WEBVTT - What Else Did Shel Silverstein Write? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey Rain 0:00:06.800 --> 0:00:11.000 Stuff Lauren voc obam here. Decades ago, in the evenings 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.920 around closing time, a man with a very bald head 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.560 and a very dark beard used to come sloping into 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:19.880 the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, his shoulders hunched 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:23.440 as though warding off a perpetual cold wind. The proprietor, 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.960 Auto Penzler, had come to expect these visits, Indeed, he 0:00:26.960 --> 0:00:29.480 looked forward to them. He would close up the shop 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:31.800 and guide the man back to his inner sanctum, a 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:35.920 book line study with Florida ceiling shelves. There, the bearded 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:38.960 man would deliver a sheaf of papers containing a new, 0:00:39.080 --> 0:00:42.040 freshly penned mystery story to be added to the anthology 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.360 that Penzler was publishing. The writer refused to take any 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:47.840 money for his efforts, even though Penzler was paying well. 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:52.080 He craved a different compensation. His eyes gleamed as Penzler 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:54.880 slid his payment across the desk. Between them, it was 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.080 a stack of used books containing dozens of stories written 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:00.960 in the mystery genre. Later that night he would devour 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:04.720 them one by one, But first Penzler and the bearded 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:08.399 man would talk and talk. They talked about books about life. 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:11.920 Auto Pendler was just recovering from a devastating breakup, and 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:15.040 so they spoke about that at length. In a recent 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.000 phone interview for this article, Penzler remembered that at a 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:22.000 certain juncture, his guest said something so piercingly insightful and 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:24.800 eloquent about the breakup that it took his breath away. 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.319 Penzler said, I wish that I could remember what he said, 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:30.480 but I failed to write it down. What I do 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:32.760 remember is that when I expressed my amazement at his 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:36.040 facility with words, he just shrugged and said, I guess 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:39.880 that's why they call me a poet. He could have added, 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:43.160 among many other things, because our bald and bearded man 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:47.360 was Shell Silverstein, a true Renaissance ban Of course, many 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:49.840 of us know him as the author and illustrator of 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:52.040 The Giving Tree, A Light in the Attic, and Where 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:55.440 the Sidewalk Ends, among many of the other wildly successful 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:58.520 books that he wrote and drew for children. But that's 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:02.440 only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Silverstein also drew 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:06.080 cartoons and wrote plays for adults, and penned numerous songs, 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.400 especially country songs. In fact, he won two Grammys for 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:11.960 a songwriting, one of them for the Johnny Cash hit. 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:17.480 A boy named Sue Sheldon Allan Shell Silverstein was born 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:20.480 into a Jewish family in Chicago in nineteen thirty. His 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:22.920 father ran a bakery, which only began to thrive in 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:26.280 the wake of the Great Depression. After high school, Shell 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.000 spent some time studying at the Art Institute of Chicago 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:33.280 and later at Roosevelt University, but was drafted into the U. S. Army, 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:36.560 serving in Korea and Japan. Silverstein began working for the 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:39.519 military periodical The Stars and Stripes, and it was there 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:44.000 that he began regularly publishing his idiosyncratic cartoons. After his 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:46.720 military service, Silverstein got a job as a cartoonist for 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:50.600 the fledgling magazine Playboy. For his Playboy gig, he traveled 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:54.040 the world, sending cartoon dispatches from bar and wide. In 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:58.000 nineteen sixty three, Silverstein met book editor Ursula Nordstrom, who 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:00.919 prodded him into writing books for children, and that same 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:03.200 year he wrote The Giving Tree, a book about the 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.480 nature of altruism and selfishness that would become his most 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:09.840 famous and popular work. His sense of the absurd, and 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.120 the whimsical cartoon line drawings that illustrated this and all 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:17.560 of his books would become his hallmarks. In deceptively simple language, 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:20.800 his exploration of the innocence and imagination of childhood made 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:23.200 him one of the most celebrated and widely read authors 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:27.639 for generations of children and adults alike. Otto Penzler recalls 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:29.880 Silverstein telling him that he spent a year living at 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:32.520 the Playboy Mansion as a guest of Hugh Hefner. It 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:34.800 was there that he met Susan Hastings, with whom he 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:38.840 had a daughter named Shoshanna in nineteen seventy Tragically, Susan 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:42.240 died in nineteen seventy five, and Shoshanna passed away unexpectedly 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:46.360 after a cerebral anneurism in nineteen eighty two. By many accounts, 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:50.520 her death utterly devastated Silverstein. In nineteen eighty four, he 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:55.040 had a son named Matthew with Sarah Spencer. According to Penzler, 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:59.960 Silverstein was a deeply eccentric man. Penzler told us, for instance, 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:02.320 it wasn't unusual for him to be having dinner in 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:04.640 a restaurant with a group of friends and then suddenly 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.320 announced that he was done, get up, take a taxi 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:09.880 to the airport, and fly to Chicago or Los Angeles 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:11.800 or Florida, or wherever he felt like going on the 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:15.920 spur of the moment. Shell Silverstein died of a heart 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:19.560 attack in at the age of just sixty eight, but 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:22.839 in story, song, and image, he left behind a remarkably 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:31.520 prolific artistic record. Today's episode was written by Ocean Karen 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:33.800 and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:36.600 lots of other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.280 Stuff is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:42.280 heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:43.960 wherever you listen to your favorite shows.