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writer Shel Silverstein
USINFO | 2013-06-13 13:57
Sheldon Allan Shel Silverstein (September 25, 1930 – May 89, 1999), was an American poet, singer-songwriter, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books. He styled himself as Uncle Shelby in his children's books. Translated into more than 30 languages, his books have sold over 20 million copies.
Silverstein was born into a Jewish family and had one sister, Peggy. He attended Roosevelt High School and University of Illinois and was expelled. He then attended Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and Roosevelt University for three years, until drafted in 1953 into the United States Army and served in Japan and Korea. He had a girlfriend named Susan with whom he had one daughter on June 30, 1970 named Shoshanna who died in 1982 of a brain aneurism. He also had a son named Mathew (b. circa 1984).
The exact date of Silverstein's death is not certain. He died in his home in Key West, Florida from a massive heart attack. His body was found on May 10, 1999 in a bedroom by two housekeepers. He died at age 68. Silverstein is buried in Westlawn Cemetery in Chicago.
Cartoons
Silverstein began drawing at age 12 by tracing the works of Al Capp. He told someone of Publishers Weekly When I was a kid—12 to 14, around there—I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that I didn't have anybody to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style; I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work till I was around 30. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit.
Shel Silverstein's Playboy travelogues were collected in 2007.
He was first published in the Roosevelt Torch (a student newspaper at Roosevelt University), where he studied English after leaving the Art Institute. In the military, his cartoons were published in Pacific Stars and Stripes, where he had originally been assigned to do layouts and paste-up. His first book, Take Ten, a compilation of his military Take Ten cartoon series was published by Pacific Stars and Stripes in 1955. He later said his time in college was a waste and would have been better spent traveling around the world meeting people.
Returning to Chicago, Silverstein began submitting cartoons to magazines while also selling hot dogs at Chicago ballparks. His cartoons began appearing in Look, Sports Illustrated and This Week.
Mass-market paperback readers across America were introduced to Silverstein in 1956 when Take Ten was reprinted by Ballantine Books as Grab Your Socks! with a foreword by Bill Mauldin.
In 1957, he became one of the leading cartoonists in Playboy, which sent him around the world to create an illustrated travel journal with reports from far-flung locales. During the 1950s and 1960s, he produced 23 installments called Shel Silverstein Visits... as a feature for Playboy. Employing a sketchbook format with typewriter-styled captions, he documented his own experiences at such locations as a New Jersey nudist colony, the Chicago White Sox training camp, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, Fire Island, Mexico, London, Paris, Spain and Africa. In a Swiss village, he drew himself complaining, I'll give them 15 more minutes, and if nobody yodels, I'm going back to the hotel. These illustrated travel essays were collected by the publisher Fireside in Playboy's Silverstein Around the World, published in 2007 with a foreword by Hugh Hefner and an introduction by music journalist Mitch Myers
In a similar vein were his illustrations for John Sack's Report from Practically Nowhere (1959), a collection of humorous travel vignettes previously appearing in Playboy and other magazines.
Now here's my plan, Shel Silverstein's best known cartoon of the 1950s, became the title of his 1960 cartoon collection.
His best known cartoon of the 1950s was featured on the cover of his next cartoon collection, Now Here's My Plan A Book of Futilities, published by Simon & Schuster in 1960. Silverstein biographer Lisa Rogak wrote
The cartoon on the cover that provides the book's title would turn out to be one of his most famous and often-cited cartoons. In the cartoon, two prisoners are chained to the wall of a prison cell. Both their hands and feet are shackled. One says to the other, Now here's my plan. Silverstein was both fascinated and distressed by the amount of analysis and commentary that almost immediately began to swirl around the cartoon. A lot of people said it was a very pessimistic cartoon, which I don't think it is at all, he said. There's a lot of hope even in a hopeless situation. They analyze it and question it. I did this cartoon because I had an idea about a funny situation about two guys.
Silverstein's cartoons appeared in issues of Playboy from 1957 through the mid-1970s, and one of his Playboy features was expanded into Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book (Simon & Schuster, 1961), his first book of new, original material for adults. Because some of his material was unclear whether it was intended for adults or children, the 1985 reprint had a conspicuous cover label
Children's books
Silverstein's editor at Harper & Row, Ursula Nordstrom, encouraged Silverstein to write children's poetry. Silverstein said that he never studied the poetry of others and therefore developed his own quirky style, laid back and conversational, occasionally employing profanity and slang. In the 1975 Publishers Weekly interview, he was asked how he came to do children's books
He is a strong, well-muscled, fit-looking man who wears blue jeans and a big cowboy hat. Though he has to be into his 40s (he's a Korean War veteran), he is also totally in touch with the contemporary scene... How, an author-illustrator alone. Asked if he would change something he had produced on an editor's say-so, he answered with a flat No. But he added Oh, I will take a suggestion for revision. I do eliminate certain things when I'm writing for children if I think only an adult will get the idea. Then I drop it, or save it. But editors messing with content No. Had he been surprised by the astronomical record of The Giving Tree, his biggest seller to date and one of the most successful children's books in years Another emphatic no. What I do is good, he said. I wouldn't let it out if I didn't think it was. It tells of a tree and the use a man makes of it. When he is a boy, he plays in the tree's branches and enjoys its luscious fruit. Later, he courts his love under the tree and uses some of its wood to build a house for his family. Years pass; the man is now old and alone. The tree lets him take its trunk to carve a boat from, and the man rows away. Finally he returns for the last time to sit and rest on the stump of the tree—all that's left of it. But The Giving Tree, which has been selling steadily since it appeared almost 50 years ago and has been translated into French, is not his own favorite among his books. I like Uncle Shelby's ABZ, A Giraffe and a Half, the sophisticated and the simple.
Otto Penzler, in his crime anthology Murder for Revenge (1998), commented on Silverstein's versatility
“The phrase Renaissance man tends to get overused these days, but apply it to Shel Silverstein and it practically begins to seem inadequate. Not only has he produced with seeming ease country music hits and popular songs, but he's been equally successful at turning his hand to poetry, short stories, plays, and children's books. Moreover, his whimsically hip fables, beloved by readers of all ages, have made him a stalwart of bestseller lists. A Light in the Attic, most remarkably, showed the kind of staying power on the New York Times chart—two years, to be precise—thought that most of the biggest names (John Grisham, Stephen King and Michael Crichton) have never equaled for their own blockbusters. His unmistakable illustrative style is another crucial element to his appeal. Just as no writer sounds like Shel, no other artist's vision is as delightfully, sophisticatingly cockeyed. One can only marvel that he makes the time to respond so kindly to his friends' requests. In the following work, let's be glad he did. Drawing on his characteristic passion for list making, he shows how the deed is not just in the wish but in the sublimation.”
This anthology was the second in a series, which also included Murder for Love (1996) and Murder and Obsession (1999). All three anthologies included Silverstein contributions. He did not really care to conform to any sort of norm, but he did want to leave his mark for others to be inspired by, as he told Publishers Weekly.
I would hope that people, no matter what age, would find something to identify with in my books, pick up one and experience a personal sense of discovery. That's great. I think that if you're creative person, you should just go about your business, do your work and not care about how it's received. I never read reviews because if you believe the good ones you have to believe the bad ones too. Not that I don't care about success. I do, but only because it lets me do what I want. I was always prepared for success but that means that I have to be prepared for failure too. I have an ego, I have ideas, I want to be articulate, to communicate but in my own way. People who say they create only for themselves and don't care if they are published... I hate to hear talk like that. If it's good, it's too good not to share. That's the way I feel about my work. So I'll keep on communicating, but only my way. Lots of things I won't do. I won't go on television because who am I talking to Johnny Carson The camera Twenty million people I can't see Uh-uh. And I won't give any more interviews.
Silverstein was born into a Jewish family and had one sister, Peggy. He attended Roosevelt High School and University of Illinois and was expelled. He then attended Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and Roosevelt University for three years, until drafted in 1953 into the United States Army and served in Japan and Korea. He had a girlfriend named Susan with whom he had one daughter on June 30, 1970 named Shoshanna who died in 1982 of a brain aneurism. He also had a son named Mathew (b. circa 1984).
The exact date of Silverstein's death is not certain. He died in his home in Key West, Florida from a massive heart attack. His body was found on May 10, 1999 in a bedroom by two housekeepers. He died at age 68. Silverstein is buried in Westlawn Cemetery in Chicago.
Cartoons
Silverstein began drawing at age 12 by tracing the works of Al Capp. He told someone of Publishers Weekly When I was a kid—12 to 14, around there—I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that I didn't have anybody to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style; I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work till I was around 30. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit.
Shel Silverstein's Playboy travelogues were collected in 2007.
He was first published in the Roosevelt Torch (a student newspaper at Roosevelt University), where he studied English after leaving the Art Institute. In the military, his cartoons were published in Pacific Stars and Stripes, where he had originally been assigned to do layouts and paste-up. His first book, Take Ten, a compilation of his military Take Ten cartoon series was published by Pacific Stars and Stripes in 1955. He later said his time in college was a waste and would have been better spent traveling around the world meeting people.
Returning to Chicago, Silverstein began submitting cartoons to magazines while also selling hot dogs at Chicago ballparks. His cartoons began appearing in Look, Sports Illustrated and This Week.
Mass-market paperback readers across America were introduced to Silverstein in 1956 when Take Ten was reprinted by Ballantine Books as Grab Your Socks! with a foreword by Bill Mauldin.
In 1957, he became one of the leading cartoonists in Playboy, which sent him around the world to create an illustrated travel journal with reports from far-flung locales. During the 1950s and 1960s, he produced 23 installments called Shel Silverstein Visits... as a feature for Playboy. Employing a sketchbook format with typewriter-styled captions, he documented his own experiences at such locations as a New Jersey nudist colony, the Chicago White Sox training camp, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, Fire Island, Mexico, London, Paris, Spain and Africa. In a Swiss village, he drew himself complaining, I'll give them 15 more minutes, and if nobody yodels, I'm going back to the hotel. These illustrated travel essays were collected by the publisher Fireside in Playboy's Silverstein Around the World, published in 2007 with a foreword by Hugh Hefner and an introduction by music journalist Mitch Myers
In a similar vein were his illustrations for John Sack's Report from Practically Nowhere (1959), a collection of humorous travel vignettes previously appearing in Playboy and other magazines.
Now here's my plan, Shel Silverstein's best known cartoon of the 1950s, became the title of his 1960 cartoon collection.
His best known cartoon of the 1950s was featured on the cover of his next cartoon collection, Now Here's My Plan A Book of Futilities, published by Simon & Schuster in 1960. Silverstein biographer Lisa Rogak wrote
The cartoon on the cover that provides the book's title would turn out to be one of his most famous and often-cited cartoons. In the cartoon, two prisoners are chained to the wall of a prison cell. Both their hands and feet are shackled. One says to the other, Now here's my plan. Silverstein was both fascinated and distressed by the amount of analysis and commentary that almost immediately began to swirl around the cartoon. A lot of people said it was a very pessimistic cartoon, which I don't think it is at all, he said. There's a lot of hope even in a hopeless situation. They analyze it and question it. I did this cartoon because I had an idea about a funny situation about two guys.
Silverstein's cartoons appeared in issues of Playboy from 1957 through the mid-1970s, and one of his Playboy features was expanded into Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book (Simon & Schuster, 1961), his first book of new, original material for adults. Because some of his material was unclear whether it was intended for adults or children, the 1985 reprint had a conspicuous cover label
Children's books
Silverstein's editor at Harper & Row, Ursula Nordstrom, encouraged Silverstein to write children's poetry. Silverstein said that he never studied the poetry of others and therefore developed his own quirky style, laid back and conversational, occasionally employing profanity and slang. In the 1975 Publishers Weekly interview, he was asked how he came to do children's books
He is a strong, well-muscled, fit-looking man who wears blue jeans and a big cowboy hat. Though he has to be into his 40s (he's a Korean War veteran), he is also totally in touch with the contemporary scene... How, an author-illustrator alone. Asked if he would change something he had produced on an editor's say-so, he answered with a flat No. But he added Oh, I will take a suggestion for revision. I do eliminate certain things when I'm writing for children if I think only an adult will get the idea. Then I drop it, or save it. But editors messing with content No. Had he been surprised by the astronomical record of The Giving Tree, his biggest seller to date and one of the most successful children's books in years Another emphatic no. What I do is good, he said. I wouldn't let it out if I didn't think it was. It tells of a tree and the use a man makes of it. When he is a boy, he plays in the tree's branches and enjoys its luscious fruit. Later, he courts his love under the tree and uses some of its wood to build a house for his family. Years pass; the man is now old and alone. The tree lets him take its trunk to carve a boat from, and the man rows away. Finally he returns for the last time to sit and rest on the stump of the tree—all that's left of it. But The Giving Tree, which has been selling steadily since it appeared almost 50 years ago and has been translated into French, is not his own favorite among his books. I like Uncle Shelby's ABZ, A Giraffe and a Half, the sophisticated and the simple.
Otto Penzler, in his crime anthology Murder for Revenge (1998), commented on Silverstein's versatility
“The phrase Renaissance man tends to get overused these days, but apply it to Shel Silverstein and it practically begins to seem inadequate. Not only has he produced with seeming ease country music hits and popular songs, but he's been equally successful at turning his hand to poetry, short stories, plays, and children's books. Moreover, his whimsically hip fables, beloved by readers of all ages, have made him a stalwart of bestseller lists. A Light in the Attic, most remarkably, showed the kind of staying power on the New York Times chart—two years, to be precise—thought that most of the biggest names (John Grisham, Stephen King and Michael Crichton) have never equaled for their own blockbusters. His unmistakable illustrative style is another crucial element to his appeal. Just as no writer sounds like Shel, no other artist's vision is as delightfully, sophisticatingly cockeyed. One can only marvel that he makes the time to respond so kindly to his friends' requests. In the following work, let's be glad he did. Drawing on his characteristic passion for list making, he shows how the deed is not just in the wish but in the sublimation.”
This anthology was the second in a series, which also included Murder for Love (1996) and Murder and Obsession (1999). All three anthologies included Silverstein contributions. He did not really care to conform to any sort of norm, but he did want to leave his mark for others to be inspired by, as he told Publishers Weekly.
I would hope that people, no matter what age, would find something to identify with in my books, pick up one and experience a personal sense of discovery. That's great. I think that if you're creative person, you should just go about your business, do your work and not care about how it's received. I never read reviews because if you believe the good ones you have to believe the bad ones too. Not that I don't care about success. I do, but only because it lets me do what I want. I was always prepared for success but that means that I have to be prepared for failure too. I have an ego, I have ideas, I want to be articulate, to communicate but in my own way. People who say they create only for themselves and don't care if they are published... I hate to hear talk like that. If it's good, it's too good not to share. That's the way I feel about my work. So I'll keep on communicating, but only my way. Lots of things I won't do. I won't go on television because who am I talking to Johnny Carson The camera Twenty million people I can't see Uh-uh. And I won't give any more interviews.
