Yesterday, I sent off (what I hope is) the final revision of the manuscript for my biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss. After I did, I began reading Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl (2010), which Donald Sturrock (the author) begins by describing his own relationship with his subject. It helped me understand…
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For those who care about such minutiae, here are some outtakes from Chapter 14, “At Home with Ruth and Dave” – from which I’ve just cut 540 words. Â The chapter, which covers Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss in 1947 and 1948, draws heavily on Ruth’s 123-page account of their daily lives in late winter 1948:…
Meeting interesting people is one of the benefits of writing a biography.  I never met Syd Hoff (1912-2004) in person, but we corresponded and talked on the phone in 2000.  You may know Hoff as the author of Danny and the Dinosaur (1958) or as the creator of over hundreds of New Yorker cartoons.  As A….
Working in a little biography-editing while at the American Studies Association conference in San Antonio. Â (Why, yes, I would like some more workahol. Â Thank you for offering!) Â I’ve just condensed three paragraphs on Crockett Johnson‘s visit to Commonwealth College (radical labor school in Mena, Arkansas, 1922-1940) down to a single paragraph. Â For the record, that…
One reason that so much must be thrown out from a biography – or, at least, from my forthcoming biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss – is that a lot of research can underwrite a very small fact. Â For example, I sometimes had to read a book in order to write a single sentence….
Will publishing the “outtakes” from my forthcoming The Purple Crayon and a Hole to Dig: The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (UP Mississippi, 2012) help to promote the book or dissuade people from picking it up? Â After all, these are the bits cut from the book, not the parts that remain. Â Well, since…
Crockett Johnson was not a teller of jokes. His sense of humor was wry, subtle, sardonic. He’d quietly offer a well-turned phrase or make an off-hand observation that perfectly addressed the moment. However, in contrast to his gentle delivery, he “had this sort of earthy laugh,”1 a “marvelous laugh.”2 Courtesy of Nina Stagakis, here is…
Though they had lived together since 1940 and married in 1943, this 1944 photograph is the first one to include both Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss. Â Taken by Frank Gerratana, it appeared in the Sunday Herald (Bridgeport, Conn.) of October 1, 1944. Â In my biography of Johnson and Krauss, I’m using a print of the…
A 1943 letter from Crockett Johnson. Asked about himself, he dodges the question.
