Nevermore Never Again: Sendak Has a New Book

 

Maurice Sendak has a new book: Bumble-ardy, and Terry Gross's interview with him about the book is just incandescent.  There are so many moving and revealing moments, most of those are best left untouched by critical comment.  In the interview, you will hear Sendak in deep confessional mode, and he is wonderfully open and unplugged about everything from a life dedicated to art and reading to why he feels himself unsuited to childrearing.  His comments on the phrase "Never again" in Bumble-ardy reminded me of the multi-layered complexity of his "simple" stories.  It evokes the postwar response to the Holocaust, the impossibility of recapturing the past, the futile struggle against disappearance,  the words of Poe's raven, even as it resonates quietly with childhood experiences of loss.

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/20/140435330/this-pig-wants-to-party-maurice-sendaks-latest

 

I especially like the fact that he has embraced the poetry of nonsense, a move that has a certain inner logic when you are his age and trying to make sense of your life: "I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of [writing] something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter."