Maurice Sendak was a great man

I've been terribly caught up in any number of things that have seriously cut into my book-reading and thinking time. I have been reading, just not as prodigiously as usual, and my thinking about what I've read has happened mainly in the interstices of busy busy days.

This interview with Maurice Sendak in the Believer is too good to not repost. Like everyone else on earth, I'm a fan of Sendak's work, but I am also a sincere admirer of him as a person, at least insofar as I can tell anything about him from interviews. I love his prickly curmudgeonliness. I love the things he says about children, and childhood, and parents. I love his love for art of many kinds. Along with being incredibly talented as an artist/illustrator and storyteller, Sendak was also a very, very smart person, and that intelligence is apparent in almost every sentence he speaks.

But it's the way he talks about children that gets me, every time; his attitude about and towards children seems very much in line with my own, and that isn't one I come across all that often (even within my own field of study). So to hear someone as important, intelligent, and talented as Maurice Sendak say things like "And now they have a child, and all they do is complain about not having time and having to get a job. Fuck you! Why didn’t you listen to me? We don’t need that baby." It's wonderful.
The best quote of all from this interview (and there are many good ones) makes me want to jump up and down with happiness, then go out and write it EVERYWHERE in the world, because it's true and smart and right.

I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence.

Maurice Sendak: an honest, and great, man.

mournful

This week, we lost one of the true geniuses of children's literature and art: the absolutely magnificent Maurice Sendak. Like virtually every American under the age of 40, I grew up with Where the Wild Things Are; it was a touchstone book (and one that also, though I'd forgotten it somehow, was the source for my mother's often-repeated "I'll eat you up I love you so"). I also loved the Little Bear books, and had more than passing acquaintance with Really Rosie and Chicken Soup with Rice.
In college, a good friend made me aware of In the Night Kitchen, which I'd either never encountered, or seen as a small child and forgotten; it too immediately became one of my  Great Books. 

It was through Sendak's illustrations for the Tony Kushner-written picture book that I came to know the story of Brundibar; their book is absolutely chilling.

When I finally heard an interview with Sendak - on NPR, of course - I was delighted beyond expression; such a curmudgeon! so adamant in his refusal to sentimentalize children! In the literary world, where so many authors have decidedly unpleasant attitudes and personae, it is a true joy to find that a favorite author/illustrator is also a person about whom I can be excited.

There have been plenty of great words written about Sendak, even before his death, and I can't add much to the elegiacs around the internet. I will link to this wonderful post by Kenneth Kidd, which says pretty much everything I've thought, and also appropriately spotlights the queerness of Sendak's work.

And I'll link, again, to the glorious art project Terrible Yellow Eyes, which ran from 2009-2010; in the tribute/inspired-by artworks, I find any number of images that are more than suitable as farewells. The image posted at the top of this post is by Chuck Groenink.

The image that immediately came to mind, upon hearing of Sendak's death, was this one, though, which has long been my favorite Terrible Yellow Eyes piece: Nate Wragg's diorama that manages to capture something of the melancholy and loss that seems inherent in the book. The lone Wild Thing, carefully holding the crown with no wearer, is a perfect image-tribute to the already greatly-missed Sendak.

Wragg's piece is titled, of course, "Wish you were here."