For the Love of ‘George and Martha’

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/books/george-and-martha-james-marshall.html

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Reasonable people can differ about books, and about authors. My Lee Child, your Walter Mosley. My Alice Munro, your Carol Shields. I am a reasonable woman but there is no differing with me about James Marshall’s brilliance in the George and Martha children’s stories.

First of all, he took their names not from the father of our country and the first first lady but from Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” Who would be inspired by that dark tragicomedy of marital strife and give the names of the miserable leads to two loving, inseparable, not-always-brilliant hippopotami? Who looks at tawdry, terrifying Elizabeth Taylor and ruined, smoldering Richard Burton and says, aha, those fun-loving besties? James Marshall, that’s who.

Maurice Sendak thought James Marshall was a genius, and the true heir to the 19th-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott (after whom the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book is named), Jean de Brunhoff (creator of Babar, the winsome, regal Parisian elephants) and Tomie dePaola, who’s won every children’s book prize there is.

“Much has been written concerning the sheer deliciousness of Marshall’s simple, elegant style. The simplicity is deceiving; there is richness of design and mastery of composition on every page,” Sendak wrote in a foreword to Marshall’s collected works. “Not surprising, since James was a notorious perfectionist and endlessly redrew those ‘simple’ pictures. The refined sensibilities of his hippos stand in touching contrast to their obvious tonnage, and his pen line — though never forgetting their impossible weight and size — endows them with the grace and airiness of a ballerina and her cavalier. The great white splash at the end of ‘The High Board’ in ‘George and Martha Back in Town’ is a marvel of weight on white, with a squiggly line to delineate the shuddering catastrophe of a diving hippopotamus.”

In the books, the first of which was published in 1972, George (often wearing a fedora) and Martha (rose behind a tiny hippo-ear) are great friends — such great friends that there are no other characters in their world aside from silent, supporting players like the crocodile bookseller, the hippopotamus dentist. They value each other and they value their friendship. In the middle of several stories, one or the other remarks on the other’s kindness and the other says: That’s what friends are for. The stories don’t usually end on that note. They end with someone getting, briefly, the upper hand. They end with someone having learned a concrete lesson (like: Don’t snoop! Don’t be selfish!). They end with Martha scaring the bejesus out of George (who had it coming). They end with George sharing his cookies. They end with the two of them telling stories at dusk, having banished loneliness and its irritating expression, fidgeting while your friend reads.

George and Martha are truly intimate: They see each other and love each other, still. George is softly kindhearted and a little slow on the uptake (he tends to be outsmarted by Martha). No one could be more encouraging or more supportive, except when he goofs and accidentally punctures your self-confidence while you’re trying to walk on a tightrope. He is filled with joie de vivre and guilelessness (which doesn’t necessarily mean dopey, even though he is that, too) which balance his faults: snoopiness, voyeurism and an inclination toward pranks. Martha is clever. She is a diva, a dirty fighter, a fury when provoked and a surprisingly good sport. (Martha, I see now, certainly could have been modeled on the actual Elizabeth Taylor.)

Here’s all I know about James Marshall, and it’s not for lack of trying: He was born in San Antonio, where his father worked for the railroad and had a dance band. He hated Texas. He studied to play the viola and intended to have a musical career. Following conservatory training in New England, he suffered nerve damage in his hand and his musical career ended. He went back to Texas for a while and later taught Spanish in a Catholic school near Boston after college.

In his adult life, Marshall divided his time between an apartment in Manhattan and a home in Connecticut. He died in October 1992 at 50, of causes unknown to me and difficult to discern.

“The Collected Stories of George and Martha: Two Best Friends” is all 35 George and Martha stories. I would recommend buying the book, with its glorious bright yellow-with-pink-flowers cover, and enjoying Sendak’s foreword. I would display it right where guests would see it even before they take off their coats. And I would hope that their exposure to George and Martha would act as lemon juice on scurvy, derailing some of the more predictable and dispiriting dinner party conversations of 2018.

“GEORGE AND MARTHA”: A STARTER KIT

George and Martha: Five Stories About Two Great Friends. In a consistently wonderful debut collection, the first story stands out. “Split Pea Soup” introduces us to the friendship, to George’s wish to never hurt Martha’s feelings, to Martha’s passion for making (but not eating) split pea soup and to George’s gorgeous pink loafers, which make their first appearance. (I think they are suede. They might be velvet. Scholars will have to weigh in.) The absurd and the warmhearted go hand in hand, just like you know who.

George and Martha: One Fine Day. Of these five stories, I love the one-two punch of “The Big Scare” and “The Amusement Park” which capitalize on the reader’s love-hate of suspense, the unutterable delight of seeing George in the shower, hiding behind the midcentury daisy-bedecked shower curtain and an ending in which, this time, all is understood and all is forgiven.

George and Martha: Tons of Fun. These five stories balance the sweet and the ridiculous, the sharp and the tender, like all of these books. My favorite story in this collection is “The Misunderstanding,” in which we get to see an insulted Martha (ignored by George, who wished to work on his headstand) soothing her hurt feelings by playing the saxophone in bed (sheet music by Bach nearby). She has such a good time, she doesn’t answer her phone and George worries and concludes that his friend is really mad — but she’s not. She had cheered herself up and forgotten her hurt feelings. An ode to friendship and an acknowledgment that other people are a mystery.

George and Martha: Back in Town. My favorite of a fab five? “The Box.” Will Martha give in to her curiosity? Will she be punished for it? This is as good as Henry James’s novel “The Wings of the Dove” but much shorter and much funnier.