Voting Station

Norton Juster

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Architect

The Resume

    (June 2, 1929-March 8, 2021)
    Born in Brooklyn, New York
    Author of ‘The Phantom Tollbooth,’ ‘The Dot and the Line,’ ‘The Hello, Goodbye Window,’ and ‘Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie’
    Civil Engineer Corps of the U.S. Navy (Lieutenant Junior Grade)
    Professor of Design at Hampshire College (Amherst, Massachusetts)
    Co-founder of Juster-Pope Associates (later Juster-Pope-Frazier, Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts)
    Teacher of architecture and planning at Pratt Institute
    Romanian-Jewish father, Polish-Jewish mother

Why he might be annoying:

    Another one of his literary works – The Passing of Irving – was not published.
    During his three-year Navy stint, he was reprimanded for working on a youth story… to deal with boredom.
    When he was posted in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he concocted the Naval News Service so he could get interviews with pretty young things… again dealing with boredom.
    The Penguin Random House website lists him as ‘an amateur chef and professional eater.’
    He had a habit of pulling practical jokes, especially on collaborators.

Why he might not be annoying:

    While he used a correspondence course to become an architect, he at least came by that skill honestly (as his father was also an architect).
    On a Fulbright scholarship, he spent a year in Liverpool working in urban planning and… learning to ride a motorcycle.
    He was a collaborator on the libretto for The Phantom Tollbooth (1995).
    As a hobby, he makes his own pickles and preserves.
    He married only once (widowed in 2018) and has had only one child.

Credit: Cool It All Right?


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 131 Votes: 52.67% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying