by Sonya Friedman
Around 1960, my close friend, Norton Juster, received a Guggenheim grant, ostensibly to write a book about architecture and urban renewal, fields he had diligently studied and practiced.
Now, Guggenheim didn’t hold you to producing a specific work. And when Norton took up his pencil to write about architecture, the pencil started writing a children’s book about a boy named Milo who was always bored—a book full of puns and word play and endless intellectual adventures (all disguised as fun). Milo goes on a long road trip accompanied by a dog-clock named “Tock” and an insect, named “Humbug.” An orchestra plays the sunset; there’s a “which” instead of a witch, as Milo stumbles through the land of Rhyme and Reason.
You get the idea. So did readers when the book came out in 1961. And they keep on reading it to this very day.
Norton used to phone me when he’d finished each chapter and read it to me. He didn’t want me to comment; he wanted me to laugh. He fretted when I didn’t. “But, Nort,” I told him, “that was a chuckle.” “Well, then, SAY ‘chuckle’ out loud so I’ll know,” he said.
He was writing almost full time now, happily stealing hours from his architectural work until one day, out to dinner, he got a fortune cookie that read, “Your dreams are getting dusty.”
Not usually a superstitious type, Norton took this very badly. He felt ill and even took to his bed. But not for long. He couldn’t resist all the verbal tricks he was playing to enliven young minds.
“The Phantom Tollbooth” became so popular that—naturally—a film of it was produced. It animated the wonderful drawings that Jules Feiffer had made for the book. When the film was completed, there was a private screening. Norton had me sit in with him. As the film rolled, he kept nudging me, anxiously, fretting. “That’s too heavy handed; they needed my lighter tone.” “That’s the wrong costume for ‘which!’” “Damn! Who asked them to use those colors for Chroma?” On and on, squirming uncomfortably as the characters in his book took physical shape on the screen. I thought he was going to erupt and nix the whole project. But then, as the end credits began to roll, he stopped his laments, turned to me and asked eagerly, excitedly, “HOW DID YOU LIKE IT???”
Norton went through the same agony with his next (delightful) book: “The Dot and the Line.” He created the illustrations himself this time, using ingenious geometric shapes and forms.
Today, those books remind me of our inventive life in the 60’s. Just as Nort spontaneously wrote a children’s book, I introduced “supertitles” to opera, and my husband Herman used his formidable documentary skills to strike out against the Vietnam War.
We weren’t paying attention to marketing or focus groups or test audiences or even to budgets. We were having a good ride.
Sonya Friedman: Writer/director of documentary films, notably “The Masters of Disaster,” an Oscar nominee, and broadcast on national PBS. Writer/translator of subtitles for foreign films, innovator of “supertitles” for opera at the Metropolitan Opera and at companies throughout the US and Canada.