I apologize that I didn't give you a "head's up" about an episode of To Tell the Truth that was rerun the other night. The panel had to guess which of three men was Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Geisel.
One of the many things I found interesting about it was that for years, learned men and women — including one of my professors back at U.C.L.A. — had insisted that "Seuss" was pronounced, "soice," as if it rhymed with "voice." A prominent author once berated me at length for saying it as if it rhymed with "goose." I argued back that there were examples like the TV special, Dr. Seuss on the Loose, that suggested otherwise. "No, no," said the man who was lecturing me. "Seuss is his middle name and it's pronounced 'soice,' no matter what the Troglodytes in the TV business think."
I said, "Uh…why would he give permission for someone producing his work to maul his name like that?"
The reply: "Well, he may have given up by now…so many morons getting it wrong. But he always pronounced it "soice" and out of respect for the man and his work, that's how we should pronounce it."
That might make sense — Mr. Geisel's middle name was, indeed, Seuss — but there he was on a 1958 game show and he himself pronounced it to rhyme with "loose" and "goose" and "juice." So if the world got it wrong, there's the reason.