From: linnea hendrickson <lhendr>
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 16:13:06 -0600

Please keep the comments coming on Tomi Ungerer. I'm glad some of you have brought up the autobiography. Here are some interesting comments from Leonard Marcus, editor of "Dear Genius," about the Ungerer-Nordstrom relationship.

Dear Linnea, You asked about references to Tomi Ungerer in DEAR GENIUS and so I thought I would answer your question. There are quite a few references to him in the book, including a letter in response to a letter of complain about NO KISS FOR MOTHER (p. 350). There are no letters to Tomi Ungerer, however, and that is because none of the ones I found seemed interesting enough to include. How, you might wonder, could that be? UN preferred working with Tomi face to face, and for much of his early career he lived in Manhattan. The letters from that period are mostly about appointments and taking caring of odds and ends. By the time Tomi moved to Nova Scotia, direct dial long-distance telephone service had become available, and from that point onward UN preferred to talk with him by phone rather than write. The letters from that period refer to their long phone conversations. I was sad not to be able to represent Tomi more fully, by way for instance of a letter detailing the genesis of CRICTOR or Tomi's friendship with Shel Silverstein (which is mentioned in the introduction) or with Sendak, or which made some reference to the pungent anti-Vietnam War posters and Village Voice ads he produced during the 60s and 70s. Unfortunately, so such letter exists, or at least was available. That's the trouble with non-fiction: you can't make up everything you wish to have in a book. But I did try to do my best to conpensate for this lack in other ways. Leonard (Marcus)

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Linnea

Linnea Hendrickson Lhendr at unm.edu http://www.unm.edu/~lhendr
Received on Sun 15 Aug 1999 05:13:06 PM CDT