I love a good mystery and I found one in Holling Clancy Holling. Holling was a writer/illustrator you could sink deeply into. Certainly more than the vanity children’s books written today by celebrities. Yet, nowhere could I find a single source of all the books he wrote, published or illustrated. No biography exceeded a handful of bare facts about his life. His work has remained in print for more than six decades—and yet, so little information is out there.
Over a period of two months I diligently tracked down all available info to get insights—and sometime just raw facts—about HCH. After a lengthy exchange of e-mails, UCLA's archivists proved too busy to answer my query, but a kind librarian in Jackson Co., Mich.—Holling's home—provided a wealth of info and an obit. Other individuals were also helpful. The article has now gone to the American Book Collectors of Children's Literature for their fall 2008 newsletter. You can read a blog posting of it at http://wordtrip.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=201873&sid=1f8a86880ffca1858fe21b1b44d4c8e9#201873.
It was interesting how some university librarians/archivists were so “busy”, while under different circumstances others (notably UConn and the U. of Iowa) have been angels at putting their collections online for the public. Yes, I remember the good ones when they ask for annual support. Support your librarians, the unsung heros of writers everywhere!
Cruising the Green of Second Avenue
What’s a friend for if not to make you feel good, eh? A very early (1959 or so) friend just wrote, “Indeed, let me tell you how much I enjoyed reading your short stories” in Cruisng the Green of Second Avenue. (Okay, commercial break: take a moment and click on http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=74&zenid=ff94c21f95111b27e8b7210244ac97a3.)
Now, that is really nice, first, because many friends have promised to buy the book since it was published a year ago, but the royalties don’t even approach the number of commitments I’ve gotten. Second, he not only bought the book, he read it. “I really admire your talent,” he wrote, “to recreate and invent those most improbable situations and these wonderful characters who resurface รก la Faulkner from place to place, smoking (as I used to) Picayune cigarettes or needing to hide their tattoos. Your surprising codas or abrupt plots turning around as in the “Sound of Music” with la belle Ellen Schuster or the hermaphrodite-assumed son of the forger-embezzeler Carl [“The Man Who Put the Sin in Cynic”] give the reader a deserved kick in the pants. Notice I am practicing compound nouns preparing myself for Germany. It’s a delight to “se promener, oder spazieren” in the company of Anderson (a nasty but correct portrait of the Lit Prof in “Donna and the Love Contract”) with his verbal duels. (Once I bought the same sheets at Conran’s and for the same purpose), or Klein the biker and his practical jokes [in “Klein Comes Back Abashed”], the precocious Benny Three Sticks [“The Kid’s Got Smarts”] in remembrance of J.D. Salinger to whom you introduced me in 1959.
Ah, mon vieux ami, you made me go back and read “Astroturfing Benjamin’s Books” the eighth story in Vol. I. And here I am astroturfing my own book, reality imitating art. Thank you for bringing a ray of sunshine into this snowy, overcast January day!
Now, that is really nice, first, because many friends have promised to buy the book since it was published a year ago, but the royalties don’t even approach the number of commitments I’ve gotten. Second, he not only bought the book, he read it. “I really admire your talent,” he wrote, “to recreate and invent those most improbable situations and these wonderful characters who resurface รก la Faulkner from place to place, smoking (as I used to) Picayune cigarettes or needing to hide their tattoos. Your surprising codas or abrupt plots turning around as in the “Sound of Music” with la belle Ellen Schuster or the hermaphrodite-assumed son of the forger-embezzeler Carl [“The Man Who Put the Sin in Cynic”] give the reader a deserved kick in the pants. Notice I am practicing compound nouns preparing myself for Germany. It’s a delight to “se promener, oder spazieren” in the company of Anderson (a nasty but correct portrait of the Lit Prof in “Donna and the Love Contract”) with his verbal duels. (Once I bought the same sheets at Conran’s and for the same purpose), or Klein the biker and his practical jokes [in “Klein Comes Back Abashed”], the precocious Benny Three Sticks [“The Kid’s Got Smarts”] in remembrance of J.D. Salinger to whom you introduced me in 1959.
Ah, mon vieux ami, you made me go back and read “Astroturfing Benjamin’s Books” the eighth story in Vol. I. And here I am astroturfing my own book, reality imitating art. Thank you for bringing a ray of sunshine into this snowy, overcast January day!
Thursday, April 24, 2008
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1 comments:
I thought I’d said so long to Holling when a letter arrived from Joan Hoffman, an archivist and researcher in his home county. The author-illustrator did indeed write an additional (limited-edition) book, and two murals painted as a teenager have come to light and gone into the Leslie Area Historical Museum. Further, his New Mexico wanderjahr came before graduating from the Art Institute, not after. All this called for a rewrite of the article, which will be posted here shortly.
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