There are biographies, and then there are psychological biographies. The fallacies and hazards of the psychobiography form are easy to name, but the form can produce miracles when used well. Donald E. Pease's Theodor Seuss Geisel, a brief, spirited new study of the life and work of the great Dr. Seuss, provides a satisfying and surprising look at the motivations and half-hidden meanings behind classic children's books like Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham and How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

The biographer brings out the heavy psychological equipment to analyze the first Dr. Seuss children's book, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, published in 1937 when the author was 33 years old. The book depicts a child with a vivid imagination facing off against a stern father who rejects his son's artistic spirit. Pease argues convincingly that young Theodor Seuss Geisel's moral battle with his strict father shaped everything about his work, and that it was the very intensity of this father-son battle that gave the early Dr. Seuss books their power and energy.

I was wondering if Sam Savage's worthy The Cry of the Sloth would get attention in the New York Times Book Review (Savage's earlier Firmin did not). The novel only gets a paragraph within Joseph Salvatore's "Fiction Chronicle" in this weekend's Review, and Salvatore finds that "as rich as the humor is, such satire does not finally sustain the novel".

1. A creepy publicity stunt involving flies carrying little paper advertisements at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Doesn't this make you feel bad for the flies?

I thought New York Times Book Review chief Sam Tanenhaus said conservatism was dead? He's written some smart things about the wrong turns of the Bush/Cheney area, but his publication still worships -- absolutely worships -- the memory of Eisenhower-to-Reagan era foreign policy conservativism.

I'm having a tough time with a lot of the grandstanding I've been hearing today about Roman Polanski. Certainly what Polanski did 32 years ago was monstrous, horrible -- he has been suffering for his crime, and he will continue to suffer for it, whether or not he is ever sent to jail. Certainly, also, his talent as a filmmaker and his sad personal history do not excuse his crimes in any way.

1. Catholic boy to the end ... from Cassie Carter's long-running fan site, here's Jim Carroll's funeral card.

I like an unusual thesis. A book called On Kindness by psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and historian Barbara Taylor, reviewed by Peter Stevenson in this weekend's New York Times Book Review, offers an appealing spin on human nature:

(Please welcome a new Litkicks writer, Willa A. Cmiel, who recently graduated from New York University, lives in Brooklyn, and runs a pop culture/literary blog called Look Out Now -- Levi)

I've been working hard, and I really need this three-day weekend coming my way. Hell yeah!

Another surprise guest will be writing this weekend's review of the New York Times Book Review. Check back on Sunday for, I hope, a wholly new perspective.

Till then, just a few links for a happy Spring day.