LIFE

      Mordicai Gerstein was born in 1935 in Los Angeles; his father was a playwright and his mother a homemaker, but both were interested in art.  Gerstein reports having completed his first painting, of a bowl of flowers, at age 4, and still has a picture of himself with the painting; later, his mother created a “scrapbook museum” with photographs of famous paintings clipped from Life magazine: “Lying on my belly on the floor, I studied those pictures over and over again till they all became part of me.” (Gerstein 406) He recalled discovering books at the age of 4 1/2, when he borrowed his first book, And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, “by a Doctor named Seuss” (Gersteain 405). After high school, he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, a school associated closely with the Walt Disney Company.  In 1956, he left school and began working for the animation studio UPA.  After marrying the next year (the marriage ended in divorce and he has since remarried), he relocated to New York, where he created his own animated films and drew a weekly cartoon, “The Inner Man,” for the Village Voice.

      Gerstein began illustrating children’s books in partnership with writer Elizabeth Levy; together, they collaborated on several series. “I had never really thought about doing book illustration or doing children’s books until I met Elizabeth Levy in 1970,” Gerstein says (“In-depth” 5)  While Levy was the writer and Gerstein the illustrator, he also provided ideas for the books (SATA 49).  He also illustrated work by other authors before writing and illustrating Arnold of the Ducks (1983), his first independent work. “I came late to writing, and it was in order to make picture books,” he explains (Gerstein 406). He produced several more self-authored picture books and novels while continuing also to illustrate work by other authors (SATA 50).

      Several of Gerstein’s self-authored picture books tell nonfiction stories, including biographies of composer Charles Ives (What Charlie Heard) and John Bardsley (Sparrow Jack), who introduced the English sparrow into North America.

      Gerstein told an interviewer, “For me, picture books are little theaters one holds in the hand and operates by turning the pages.” (SATA 53) In his Caldecott speech, he said, “In creating a picture book I try to make the sentences and pictures as clear and simple as possible.  I feel that in the simple and obvious, paradoxically, one can find the utmost complexity and ambiguity.” (Gerstein 407) One of his former editors attests to Gerstein’s meticulous effort to achieve this goal:

“Just as you don’t see the hard work and hours of painstaking practice that went into Philippe Petit’s soaring act of daring between the Towers, you don’t see the hard work and hours of painstaking practice that go into Mordicai’s own soaring acts of daring, acts that define each and every book he writes and illustrates.” (Gordon 411-12)

Gerstein describes his typical work schedule as five days a week, rising at 5:30 and biking to his studio, then writing until noon; after lunch, he does illustration until about 5:30.  Typically, he is writing one story while illustrating another (“In-depth” 6).

      In his Caldecott acceptance speech, Gerstein said, “I think that being human is probably the most difficult, incomprehensible, and sometimes seemingly impossible thing in the world.” (Gerstein 405)  In an interview, he says, “All stories, in one way or another, are about the mystery of being a human being.  What are we here for, and what are we doing? What are we supposed to do?  How am I supposed to be a kid?” (“Transcript” 1) “Many people seem to forget that children are ourselves as we were and as we are and not a different species.” (Gerstein 405-06)   

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

      Although Gerstein remembers reading about Philippe Petit’s World Trade Center walk when it happened (he lived in New York at the time but did not witness it), it wasn’t until a New Yorker article about Philippe appeared in 1987 that he began to think about a book on the topic.  His first idea was to create a fictional story “about a boy who bicycles to the moon on a tightrope,” but the idea was rejected by his editor as too unbelievable, so he put it aside.  When the Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001, Gerstein was no longer living in New York but recalled the twin towers as “part of my home, my furniture” (Gerstein 407); thinking about the now-gone towers, “The idea came to me that instead of concocting a fictional parallel to Philippe’s walk, I should tell the story of what actually happened; it was less believable and therefore more truly wonder-ful!” (Gerstein 408)

      Gerstein says the book isn’t about September 11, “[b]ut because the towers were destroyed, it is about that, without saying anything more than I said.” (“In-depth” 2)  Only two passages refer to the towers’ destruction, and neither confronts it directly.  The first is the opening line, which places the towers firmly in the past: “Once there were two towers.” The second comes near the end of the book, with the simple statement, “Now the towers are gone.”  The text is all alone on the middle of a white page; on the opposite page, the empty sky where the towers once stood dominates the painting.  “I wanted that to stop the reader,” Gerstein says.  “I wanted them to feel that emptiness.” (“In-depth” 2)

      Around the same time Gerstein was working on The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, Petit himself was writing a book about the incident, with photographs, diagrams, and descriptions that Gerstein was able to use in making his book more accurate.  “I didn’t want to just tell the story of the walk – I wanted the book to be the walk between cardboard covers,” he says (Gerstein 408). Gerstein says he was acutely aware of Philippe as he worked on the book: “…as I worked, in my mind, he was looking over my shoulder saying, ‘No, that’s not how you hold the balancing pole.  That’s not how you walk on a wire.  I would never do that.’” (“In-depth” 2) He sent the completed book to Petit, who gave his seal of approval.  “He said his favorite picture was the picture of him sitting on the back of a park bench thinking about how he was going to put a tightrope between the towers”; Gerstein gave him the original painting for that scene (“In-depth” 2).

      Gerstein notes that The Man Who Walked Between the Towers involved several new approaches for him.  For example, in the night scenes while the crew is setting up the cable, “I wanted to get the feeling of night, so… I made the page beyond the borders a dark blue textured tone that gave the whole thing a feeling of night.” He also reports distorting the frame of several pictures to create a sense of deep space: “they’re trapezoids.  I twisted the space to get more of a feeling of vertigo.” (“In-depth” 1)

      One of the particularly striking features of the book is Gerstein’s use of fold-out spreads to create a sense of the great height of Philippe’s wire-walking.  Tzannes observes, “When I opened the first [of the spreads] for a kindergarten class, the 5-year-olds gasped with amazement.  In imitation of the feat itself, the stunning image took their breath away.” That was the reaction Gerstein was seeking:

      “I wanted you to feel like you were going to fall in, so I had to work on the pictures until I felt I was going to fall in, and then I knew I was getting it.  I think I’ve been successful, because a lot of people have told me the book makes the soles of their feet tingle when they look at it.” (“In-depth” 1)

Title page:  Towers under construction; winter.

Opening page: Completed towers; blue skies, spring/summer.  Note figure of Philippe in lower left corner; text has elegiac tone: “Once there were two towers.”  Text provides facts about the towers: “They were each a quarter of a mile high; one thousand three hundred and forty feet.”  [Many children enjoy mastering large, specific numbers like this.]

First two-page spread: Three small scenes on left page, one on right: Philippe as a performer in the park.  Note WTC dominates first and fourth picture – in first, Philippe is seen from the back, so he like the reader is looking at the towers; in the last, he is on a rope with an admiring crowd below – a diminutive version of his later feat.

Second spread: Two scenes left, large one on right.  Both left-hand scenes frame Philippe between the towers, first on a rope at ground level, then holding a rope up visually spanning the tops of the towers. Text suggests obsession: “Once the idea came to him he knew he had to do it!  If he saw three balls, he had to juggle.  If he saw two towers, he had to walk! That’s how he was.” On right, scene is duller grays and browns, ragged edge – memory of his earlier crossing of Notre Dame Cathedral.  Note police in lower corners of picture, one is angry, the other awed.

Third spread: Two half-page scenes on left, full page on right.  At left, images are duller, grays and blues, and raggedy edge – this is what is going on in his mind.  Again, towers are visible in the background, a constant presence.  At right, we see him sitting on a bench, thinking and holding a rope, with the towers behind him.  Note that even here he is not sitting conventionally, but perches on the narrow back of the bench rather than its wide seat.  This is the picture Philippe Petit himself liked best from the book.

Fourth spread: Five small pictures left, full page with no text right.  Lefthand pictures show stages in the process of getting the equipment to the roof; one small picture of men in the elevator bisects a vertical of one of the towers, showing they are inside while continuing to emphasize the height.  Right is night scene; note the blue shading on the frame.  Picture is at an odd angle (not 90°) to emphasize height, slightly dizzying.

Fifth spread:

Sixth spread:

Seventh spread: Dawn approaching;

Eighth spread: Dawn arrives.

Tenth spread: The walk begins.

Eleventh spread: First fold-out page.

Twelfth spread: Second fold-out page.

Thirteenth spread: Open sky dominates.

Fourteenth spread: Vertigo.  No frame.

Fifteenth spread:

Sixteenth spread:

Seventeenth spread: After 9/11.

Eighteenth spread:

Philippe Petit:  On August 7, 1974, the young Frenchmen spent nearly an hour walking, dancing, and running on a cable strung between the two towers of the yet-unfinished World Trade Center.  He had first conceived of the idea six years earlier when he read an article about the buildings while waiting in a dentist’s office in Paris, and spent several months scouting the scene in early 1974 to prepare for the walk.  At the time, the World Trade Center was facing financial difficulties and criticism both about its design and its social impact; Petit’s walk made worldwide news and instantly created positive buzz about the WTC project (“American Experience”).

      About the World Trade Center walk, Pettit said, “The first problem was how to pass the cable across”; the solution, to shoot the first line across with a bow and arrow, “was the one I thought was ridiculous” (“American Experience”) 

      While Petit’s crossing between the twin towers of the World Trade Center is probably his best known feat, it was neither his longest nor his highest performance.  In 1989, he walked a diagonal wire from the ground to a landing on the Eiffel Tower, a total of 2,000 feet, and in 1999, he walked a cable across the Little Colorado River at a height more than 300 feet greater than the New York effort.  Altogether, he has performed more than 70 high-wire walks, most of them legal (Tomkins 80).

      Petit has stated that his walks are quite safe, in that he takes no risks but prepares intensely for each feat, studying the peculiar features of the site and being extremely conservative in his safety measures: “‘I prepare by reducing the unknown to nothing…but also by knowing my limitations.” (Tomkins 82)  In the World Trade Center walk, his preparation mad it so that “when I found myself on the wire, facing the wire, one foot on the wire, one foot on the building, and ready to decide to shift my weight to become a bird, to become a wire walker on that wire, it was not something new” (“American Experience”)

      Petit learned about wire walking from a famous circus performer but has rarely worked for circuses, preferring a more artistic approach than most circus acts. “‘There is nothing more beautiful or essential in the world of wire walking than simply walking on the wire, but in circus school no high-wire walker is learning that,’” he says. “‘They don’t walk beautifully, or elegantly, because they don’t love it enough.’” (Tomkins 83) Instead, he became a street performer in Paris, mixing juggling, magic, humorous comments, and rope walking.  In 1971, he made his first major performance, walking on a wire between the two towers of Notre Dame Cathedral. As happened later with his World Trade Center walk, he was arrested and released, in the process briefly becoming a hero to his fellow Frenchmen (Tomkins 82-83). 

SOURCES:   “American Experience: The Center of the World,” PBS/WGBH, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/newyork/peopleevents/p_petit.html; Mordicai Gerstein, “Caldecott Medal Acceptance,” Horn Book (July/August 2004) 405-409; Cyndi Giorgis and Nancy J. Johnson, “Talking with Mordicai Gerstein,” Book Links (July 2005) 50-53; Elizabeth Gordon, “Mordicai Gerstein,” Horn Book (July/August, 2004) 411-414;  Calvin Tomkins, “The Man Who Walks on Air,” New Yorker 75, 6 (April 5, 1999) 80-87; “Mordicai Gerstein: Author Program In-Depth Interview,”  TeachingBooks, http://www.teachingbooks.net/content/Gerstein_qu.pdf; “Mordicai Gerstein: TeachingBooks Movie Transcript,” TeachingBooks, http://www.teachingbooks.net/content/Gerstein)trans.pdf; Something about the Author 142 (2004) 47-54; Robin Tzannes, “A Walker over the City,” New York Times Book Review (November 16, 2003) 31.

External Links: 

 Video interview with Mordicai Gerstein at TeachingBooks.net:

http://www.teachingbooks.net/spec_athr.cgi?&name=Gerstein%2C%20Mordicai

Video interview with Philippe Petit:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/newyork/sfeature/sf_int_pop_08_01_qt.html

A. Waller Hastings
Professor of English
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD  57401

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