Where gritty meets sublime

Browsing in a used bookstore the other day, I came across an original hard cover copy of “Where the Wild Things are” by Maurice Sendak, a marvelously playful romp into childhood’s dark side. The story’s hero, Max, escapes the drudgery of parental rules to create his own world of scary creatures where anything seems possible, where life’s exciting beauty traverses the imagination without, for a short time, limit.

Max must eventually return to society’s defined reality, but with the whispered c...