Abecedariana

[steepholm]

So, in 1962 Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library was published by Harper and Row - four tiny hardback books in a slipcase, including the ABC Alligators All Around (here rendered delightfully by Carole King), as well as One Was Johnny and Chicken Soup with Rice, which introduced young readers to numbers and months respectively, and the cautionary tale of Pierre, who didn't care (at least, to begin with).

The following year, Edward Gorey's Vinegar Works ("Three Volumes of Moral Instruction") was published by Simon and Schuster. This too came in a slipcase, and included, along with the textless The West Wing and The Insect God, an ABC, The Gashlycrumb Tinies (here animated by Marcus Kihn).

Two classic ABCs - and if the children of the early sixties (of whom I) didn't know their alphabet after that, they had no excuse. It's a bit of a coincidence, though, isn't it? These multi-volume slipcased collections of original work appearing in such quick succession, from rival NY publishers? Could The Gashlycrumb Tinies be in any sense a response to the upstart crow Sendak, for people who found alligators in propeller beanies just a tad saccharine? I'd love to know if there's a story behind these stories...

Comments

[larryhammer]

I grew up with the Sendak set -- though the only part of it that wormed its way into my hindbrain as Chicken Soup with Rice, which I seem to remember wearing out. I didn't discover the Gorey trilogy until my early adolescence, via Amphigorey.

This is the more common experience, among people I've talked to, than the reverse. As far as I know, the Gorey did not get distribution, or as wide.

---L.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That was certainly my experience. I grew up with the Nutshell Library too - at least, my elder brother had (and has) a copy, which I coveted (and covet). I remember thinking that chicken soup and rice seemed a very odd combination of foods.

The Gorey I knew rather later, though I came across it first in an individual volume. His market was always older, I guess.

It's hard to recreate the atmosphere of 1962, what with the publication of the Nutshell Library and the Cuban missile crisis, and although I was around for some of it I frittered the time inside a uterus, developing limbs and major organs. In particular I'm not sure how well known Sendak was before Wild Things came out the following year. He'd done a lot of illustrations of others' books, but that was session work, not headlining. Would Gorey even had heard of him?

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

I was born in '69, and I knew Nutshell both as books and as the Carole King record. I still walk around singing all the songs sometimes (including the B side, non-Sendak), though I'm desperate for a new thing to imitate for "I," something that scans right. Ideas, anyone? (Oh, heh -- "ideas" works for content, but the emphasis is wrong.)

Gashlycrumb Tinies I didn't know as a book. I knew it as a poster that people hung on the wall.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Imitating Idaho would be an interesting challenge. ("Look at me! I'm Boise!")

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

On second thoughts, "Imitating Idaho" sounds like the name of a sensitive film about an sports star who learns a lot about life and himself after he succumbs to serious illness. I don't know why: it just does.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Of course! I just realised I was thinking of My Own Private Idaho, and somehow conflating it with present-participle films like Regarding Henry. Clearly part of me is stuck in 1991.