Gay writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak dies
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Seattle Gay News
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posted Friday, May 11, 2012 - Volume 40 Issue 19 Gay writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak diesby Mike Andrew - SGN Staff Writer Gay writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak died May 8 from complications of a stroke, his editor Michael di Capua announced. Sendak was 83. Perhaps the most influential children's book author of the 20th century, Sendak was known for a dark, terrifying, and yet enchanting view of childhood that challenged the sugar-sweet sentimental children's literature that prevailed in the 1950s. Best known for his trilogy Where the Wild Things Are (1963), In the Night Kitchen (1970), and Outside Over There (1981), Sendak also designed costumes and sets for ballets and operas, including Pacific Northwest Ballet's version of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. Although he lived with his partner, Dr. Eugene Glynn, for 50 years until Glynn's death in 2007, Sendak was very private about his sexuality. When he finally talked about it in public, it was almost a throwaway line in a newspaper story. In a 2008 New York Times interview, Sendak was asked if there was any question he had never been asked. 'Well, that I'm Gay,' he answered. 'I just didn't think it was anybody's business.' He also revealed that, like many Gays and Lesbians of his generation, he had never told his parents. 'All I wanted was to be straight,' he said, 'so that my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.' 'Finding out that I was Gay when I was older was a shock and a disappointment,' he said in another interview. 'I did not want to be Gay. It meant a whole different thing to me - which is really hard to recover now because that's many years ago. I always objected to it because there is a part of me that is solid Brooklyn and solid conventional and I know that. I can't escape that. It's my genetic makeup. It's who I am.' Frail and sickly as a child, Sendak was reared, he recalled long afterward, in a world of looming terror - the Depression, World War II, the Holocaust - in which many of his European relatives died. He experienced the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932 as a personal torment, he said. Nevertheless, Sendak found his earliest literary influences among his family members. His Jewish immigrant father would tell him Bible stories, Sendak said, but he would embellish them with racy details. Not understanding his father's humor, little Maurice would frequently be sent home after retelling his father's 'softcore Bible tales' at school. As he grew up, Sendak said, he was deeply influenced by Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940), and by Melville, Dickinson, and Mozart. 'My gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart,' he once said. 'I believe in them with all my heart. 'And I have a little tiny Emily Dickinson, so big [indicating a tiny pocket-sized edition], that I carry in my pocket everywhere. And you just read three poems of Emily. She is so brave. She is so strong. She is such a sexy, passionate little woman. I feel better.' 'When Mozart is playing in my room,' he added, 'I am in conjunction with something I can't explain. [...] I don't need to. I know that if there's a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.' Although he held a deeply modern sense of childhood and lived well into the 21st century, Sendak was not a fan of all modern appliances. E-books, in particular, outraged him. 'Fuck them is what I say, I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future & they may well be & [But] I will be dead, I won't give a shit!' Sendak wrote or illustrated more than 100 books during his career. He received a National Book Award, a Caldecott Medal, the Hans Christian Andersen Award for children's book illustration, and the National Medal of Arts. His last picture book, Bumble-Ardy, was published in 2011. It tells the story of an orphaned pig who gives himself a riotous birthday party. A posthumous picture book, My Brother's Book - a poem written and illustrated by Sendak and inspired by his late brother Jack - is scheduled to be published next February. |
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