Norton Juster, 1929-2021

[jazzfish]

So it goes.

There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself: not just sometimes, but all the time.

I adored The Phantom Tollbooth from the first time I read it, sometime in elementary school. Jules Feiffer's pen-scratch illustrations were the perfect complement to Juster's ridiculous wordplay ("I come from a place called Context, but I spend all my time out of it"), and the sheer ... directed coherent chaos of it all made me happy every time I picked it up.

(I saw the animated movie at some point and thought it was only okay. These days I'm inclined to agree with Juster, who said "When you transform a book into a film, there have to be changes.")

The documentary Beyond Expectations came out some years back, and it's such a delight all the way through. They got Juster and Feiffer together for lunch at some fancy restaurant and the two of them are clearly just having a great time. There's a trailer, which I recommend, below.

Onward.

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[reedrover]

I know nothing about the author besides the fact that The Phantom Tollbooth is a star in my childhood sky. I hope Juster lived his life knowing that he offered kids a way to love academic concepts through absurd presentations.

[jazzfish]

I knew basically nothing about Juster until I found the documentary, and even now I know very little. But he seems to have been a Good Egg, which is always nice to learn.