The Dick And Jane Papers

Ever since my first days of school, I have been fascinated by the world of Dick and Jane. What is apparently a "family unit" consisting of Dick, Jane, Sally, Tim (actually a teddy bear), Spot, Puff, Mother and Father is a most intriguing template for an idyllic and bygone era of the "typical" American family.

I first started seriously lampooning this group of apparently happy idiots in about 1969 when I was in 7th grade (at least, this is as far back as I have records of my writings and drawings about these characters. I may have alluded to their ridiculous and naive lives as early as 1966 when I hand-printed my first set of my "Monkey Time" encyclopedias). From very early on I was fascinated by these simpletons and their blundering, boneheaded innocence, their severely mentally impaired and repetitive meanderings through life without ever demonstrating much more spirituality and self-awareness relative to the world than is commonly demonstrated by the average family pet. They were, I guess, just such easy targets. I couldn't just let it go.

As time went by I began to see them as the onstage (or "on-page") actors who played these roles, and I started to speculate about what these people might be like in their real lives, when they weren't playing the fool for the Scott-Foresman Publishing Company. Clearly they could not be as naive and stupid as they appeared. I began to consider them on the same wavelength as the actors who appeared on TV shows like "The Partridge Family" and "The Brady Bunch" which also attempted to display these typical and perfect family units. Behind the scenes, the actors on these shows, both the adults and the children, were often tragically flawed in large part by the wear and tear of their celebrity. In my mind, I believed that Dick and Jane and their clan had to be similarly damaged.

So I began creating perverse parodies of these scholastic legends. My first serious attempt, I believe, was a small booklet entitled "Dick and Jane Get Spaced-Out", which told a brief tale of drug abuse in the family - this tome, alas, no longer exists except in my memory. I passed it amongst a select few during Mr. Schwartz's English class in seventh grade. I know it was returned to me, but I do not know what ultimately happened to it; I only know that I do not have it amongst my files of this sort of thing. Ray Sibra does in fact have some of the material that we produced during this time period, I believe (either individually or together), but I don't believe he has any Dick and Jane materials. I will have to remember to ask him.

For the next few entries on this blog, I intend to reproduce a few of the trips that I have taken behind the scenes, into the dimly lit shadows that fell across the lives of Mother, Father, Dick, Jane, Tim, Baby Sally, Spot and Puff, during the times that the covers were closed. I can only hope that this will in some small way sully the earliest memories of at least a couple of the readers of this blog. In fact, if it makes even one person take a second look at what sort of effect Dick and Jane might have REALLY had on them, I will consider my time well spent. Thank you for reading.