I never liked Shel Silverstein’s spare, twee little book, not the first time I read it, back in the late 1970s, or the second time, in the mid-1980s, or the third time, just a few weeks ago, in preparation for this column.

I’m not alone.

Here we have a story, fewer than 650 words long. What are its adjectives, after the one in the title, “giving,” which never appears in the story itself? Little, tired, happy, older, alone, happy, too big, happy, happy, long, sad, happy, too busy, warm, happy, happy, so happy, too old, sad, happy, happy, long, sorry, gone, too weak, gone, too old, gone, too tired, sorry, old, sorry, quiet, very tired, old, good, happy. “Happy” is the last word of the story, and in interviews Shel Silverstein explained that it took him years to find a publisher for “The Giving Tree” — that it had been important to him that he keep what he called the sad ending.

vainglorious

“She is a personable and knowing young female, albeit too flachbrustig (though her Arsch is perfectly all right, and if you hoiked up that tight skirt you’d . . . Don’t quite see why I write like this. It isn’t my style at all).”

I’m not alone.

Most disgusting book ever,” said one. “One star or five, there is no middle ground,” declared another. “The Nazis would have loved it,” one man raged, proving that

he spiritual sons of the Abolitionists have not been prepared to acknowledge that the schools founded before Tuskegee, by men of broad ideals and self-sacrificing spirit, were wholly failures or worthy of ridicule.