entry on George Plimpton whose book was also illustrated by William Pène du Bois.) Were he to update his bio now, Matthiessen might mention that he has twice won the National Book Award: in 1980 for general nonfiction paperback The Snow Leopard, and in 2008 for fiction Shadow Country. But he would probably still humbly obscure his groundbreaking work for environmental conservation and his commitment to expose the tragedies that post-industrial civilizations inflict on pre-industrial peoples, relegating those endeavors to "several other novels, and a number of books on wildlife."

In Seal Pool, Matthiessen's environmental conscience is in the forefront in a story about a Great Auk, a bird thought to have been extinct since 1844, who has taken up residence in New York's Central Park Zoo.

THE STORY STARTS with a framing narrative about Lucas and his sister Sara who is celebrating her fourth birthday with a visit to the Central Park Zoo in New York City. The seals are lazing about instead of giving the proper swimming display Lucas had hoped to show his sister as a birthday present. In fact, all of the animals seem to be asleep or in hiding. As a result, the crowd is thinning. Lucas and Sara are about to leave too when they meet Dr. Frederick Fluke.

On his right shoulder perched a blue Pigeon and on his left a gray one, and a white Pigeon balanced itself with little flutters on his slouchy hat. So many other Pigeons flew around his head that sometimes it was hard to see his face at all...

Dr. Frederick Fluke knows why the animals are on strike. He offers to tell the two children over ice cream sundaes, which they accept. (More innocent times, I guess.) It turns out Dr. Fluke can talk to animals. ("'Do you really talk to animals?' Lucas said...still suspicious but not wishing to be rude...") Dr. Fluke begins.

The Great Auk was a flightless sea bird that lived in Northern Oceans and has been extinct since 1844. However, the previous month he was at the docks and saw a parcel of crates marked "Bronx Zoo," one of which was labeled "Red-Eyed Hoozis." But it wasn't a Hoozis, it was "A real honest-to-goodness Great Auk, lying on his back with his flippers behind his head!"

In his excitement, the good doctor sits on the Snowy Owl's crate, who then exposes him to all of the animal as "a spy in our midst!"

What follows is a long humorous debate between the animals (the Auk, the Owl, a Polar Bear, a Ptarmigan, an Arctic Hare, an Ivory Gull, a Blue Fox, and a Lemming) and Dr. Fluke, which reads like the Mad Tea Party in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Dr. Fluke decides he must save the Great Auk.

If this Auk was discovered, every museum in the world would send an expedition into the Arctic to find others like him. And even if they meant well, the disturbance might mean the end of the Great Auks.

When Dr. Fluke tells the animals his plan (to simply hide the Auk in his coat and then release him off of Staten Island), they are skeptical. They point out many of the different kinds of birds that are extinct as a result of humans. After all, "'Man is the only animal who does not know exactly what he wants,' the Owl observed, 'which is why he causes so much trouble.'"

The conversation devolves into mere bickering as each animal threatens to eat the other, a perhaps more honest interaction than most discussions between people. Eventually a truck driver from the Bronx Zoo arrives for the delivery. Dr. Fluke talks his way onto the truck. When the truck stops at a traffic light, Dr. Fluke escapes with the Great Auk. They are chased through Central Park, first by the driver, then police, and worst of all an old woman with a surprising amount of ornithological knowledge ("'That's a Great Auk.'").

Dr. Fluke talks his way out of this last encounter by threatening to report the old woman as a crazy person, because someone who thinks she sees extinct animals must be crazy. He finds his way into the Central Park Zoo and just as what has become a crowd of pursuers is upon him, he slips the Auk into the seal pool. There, the other zoo animals enable him to eat unobserved by driving off the crowds of zoogoers by being terribly boring.

The story ends just as a squirrel informs Dr. Fluke that the seals will swim now, fulfilling Lucas's wish to show his sister the seals on her birthday.

FOR A BOOK WITH such an obvious message (prevent animal extinction) it manages to never preach. This might be because the dialogue moves so quickly and it's all so funny. ("'If it weren't for all this eating, Lemmus trimucronatus [lemmings] would rule the earth!'") There are Shakespearean allusions ("'alas, poor Curlew,' sobbed the Ptarmigan. 'I knew him well...'"), playful sarcasm ("'I mean, it never occurred to me that anyone who sees a Great Auk these days must be off their coconut.' He peered at me very queerly with his bright red eye."), and William Pène du Bois's beautiful illustrations throughout. Perhaps the reason that Seal Pool has disappeared (Matthiessen doesn't even include it in his "Also by Peter Matthiessen" list at the beginning of Shadow Country) is because its a little too simplistic for adults, but a little too adult in its humor for children. Or maybe it's just the rather drab title. But then, the British edition didn't seem to help its legacy, and its title has plenty of intrigue.

For all of William Pène du Bois's illustrations for Seal Pool see my Flickr set here.


All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders. The cover of the British edition comes from Page Books list of books by William Pène du Bois.

GEORGE PLIMPTON: THE RABBIT'S UMBRELLA

GEORGE PLIMPTON MADE A NAME FOR HIMSELF by being like no one else. He founded The Paris Review, he played with the Detroit Lions, he boxed with Sugar Ray Robinson, he played on the PGA Tour--all as an amateur--he was with Robert Kennedy when Kennedy was shot, and he hawked Intellivision on television. But in 1952, at the age of twenty-five, Plimpton faced a very common situation: he was graduating from university and had no idea what to do with himself. Or more accurately (but just as common), he knew he wanted to be a writer, but he didn't know what to do as a day job.

Luckily for him, a friend he had known since grade school got in touch to ask if he would be interested in moving to Paris to act as editor-in-chief for a new small literary magazine. His friend was Peter Matthiessen (later to win two National Book Awards, among other things), and the small literary magazine was soon to be called (with Plimpton's input) The Paris Review. But there was no money in running a small English language literary magazine from France. (In fact, just the opposite. It was a constant question of where would the money come from?) But another founding member of the Review and its first art director, William Pène du Bois, had already made a nice career for himself as a children's book author and illustrator. He had won the Newbery Medal in 1948 for The Twenty-one Balloons. Whether it was by example or by suggestion, George Plimpton followed Pène du Bois's lead, and wrote what was to be his first published book, a children's novel, The Rabbit's Umbrella (1955) with illustrations by William Pène du Bois.

"YOUNG BOY SITTING IN A LARGE ARMCHAIR: Well, now that you've finally decided to tell me a story, what sort of people are you going to tell me about?"  This framing conceit, that the book is told to a specific boy who interjects as the plot does or does not suit his interest, sets up the tone of the book exactly: cozy and casual, irreverent and slightly nonsensical. The narrator replies:

"The characters in the story you're about to hear include Mr. and Mrs. Henry Montague; their son Peter; a pet-shop owner called Mr. Perkins; Mr Otway, the streetcar motorman; Mr. Delaney, who is a police officer; and finally, a doctor, Doctor Trimble...But may I hasten to add that other characters in my story that might interest you more include an enormous dog named Lump, three robbers--Pease, Punch, and Mr. Bouncely--a number of shouting parrots, and a rabbit with an umbrella."

This unlikely cast of characters live in the small American everytown Adams, a map of which is provided on the endpapers and often referred to, despite it being almost wholly obscured by the slumbering rabbit of the title. It is a bucolic and welcoming place.

There, one of the town's longest standing institutions is threatened by the imminent vote of the mayor's council to discontinue trolley service, and to allow for the sole operational trolley to be converted into a diner. Its operator Mr. Otway, Officer Delaney, and Doctor Trimble, trolley enthusiasts of childlike proportions, are much distressed by this impending doom.

At the same time, nine-year-old Peter Montague, proud owner of  a single passenger pedal car and son of the thimble manufacturer Henry Montague, decides he wants a dog. Mr. Montague, knowing his wife abhors dogs, gives his permission as long as Peter obtains his mother's permission. Due to the fine showing a poodle had recently made at a tea Mrs. Montague had attended, she unexpectedly gives her approval. And so, eight years before the appearance of Clifford the big red dog, Lump enters the stage.

And on the outskirts of town, in an old haunted house, the cowardly and incompetent burglars, Pease, Punch, and Mr. Bouncely have set up house.

The three robbers have never succeeded in stealing anything of note, and are, as a result, so famished, that all of their burglaries take the shape of a meal Punch prepares with whatever food stuffs are at hand.

And so, when Mrs. Montague sees how enormous Lump is--"'Mr. Perkins says it's probably a very large type of poodle'"--she demands that he be returned, even though Peter has already fallen in love with the dog. The mayor's council finally votes to end trolley service in Adams. And Mr. Bouncely, appalled that Pease and Punch's complete take home haul from their burglary at the Montague residence is a chess pawn and a pincushion with one pin in it, demands that they return to the Montague's and burgle something big.

And so the stage is set. Pease, Punch, and Mr. Bouncely enter the Montague's, but are startled and grab the first big thing at hand: Lump. Still panicked, they make their escape in Peter's peddle car.

Lump lets out "a wild, drawn-out cry of fright and misery and dejection and anger; and this cry rolled across the meadows and the forests like a thunderclap." It brings Mr. Otway, Officer Delaney, and Dr. Trimble in pursuit on the trolley car. When they arrive, Lump has subdued the criminals, and Officer Delaney makes the arrest.

Lump is now a hero, and therefore socially acceptable to Mrs. Montague (which means Peter can keep him). Punch, with his experience cooking under severe circumstances, suggests that the trolley be converted into a moving restaurant with himself as cook, and after Dr. Trimble defends him in court (by simply talking about how insulted the real dregs of society would be if Pease, Punch, and Mr. Bouncely were given the badge of burglars), the town puts that plan into effect, saving the trolley and rehabilitating the criminals. Happy ending.

THERE IS NO QUESTION that The Rabbit's Umbrella is on the other end of the literary spectrum from what Plimpton was himself editing in the first issues of The Paris Review. As he assured his parents in a letter dated March 20, 1954:

Here is another Paris Review, the fifth. I'm not sure as usual that you're not going to be shocked by most of the content...The contents, you'll be glad to hear, are hardly reflections of my own character, which remains merry enough and full of hope and enthusiasm. You'll have to wait for The Rabbit's Umbrella for proof, which in its way may make you laugh twice, or even three times, and I doubt will be considered the product of a tormented mind....

When The Rabbit's Umbrella first appeared, Plimpton's bio read, "George Plimpton, an American in Paris..." When the book was reissued many years later, the bio had been altered to, "George Plimpton wrote The Rabbit's Umbrella soon after he went to Paris to edit The Paris Review..." So the dichotomy between the serious but untested work at The Review and the humor of the children's book was very strong at the outset. In both bios, Plimpton goes on to tell the story:

When I first came to Paris I happened to frequent a restaurant where the proprietor's pet was a dog the size of a young bear...One day in the restaurant I happened to read of a burglar who'd climbed in the window of a house he thought deserted and found himself in the middle of a small party...I suppose the big dog and the burglar stuck in my mind...."

Despite the seemingly two different worlds that Plimpton's early work seemed to straddle, it was William Pène du Bois who no doubt acted as midwife to both. Russell Hemenway, director of the National Committee for an Effective Congress and a friend and witness to Plimpton, Matthiessen, Pène du Bois at the creation of The Review, said:

Billy Pène du Bois is the reason there is something called The Paris Review, I'm convinced. Because even though the first issue didn't have much content, it looked great, and it looked great because Billy Pène du Bois worked over the stone with the printer for days...This was no amateur. He spoke French, and he had six or eight children's books in circulation and was one of the great illustrators. He had great style. The Paris Reveiw looked great. That's what everyone talked about.

It was William Pène du Bois who designed The Paris Review's logo, an eagle holding a pen and wearing a Phrygian hat, in some ways, as humorous as a rabbit with an umbrella that had holes for its ears to stick through.

     YOUNG BOY: But there are more things I want to know. I want to know about the rabbit with the umbrella.
     Well, in that case we'll have to have an epilogue.
     YOUNG BOY: What is an epilogue?
     It's used to explain what hasn't been explained, to tie up loose strings, and generally to tidy up the book. Turn the page and you'll see.

The rabbit with the umbrella never explicitly appears in the novel. They are referred to by Dr. Trimble, whose claims, the reader knows, are suspect. But in the epilogue, Plimpton makes the rabbit the manipulator behind the scenes, the person pulling the strings, in short, the rabbit with the umbrella is Plimpton himself.

All background research and quotes that weren't from The Rabbit's Umbrella come from the delightful George, Being George: George Plimpton's life as told, admired, deplored, and evnied by 200 friends, relatives, lovers, acquaintances, rivals--and a few unappreciative observers edited by Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr.

William Pène du Bois is indeed a master, and he has not made his last appearance on We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie by a long shot. To see, for now at least, all of his illustrations from The Rabbit's Umbrella, visit my Flickr set here. For a cover gallery of Pène du Bois's work, see Page Books.

And as an epilogue of sorts (really a post script), I share the cover illustration by Pène du Bois of My Brother Bird by George Plimpton's Aunt Evelyn Ames (one of Plimpton's two Aunt Evelyn Ames's), whose maiden name, Perkins, Plimpton lent to the pet shop owner who sold Lump to the Montagues.

All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.