THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH

IT'S BEEN QUIET here on We Too Were Children, but with good reason. My novel for adults The Twenty-Year Death comes out on August 7th. The L.A. Times today calls it a "Triumph." Stephen King (as you can see on the cover) calls it "Bold, innovative, and thrilling." Booklist says it is "immersive, exhilarating, and revelatory." People are excited! And as a result, I have spent the last month writing lots of guest posts, top ten lists, and essays that will appear on many different websites in the next few weeks. I have given a number of interviews, which will also show up online soon. And starting today, my new short story "Pawn" will be released on Hard Case Crime's Twitter feed sixty tweets a day for the next week (so make sure you follow @HardCaseCrime). To stay on top of all of the news, head over to my Facebook profile and hit the Like button. And most importantly, pre-order the book.

And as soon as the dust settles, I will be back with more We Too Were Children.

GERTRUDE STEIN: THE WORLD IS ROUND, FRANCIS ROSE ILLUSTRATIONS

WHEN GETRUDE STEIN WROTE THE WORLD IS ROUND, her first choice for illustrator was one of her protégés, the painter Sir Francis Rose. Her editors, William Scott and John McCullough, however were opposed. They felt Rose's art would not appeal to children. As McCullough wrote in a letter to Stein, the "rather studied decadence and sophistication, though possessing qualities of its own strikes me as neither appealing to children nor particularly appropriate to the imaginative vitality of your writing." Stein in a letter to her good friend Carl Van Vechten said, "the editor William R. Scott 224 West Eleventh Street and the editor of [The World Is Round] John McCullough have found an illustrator, I had suggested Francis Rose but they seemed to want an American, they sent me some of the illustrations by Clement Hurd, they seem sweet but very undistinguished..." Hurd became the illustrator, and ended up doing three iterations in his lifetime, as I have written about in my original post (link above).

In 1965, Haskell House, "Publishers of Scholarly Books," at last released an edition with Sir Francis Rose's illustrations. The first is a halftone reproduction of what looks to be a watercolor sketch labeled "Rose" and dated 1939, the year the first edition of The World Is Round appeared.

 The rest are black and white line drawings interspersed throughout the text. I have not been able to ascertain if the line drawings were also executed in 1939, making the Haskell House edition a restoration of sorts, but I suspect they were not and were created specifically for this edition.

In 1958, Rose again lent his talents to a book closely connected with Stein, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, by Stein's life partner Alice B. Toklas. The cookbook went on to become a bestseller.

TO SEE ALL OF FRANCIS ROSE'S ILLUSTRATIONS for The World Is Round, visit my Flickr set here. In addition to the research I did for my original post, for this post I consulted The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten: 1913-1946, and Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened By The Moon by my distant cousin Leonard S. Marcus.

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

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

SORRY I'VE BEEN M.I.A. As you may have noticed, my picture book One of a Kind came out at the beginning of the month. I was at Book Expo America that whole week, and I've had a few other events since then as well. I have a post that is practically ready to go up, which I'll publish in the next few days.

In honor of Father's Day, I've added this image to my Flickr photo set Dad's the One With the Pipe. It's the first German LEGO catalog from 1959. (I scanned a facsimile.) As you can see, even in Germany, Dad's the one with the pipe. Click through to my photo set for more from the heyday of pipe-smokin' Pop. Happy Father's Day.

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

UMBERTO ECO: THE GNOMES OF GNÙ

A LITTLE OVER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS after they published their first two children's books, Umberto Eco and Eugenio Carmi published the ecological parable The Gnomes of Gnù. Like in the earlier works, The Gnomes of Gnù carries a heavy-handed message, in this case that we should work on cleaning up the earth. But unlike The Bomb and the General and The Three Astronauts, The Gnomes of Gnù lacks a clear protagonist that undergoes some kind of change meant to represent the change we should all make to improve the world. There is a protagonist, the Space Explorer (called SE throughout), but he functions simply as a lens that focuses on all of the ecological horrors that plague the earth: smog, oil spills, deforestation, not to mention drug abuse and automobile accidents, not quite ecological, but still a problem. He's willing to then be the messenger of change, but not through any conviction, simply because, why not? As a result, the book isn't that compelling, which is perhaps why it is so scarce. Only five libraries hold the English edition worldwide according to WorldCat.

"ONCE UPON A TIME there was on Earth -- and perhaps there still is -- a powerful Emperor, whose greatest desire was to discover a new land." His ministers have to inform him that all of the land on Earth has been discovered, and that space exploration is the future of discovery. So he sends out a Space Explorer, SE, to find a beautiful planet to which they can bring civilization.

After combing "the immensity of space for a long time," finding only barren rocks and spitting volcanoes, SE finally finds an inhabited planet: Gnù.

The gnomes of Gnù come out to meet SE, and SE tells them he's discovered them. They say that they discovered him, but they won't quibble over the matter, "otherwise we'll spoil our day." SE says he's come to bring them civilization. The gnomes ask what civilization is.

"'Civilization,' SE answered, 'is a whole lot of wonderful things that Earth people have invented, and my Emperor is willing to give it all to you free of charge.'"

The gnomes require more of a definition than this, so SE pulls out "his megalactic megatelescope and trained it on our planet."

That's where, somewhat embarrassed, SE has to admit that Earth has smog, oil spills--"'You mean your ocean is full of shit?' the second gnome asked, and all the others laughed, because when somebody says 'shit' on Gnù, the other gnomes can't help laughing.'"--, litter, deforestation, traffic jams, automobile crashes, disease from smoking, intravenous drug abuse, and motorcycle accidents. The gnomes are understandably not interested in receiving civilization.

"'Listen, Mr. Discoverer, I've just had a great idea. Why don't my people go down to Earth and discover you?'" The gnomes can then teach everyone to take care of meadows, gardens, trees, to collect litter and end pollution, and to walk instead of drive.

SE just says, "'All right then..I'll go home and talk about it with the Emperor.'"

At home, the ministers aren't going to let the gnomes come without the proper papers. Then one of them trips on chewing gum and is grievously injured, thus changing the subject.

"For the moment our story ends here. We're only sorry we can't add that everybody lived happily ever after." Let's just hope we can do on our own what the gnomes would have taught us.

TO READ THE GNOMES OF GNÙ in its entirety, you can view it as a Flickr set here.  To answer your question, yes, the book actually uses the word "shit."

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

TWO WHOLE YEARS

TWO WHOLE YEARS. It's been two whole years since I launched We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie. I may not post as often as I wanted to in the beginning, (I thought I'd get a new author up a week!) and I may not have posted in a while (almost two months since my last "real" post), but I'm still here and have lots more planned. (I've partially scanned the long-ago promised The Gnomes of Gnu by Umberto Eco, and hope to have it up next week, emphasis on the "hope.")

For the longest time, especially in the beginning, I often wondered why I was doing it. Was anyone reading? But since then, many of you have let me know how much you appreciate the blog, and that makes it worth it. According to Blogger's built-in stats, I've had over 102,000 page views since the start of the site, and I average about 300 page views a day even when I haven't posted in awhile. I have 134 followers here, and Google Reader tells me I have another 274 followers there. (And that's the extent of my know-how in terms of guesstimating my audience.) Thank you to everyone for reading. Thank you for your words of encouragement. And please keep checking back as I am by no means done.

You may have noticed over on the right that I have two books coming out in the next few months, both a children's picture book and a novel for adults. If you want to stay in the know, see some behind the scenes treats, and keep track of where I'm going to do book signings be sure to Like my Facebook page. (Stephen King said of my novel, “Bold, innovative, and thrilling – The Twenty-Year Death crackles with suspense and will keep you up late.”) This is going to be a very exciting year. Thank you all.

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