Maurice Sendak: "Cannibals and Psychotics"
I remember the first time I saw a Maurice Sendak book. It was In The Night Kitchen. I was eleven or twelve, and had been given a small allowance by my parents to buy my littlest sister, who did not read, books, if I would read them to her. I loved books and reading aloud. In The Night Kitchen was liberating, transgressive, and a dream come to life: I understood the nakedness, could not understand why all the chefs were Oliver Hardy but loved that all the chefs were Oliver Hardy. Years later I discovered Little Nemo in Slumberland, and In The Night Kitchen came into focus.
As a parent, I read Where The Wild Things Are to my children, but Holly's favourite Sendak book was Outside Over There, and I must have read it to her hundreds of times, perhaps thousands of times, marvelling at Sendak's economy of words, his cruelty, his art.
What I loved, what I always responded to, was the feeling that Sendak owed nothing to anyone in the books that he made. His only obligation was to the book, to make it true. His lines could be cute, but there was an honesty that transcended the cuteness.
I never met him, although I had friends who worked with him, and friends who were friends with him. I never wanted to meet him. I had read the books -- by that point I'd read all the books -- and read the interviews. He was so grumpy and so wise, so sensible and so very much at the service of each of the books. He made personal books that came out and were banned and challenged and then embraced by the children who had grown up with them. (In The Night Kitchen was the 24th most challenged US library book in the last decade.)
When I heard this morning that Maurice Sendak had died, I asked the New Yorker over Twitter if they could unlock a two page comic: art spiegelman and Maurice Sendak in conversation in 1993, drawn by both of them. They did, and I am grateful to them.
Click on the small version of the first page to read the whole thing (and click on that to make it bigger).
And the strange thing about reading this, was that it was pretty much, I realised, what I'd been trying to say last week when I made my Zena Sutherland speech in Chicago. Only I took thirty-five minutes and almost five thousand words to say it, and art and Maurice did it in eleven panels.
Labels: Maurice Sendak
As a parent, I read Where The Wild Things Are to my children, but Holly's favourite Sendak book was Outside Over There, and I must have read it to her hundreds of times, perhaps thousands of times, marvelling at Sendak's economy of words, his cruelty, his art.
What I loved, what I always responded to, was the feeling that Sendak owed nothing to anyone in the books that he made. His only obligation was to the book, to make it true. His lines could be cute, but there was an honesty that transcended the cuteness.
I never met him, although I had friends who worked with him, and friends who were friends with him. I never wanted to meet him. I had read the books -- by that point I'd read all the books -- and read the interviews. He was so grumpy and so wise, so sensible and so very much at the service of each of the books. He made personal books that came out and were banned and challenged and then embraced by the children who had grown up with them. (In The Night Kitchen was the 24th most challenged US library book in the last decade.)
When I heard this morning that Maurice Sendak had died, I asked the New Yorker over Twitter if they could unlock a two page comic: art spiegelman and Maurice Sendak in conversation in 1993, drawn by both of them. They did, and I am grateful to them.
Click on the small version of the first page to read the whole thing (and click on that to make it bigger).
And the strange thing about reading this, was that it was pretty much, I realised, what I'd been trying to say last week when I made my Zena Sutherland speech in Chicago. Only I took thirty-five minutes and almost five thousand words to say it, and art and Maurice did it in eleven panels.
Labels: Maurice Sendak
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Angie
(new)
May 09, 2012 08:32AM
I was so sad to find out that Maurice Sendak had passed. It was his simplicity that made him great.
reply
|
flag
Childhood does seem to have more darkness in it then light. But that is where the best stories come from.
Thank you so much for sharing that comic with us. I was very sad when I found out Maurice Sendak passed, but very glad that his books will carry his legacy to future generations of readers.
NOOOOOOOO!I haven't even watched Where The Wild Things Are!!! Let alone read or understood what Sendak was about, and he's gone?!
Sigh. Such is life, there and gone before you know it, leaving you just enough time to regret it.
Now when I watch it, it'll be like The Dark Knight again. If I love it, I'll just feel sad knowing that the one who made me love it is gone.
@DonThe things that make us who we are, the things and the people that we love, are never really gone.
This is most especially true with books. Honesty trascends time and emotion, and even presence. Good literature is honest literature, or honest in that its not being honest, and the reader is in on it. Most of my favorite books are written by people centuries dead, but they're never really gone.
I grew up reading "Where the Wild things are" and now my son loves it as well. I hated to hear that Sendak passed. I loved that two page comic... Sendak is so very true in it, my son and I never keep secrets from each other so anytime he has questions or comments, no matter how dark they may be, he speaks his mind and sure enough that boy knows more then any adult could give a kid credit for. But, in today's world kids are more out with it then we were when I was a kid. And like Sendak had said kids books, adult books.. books are books I feel that if my son will read it then he should be allowed to (as long as it's good literature and not something like Playboy!), it's good for him and makes him stronger and more knowledgeable.
There's a very moving interview with Maurice here, http://www.npr.org/2011/12/29/1440772...recorded last December, only two days after a good friend of his passed away, so he was very sad. He reflects on his life, and the importance of friends and his lonliness when they go. It's even more profound since his own passing.
