Dr. Seuss’ books have sold over 600 million copies worldwide. The Cat in the Hat was written in response to a study that showed children were not learning to read because their books were boring. It was an immediate hit.
Aries: J’Accuse! (I accuse!) Emil Zola used the crusading ability of his Sun Sign to show that accusations against Alfred Dreyfus were false and based on antisemitism. Dreyfus, a Jewish soldier, had been falsely accused of espionage. Zola penned the famous phrase in an open letter in the newspaper L’AUROE. He wrote numerous short stories, essays, and novels during his career. Half of his novels were about a single family.
Taurus: La Com’edie Humaine was Honore de Balzac’s greatest work. He linked human behavior in his novels to the environment and portrayed people as foible. They had virtues and vices. This down-to-earth thinking is typical of the sign.
Gemini: John Hershey was a war correspondent and writer who described soldiers’ emotions in combat at Guadalcanal. [Gemini-observation, the immediate environment.] His most famous book was Hiroshima which was about the atomic bomb dropped on that city. He wrote about contemporary history—what was happening now– and people’s reactions under duress. His Mercury in Cancer was conjoined with Venus and Neptune and square the Moon. Jupiter was trine a Sun/Saturn conjunction ensuring his success. A Sun/Saturn conjunction can indicate a self-made man and Hershey worked as a waiter, janitor, lifeguard, librarian, and tutor to pay for his education. [Gemini- versatile]
Cancer: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” “Whosoever would be a man, must be a nonconformist.” Cancers have an independent streak, and this was accentuated in Henry David Thoreau’s horoscope by his stellium in Sagittarius (Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune). Mercury was with the Moon, trine Saturn, and square Pluto. Thoreau wrote about nature in Walden’s Pond. He was a transcendentalist; in his view intuition trumped information received through the senses. [Mercury/ Moon in Cancer] Spirit was more important than matter. [Saturn in Pisces]
Leo: Raymond Chandler became a detective writer through harsh circumstance. He lost his job during the depression. His character Philip Marlowe was thoughtful, sentimental, adventurous, courageous, and a man of honor. These adjectives describe Leos at their best. The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely are classic crime novels.
Virgo: Every critic is at heart someone who wants to make things better. In An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser was highly critical of the legal system. The Financier was based on the life of Charles T. Yerkes, an unscrupulous robber baron who used stock purchases and bribery to create Chicago’s mass transit system. Yerkes did make many improvements and extensions in his lines.
Libra: Libra is the sign of partnership and Isabel Briggs Meyers’ mother was her research partner. Together they created the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, perhaps the most widely known and used of all personality tests. Myers was also a novelist. Murder Yet to Come won a writing contest and a considerable sum. The MBTI is based on the work of Carl Jung.
Scorpio: The eighth sign is one of intense emotions. Unless those are controlled by becoming courageous—fears are faced directly —the native will often lead a troubled life. Sylvia Plath was very bright but overcome by doubt, anxiety, confusion, and depression. Tragically, she took her own life at 30. The Bell Jar, her novel, describes her mental health crisis through a fictional girl. Plath had graduated from Smith College with highest honors.
Sagittarius: “I am not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” “I took a test in existentialism. I left all the questions blank and got 100.” “There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?” “What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case I paid too much for my carpet.” “Life doesn’t imitate art. It imitates bad television.” “I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It involves Russia.” These quotes are humorous but also a little philosophical. They exemplify the fun-loving Sagittarian nature. In this case we’re talking about Woody Allen.
Capricorn: E.M. Forrester wrote about social and class divisions in such novels as A Room with a View, Howard’s End, and A Passage to India. Ambitious Capricorns are often status seeking.
Aquarius: Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel The Color Purple. She has advocated for women, for animals, and registered Black people to vote. Walker was born in rural Eaton, Georgia. Humanitarian like many Aquarians she said, “Encouraging others to love nature, to respect other human beings and animals, to adore this earth, is part of my work in this world.”
Pisces: Theodor S. Geisel’s cartoons appeared in national magazines. He also worked for Standard Oil for fifteen years and was lauded for his work in the advertising department. But it was as a writer of children’s books that he earned enduring fame. Writing under the pseudonym of Dr. Seuss, he wrote and drew imaginative illustrations for The Cat in the Hat, a children’s primer of 220 rhyming vocabulary words. In Horton Hears a Who, Horton, an elephant teaches kindness and perseverance, Piscean traits for the fish that swim upstream. In How the Grinch stole Christmas Dr. Seuss instructs the young to do good deeds.