Contortin' Horton MUDDLE-PUDDLE THROUGH THE MYTH OF SEUSS' GOBBLEDY-GOOK by Brandon Estela graphic by Scott Herman (after Dr. Seuss) I knock on wood. All the time. I don't mind that the whole idea is pagan; I still find comfort in superstition's power to unjinx a jinx and scare away all of those evil little wood elves planning to wreak havoc in my life. I know that I'm not the only person here who subscribes to this heathen activity. I hear rap, rap, rapping all the time. Besides little wood elves, I also believe in Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, and, when I feel inspired, Elvis. Sure, I know that the King is six feet under; I've seen his grave at Graceland. Yet sometimes when I hear "Jailhouse Rock," my lips start a-twitchin' and my pelvis a-gyratin', and I have full faith that he will parachute out of a plane, whisk me off to Vegas, and set me up in a posh trailerhome in the Nevada desert. These things are all a part of Americana -- icons and beliefs that add to the grandiose myth of America, infusing themselves into pop culture and forming a thread of unity among the masses. At U.Va. we also have pervading belief systems that define our way of life. Honor code, secret societies, superstitions -- we take them all for granted and rarely, if ever, question their being or worth. It would be unfathomable. There are things that we believe in, even while questioning their validity. There's the one story about "fertility bridge" (the bridge connecting Newcomb service road to Ruffner): whenever a woman walks on the "Z" on the steps, she dooms herself to an unwanted pregnancy before the year is over. There is also the myth that if a virgin walks the length of the Lawn, the statues of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington will rise and switch places. Some people think that Edgar Allan Poe graduated from U.Va. There's also a crazy notion -- one that gets a considerable amount of attention -- that Dr. Seuss lived in C'ville and wrote about us in some of his books. As the story goes, the late Dr. Seuss lived in the medium-sized mansion (sometimes mistaken for Monticello) on the hill visible from the Newcomb Hall cafeteria. From this perch he would look down and see all the Wahoos scurrying here and there, bumping into each other and living their crazy lives against the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains -- true inspiration for some of his greatest stories. In browsing the Seuss library, one runs across Horton Hears a Who. As educated and narcissistic people, we are more than willing to infer that the creature the loveable elephant hears is one of us! A 'Hoo! Yes, we are the little people who live on a speck of dust. Horton tries to protect us from the rest of the animal kingdom. The animal kingdom wants to destroy us, thinking Horton is experiencing delirium. We are the ones who scream with all our might to vindicate our existence and restore Horton's status in zoological circles. That's not the only time we 'hoos believe we make it into his books. In How the Grinch Stole Christmas, that green deviant tries to take away Christmas where? Who-ville. Coincidence? I think not. Surely Wahoo-ville would have been a bit too hard for little kids to pronounce, right? Right. The truth is, kids, all this is bosh. Dr. Seuss never lived in Charlottesville, nor did he attend U.Va. According to the comprehensive biography Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel, he attended Dartmouth, Oxford, and the Sorbonne in Paris. He spent most of his adult years basking in the La Jolla sun, taking his wife for walks and showing her the local flora; every hundred yards he would stoop down and whisper, "This one here -- this is a California Wildflower," certain that he was identifying one of hundreds of species falling under that description. Magical and childlike, this amazing man dedicated his life to creating books that were at the same time entertaining and educational for young children and enlightening for their elders. The book Horton Hears a Who was not written about us Wahoos. Instead, Dr. Seuss' biography claims that he was inspired by his visits to Japanese schools. He was making his visits at a time when the significance of the individual within society was a ground-breaking notion. From this he derived the main theme of his book: a person's a person, no matter how small. The original title was Horton Hears 'Em; "who" was chosen for its nonsensical nature. The "whos" make their way back into How the Grinch Stole Christmas for no other reason than literary license. After all, Horton had another appearance in the book Horton Hatches the Egg, so why not be egalitarian in our suppositions and give the teeny whos two appearances too? As for that house upon the hill, there is nothing to indicate that Seuss lived there. A private home built in 1909 for Brigadier General Kearny, it was turned into a monastery in 1933 by the sanguinary Order of Precious Blood and returned to private hands in the 1950s. The current owners are not quite as sociable as Seuss himself might have been: anyone trying to hike up there to sleuth about the place will be greeted with a grand display of vicious canine teeth. Although I've undermined the sacred belief that Seuss lived here, I doubt that it will ever disappear. I was recently in the library and picked up a book by the good man himself. It was my favorite: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. In the book a father tells his son to report what he sees on the way back from school, warning him not to turn "minnows into whales." The child walks home and sees a horse and carriage -- but that's too plain -- that can't be what he sees. He creates a whole parade of dignitaries and animals and runs to tell his father. As he approaches his father, he remembers the warning and, red faced, claims that he saw nothing. Seuss tells of a child who exaggerates immensely when not subjected to a father's disapproval. The New York Times described this book as a "masterly interpretation of the mind of a child in the act of creating one of those stories with which children often amuse themselves and bolster up their self-respect." It is the same with us. Once a few weeks pass and this article is long forgotten, people will dismiss the facts and continue to perpetuate the myth. Future students will hold onto the myth, secretly hoping it's true, not really wanting to find out the truth lest it deprive them of an ounce of pride. What else does the Seuss myth tell us about ourselves? That we're Dartmouth wannabes trying to steal some of Seuss' history? I don't think so. More likely, the mere fact that we have such a myth shows our desire for some sort of continuity. We grew up careful of walking under ladders; now we're wary of fertility bridge. We are not able to fully give up notions we attained at an early age and are therefore willing to create variations on those notions. Is it any wonder that we would like to think that the Cat in the Hat exists, long after the pink rings have stopped appearing in our bathtub?

back to Decweb main