Non-business book: The Phantom Tollbooth

Jules Feiffer, the brilliant political cartoonist and illustrator of the Phantom Tollbooth, died January 17th.

And it set me thinking about all the reasons that book is a great non-business read.

Or re-read.

1. Rereading and re-exploring the books that we loved when we were kids is a great escape as adults, but also full of insight. We see new things. And we remember how glorious it is to go into those worlds, to let the real world and all its challenges slip away for a while. You don’t need to have a young person in your life at this moment to use this escape hatch. It’s there any time you need it.
2. This book celebrates the process of generation of ideas, of playing with words and sentences for the sheer joy of it. This process is so important to who we are as creative cognitive human beings who communicate. And so so fun. Fundamentally, Phantom Tollbooth is about creativity and the creative process, about the love of words and puns and metaphor and mighty rhyme and reason. What do we lose when we hand off that generation, that play, that fun, that exploration to Artificial Intelligence, and become instead merely the editors of content, rather than creators? What are we giving up about our humanity when all our generation of new ideas is done by AI and we just polish and refine? Is there as much joy in that process? As much silliness? As much cognitive leaping as Norman Juster and Jules Feiffer and Milo and the reader make in Phantom Tollbooth?
3. Mistakes and moments of boredom are the keys to creativity. All of this starts because Milo is bored, unengaged and unenthusiastic. Moments when we have nothing to do, as kids and as adults, but look at the world around us and think silly thoughts are not bad moments. Next time you’re in a line or waiting for something set the phone down for a hot minute and look around. What do you notice? What is surprising or silly or awesome or poignant? And what accidental discoveries happen when you make a mistake or get lost or go off in a different direction?

"You must never feel badly about making mistakes," explained Reason quietly, "as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.”

It’s an easy read. You can get back to all your ‘Have-To” and ’Should” books in a little while. The social media and the news will still be here when you get back. But get into your cardboard car with a dog with a clock on its tummy for a bit this month and rediscover a world of human imagination. It might change how you see all those “Have-Tos" and “Shoulds."

The most poignant part of Milo’s journey for our modern social media-driven selves may be the city of Reality, where everyone is so busy moving from one place to another and not seeing the world around them that eventually the city disappears altogether. Nearby is the city of Illusion where everything looks good but nothing is real, where “it’s just as bad to live in a place where what you do see isn’t there as it is to live in a place where what you don’t see is.”

So take another look or a first look at this little book. See what lessons it might hold for you with your adult eyes. Who knows, you might learn a new thing for no reason at all.

And remember, also," added the Princess of Sweet Rhyme, "that many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you'll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.

If you haven’t seen Feiffer’s political cartoons, go on a hunt. He was a brilliant commentator on Nixon in particular, and his work still resonates today in some brutally poignant ways.

If you haven’t read Juster’s other book, ‘The Dot and the Line: A romance in lower mathematics’ it is also worth finding.