Racist Dr. Seuss drawing up for auction

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/28/living/feat-racist-dr-seuss-drawing/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Top+Stories%29

(CNN)A California auction house is selling an early drawing by Dr. Seuss that's sure to disappoint the parents and children who adore his later work.

The 1929 color illustration for "Judge" magazine depicts a blatantly racist scenario and uses a slur to describe black people. It's being auctioned for a minimum bid of $20,000.

In the four-panel drawing titled ''Cross-Section of The World's Most Prosperous Department Store," the artist depicts scenarios in which rich men can purchase items to make their lives more difficult.

These include a fly for your ointment and a monkey wrench for your machinery. The final and largest panel features a crowd of men rendered in classic blackface caricature, with dark skin and pronounced red lips, being presented to a white shopper.

A sign reads: "A n---- for your woodpile

[ready4ONE 5,400]

I love Dr Suess and of course it doesn't justify the cartoon, but I think 1929 was a very different time. Crazy to think about how this was probably not only fine once upon a time, but likely got quite a chuckle.

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

I love Dr Suess and of course it doesn't justify the cartoon, but I think 1929 was a very different time. Crazy to think about how this was probably not only fine once upon a time, but likely got quite a chuckle.

It was. I think he wrote one of the most romantic quotes of all time. Just goes to show how things change...

[Boiler 43,362]

Got a chuckle today

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

Got a chuckle today

Glad I could amuse you.

Edited May 29, 2015 by Stay Woke

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Got a chuckle today

And what does that tell you about your mindset?

[Boiler 43,362]

Some people have a sense of humour, some people prefer to be perpetually outraged.

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

Some people have a sense of humour, some people prefer to be perpetually outraged.

I'm curious, what's so funny about it?

Edited May 29, 2015 by Stay Woke

[Boiler 43,362]

This explains a lot!

He is taking familiar sayings and interpenetrating them literally.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I think most authors are a compendium of the prevailing values of their time. That's about all you can say.

[Janelle2002 3,865]

I loved Dr. Seuss as a kid. Green Eggs and Ham will always be my favorite. This just put a damper on my day to realize he had these types of drawings.

[Golden Gate 530]

Seems he was a pretty self-centered person and so was his second wife...

"

Were you thinking the widow of the country's most beloved children's writer must have been a sentimental and devoted mom, admitting only the most traditional family values?

Sorry.

Audrey Dimond was married with two children when she fell in love with Ted Geisel. Mr. Geisel, 18 years her senior, was also married. In the wake of their affair, Mr. Geisel's wife, Helen, committed suicide, causing, as Mrs. Geisel puts it, ''a rather large ripple in the community of La Jolla.'' Mrs. Dimond divorced her husband to marry Mr. Geisel, 64, and when she did, her daughters, 9 and 14, were sent away to school.

''They wouldn't have been happy with Ted, and Ted wouldn't have been happy with them. He's the man who said of children, 'You have 'em and I'll entertain 'em.' ''

''Ted's a hard man to break down, but this is who he was. He lived his whole life without children and he was very happy without children. I've never been very maternal. There were too many other things I wanted to do. My life with him was what I wanted my life to be.''

Mrs. Geisel's own childhood, in and around New York, did not come with a great deal of security. Her father was a medical furniture salesman, her mother a nurse, their marriage was off and on.

''It cometh and it goeth, it cometh and it goeth, '' Mrs. Geisel says, singsong and wry, ''and that was my father, too.''

When Mrs. Geisel is 5, her mother decides to live in a nurses' dormitory to save money. She sends her daughter to live with a friend in New Rochelle, N.Y., for five years, visiting on weekends. Later she studies nursing at Indiana University. She knows, looking at the application form, that she is supposed to say she wants to be a nurse ''to serve humanity,'' but she writes what she really wants: to be in the center of the action.

AT 25, she marries Grey Dimond, a fellow student who becomes a cardiologist. After the Dimonds move to La Jolla, they became friends of the Geisels. In October 1967, says Judith and Neil Morgan's biography ''Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel'' (Random House, 1995), Helen Geisel, in frail health, takes an overdose of barbiturates. She leaves a note to her husband.

''I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are that I cannot conceive of life without you,'' it reads in part. ''My going will leave quite a rumor, but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends will not be harmed.''

The following summer, Audrey Dimond marries Ted Geisel. Her daughters are sent away.

Audrey Geisel did the same thing to her daughters that her mother did to her, she is told.

''Not entirely,'' she says, with unsparing self-appraisal. ''I think she did it out of absolute necessity, you know, as the wife of one who cometh and goeth. She's a better person than I am, Gunga Din.''

Mrs. Geisel is proud of her contributions to Ted Geisel's work. She doesn't want to sound self-centered, she says, but his editors at Random House told her ''his juices were getting diluted and he needed something to start him again.'' She also says she improved his appearance.

''His head was mine,'' she says. ''I created the beard. He had a nose that was looking for that beard all his life. I chose clothes for him.''

Mr. Geisel died nine years ago. Audrey Geisel has apologized to her two daughters for not being ''the best of mothers,'' and now, she says, they are close.

Mrs. Geisel mentioned that she was glad she had two children, because it would be easier for them to care for their mother in her final days than it had been for Mrs. Geisel, an only child.

How did Mrs. Geisel's mother die?

''Pancreatic cancer. I was married to my physician husband. I say I did not have staff or anyone to help. Then again, I fell short of what I could have done. I didn't spend sufficient time with my mother.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/29/nyregion/public-lives-mrs-seuss-hears-a-who-and-tells-about-it.html