He is still raging. But since Eugene's death, says Sendak, it is merely an echo of his former anger. He looks around his property, built in and boasting in its grounds one of the last elms still standing in Connecticut, and approaches something like peace.
He knows he is lucky and has been lucky for a long time. His relationship with Eugene, who was a psychoanalyst, lasted almost 50 years. His parents never knew — not officially. Especially my father. My mother was so bewildering and strange and lived in another world, I don't know what she knew. Nothing was said, but if something had been said, I would have been thrown out of the house. And yet they met him and respected him. Is it any wonder, he says, that his work pitches against euphemism and whitewash in favour of the unvarnished truth?
It was a cousin who first encouraged Sendak to look beyond his narrow life in Brooklyn. She was a communist and they weren't supposed to associate with her, but he and his sister would sneak off to see this woman, who recognised his talent for drawing. He had always hated school and, to his parents' horror, eschewed university to become a commercial illustrator.
His first job, in , was illustrating a physics text book called Atomics for the Millions. Since then he has illustrated more than books, and written and illustrated more than Where The Wild Things Are, published in , has sold more than 17m copies, but it is not his favourite.
That honour goes to Outside Over There , about siblings. Sendak was very fond of his siblings. The term "children's illustrator" annoys him, since it seems to belittle his talent. I will never kill myself like Vincent Van Gogh. Nor will I paint beautiful water lilies like Monet. I can't do that. I'm in the idiot role of being a kiddie book person. He's sure he would have messed it up. His brother felt the same way: after their childhood, they were too dysfunctional.
And we — making fun of them. I remember when my brother was dying, he looked at me and his eyes were all teary. And he said, 'Why were we so unkind to Mama? We were kids, we didn't understand. We didn't know she was crazy. There was a partial reconciliation with his parents, a moment of understanding.
They never made much of his work except once, when he was asked to illustrate a set of stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer , winner of the Nobel prize for literature in They were proud of that, he says.
For the illustrations, Sendak went back to the family album. And I went through the album and picked some of my mother's relatives and some of my father's and drew them very acutely. And they cried. And I cried. So there was that. And there still is that. He's crazy, too, he says. I don't say that to be a smartass, but I know that that's the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that's fine. I don't do it for everybody.
Or anybody. I do it because I can't not do it. In , Sendak's partner of 50 years, the psychoanalyst Eugene Glynn, died. During Glynn's final illness, Sendak wrote Bumble-Ardy , his first book for children in 30 years. He told the Canadian paper the Globe and Mail: "I don't know why that amalgamation of emotions led me back to doing a book for children I had this little story in my head for a long time. I couldn't figure it out, I couldn't solve it.
Then, during this horrendous time, I solved it. And it was like heaven sent to preoccupy me during a terrible, terrible, terrible time. Sendak relished the miracle of having survived so long, having always faced up to the "arbitrary nature of life" — his European relatives perished in Nazi camps, his parents never hid from his baby self how close he was to death, and at the age of 39 he had a major heart attack.
Pragmatically, he set out to accomplish more in what time he had, and he cared deeply about the life we were bequeathing our children. For this complex man and great artist had "an intense nostalgia, a passionate affiliaton for childhood", and those very accomplishments are the finest of all bequests. Maurice Sendak obituary. Children's author and illustrator best known for Where the Wild Things Are. Maurice Sendak at his home in Connecticut, New England. He liked to portray himself as glum and cantankerous with no need of a social life.
His idea of perfect company was his dog. His talents and ambitions, however, are not limited to children's books.
He also created television shows and designed sets for operas and ballets. To honor such a cherished cultural icon is no small task. How can anyone sing the praises of Maurice Sendak with enough affection?
The doodlers and I decided to let Sendak's characters do the talking, or the walking rather.
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