Dr Seuss and Roald Dahl never did me any harm

In Martin Amis’s excellent autobiography Experience (by far his best book) he describes how he is Saul Bellow’s ‘perfect reader’ (and Chris Hitchens, he suggests, is Kingsley’s perfect reader). I think I might be Wes Anderson’s ‘perfect viewer’. The Darjeeling Limited, The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore – I could watch any of them any number of times with a fixed expression of rapt wonderment and glee, of the kind that you might see on the face of a five year-old if Bob the Builder came riding into the living room on Thomas the Tank Engine, bearing a tray of Milky Bars and plastic tat. The Life Aquatic is possibly my favourite, but if there are flaws in any of Wes Anderson’s films then I am impervious to them.

A stop-motion animation of Fantastic Mr Fox is next from him. It’s bound to be good, though the other day Nige gave us a surprisingly hostile rant against Roald Dahl. I seem to remember our own Peter B, I think, launching a similar tirade against the nonsense verse of Dr Seuss once (correct me if I’m wrong, Peter).

Well I loved both Dahl and Seuss, and it never did me any harm. Certainly I didn’t seem to turn into a psychotic spouter of nonsense, but grew into a perfectly rounded and responsible member of society. And if you don’t believe that’s true,
I’ll fill your nostrils up with glue,
I’ll stuff your pants with itchy ants,
And give you weird breast-implants.
I’ll run you over with a tractor,
Then make you sit through The X Factor
(Including the bits with the Irish twins),
And then I’ll put you in three bins.

In three bins, you say,
But how?
I do not understand you now.
You could put me in a box.
You could put me with a fox.
You could put me in a house.
You could put me with a mouse.
In a tree
Or on a flea
Or with a Zizzle-Zozzle-Zee.
But still I fear I cannot see
How in three bins you could put me!

Before your puzzlement increases:
I’ll chop you into little pieces,
Your guts will burst like pus-filled pimples,
And in three bins I’ll put you.

Simples!