I was listening to one of the most intimate interviews I have ever heard (now twice) again a couple of weeks ago, replayed on Fresh Air, upon the death of the beloved Maurice Sendak. Terry Gross interviewed him for the last time last September. I remember the day I listened to it then. I was visiting my parents in Missouri, and I was in the kitchen preparing food for the family. I recall stopping chopping to sit down and enter in. Someone posted part of this interview on their Facebook page on the day of Sendak's death:
The New York Times began their article on Sendak like this:
But I digress just a tad. What I've thought about most often the last couple of weeks since his death is this very conversation he had on Fresh Air, where he opened up so genuinely about his choice not to have children. Here is someone who has touched the lives of children in ways a parent can only dream. And yet Sendak, like so many other children's book authors, has created worlds centered around the hero child, with the parent in the proverbial background, either asleep, sick, overworked, you name it. I don't have his books in front of me, so I hasten to say this will fall short of any sort of true literary analysis, but from what I recall in reading his books, some more recently than others, the parent figure is both villain and savior. Their actions, either purposeful (like a punishment) or inadvertent (like an illness), tend to pave the way for the break of independence that sends the child off on his or her journey, and yet the very bond of the relationship lures the hero back home in to the arms of the waiting, perhaps even remorseful, and loving parent. This brings to my mind an inherent conflict: in what ways do we truly shape our children, as they explore the world on their own terms. And as well, Sendak's seeming understanding of what one gives up to be a parent, at the expense of oneself or even one's child hangs like a cloud over his landscape. For certain, endless articles and books have been written on these subjects, but I come to this from a purely emotional place.
My love for my children has changed my life, as have the choices I've made to be a parent. And my own journey to the land of the monsters, with the fear and trembling along the way, reminds me that Sendak's work is much more universal than what sits before us on those beautifully illustrated pages. We are all seeking that same unconditional love and acceptance, along with an ever-present desire for independence from those most close and devoted to us... our partners, our children, our parents, our friends. It is the loneliest and most exhilarating place all at once. And Sendak's greatest gift may have been that he led us to that place where we abandon the familiar in search of the new; and when we go back home, we have all changed for the better.
I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more. ... What I dread is the isolation. ... There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready.Many may or may not know that Sendak never had any children of his own, and as a gay man (who came out quite late in life, although he had a long-time partner for four decades who died in 2007), this could have been perceived to be a result of being gay in a time where it wasn't as prevalent for gay men and women to have children. However, he rejects this notion. He tells Terry Gross that he never wanted children (well, maybe one daughter who he thought would be nice to have around in his latter life — but only if she came out fully grown so he wouldn't have to worry about how to dress her every day, etc.). He loved his life of the mind, so to speak, to be able to read, write, and submerge himself in his work in a way he would never be able to do had he had even one child. He understood the commitment of parenthood and how that would, ultimately, take him away from his life's purpose. And this was a choice he was not ready to make. Ironically, the major canon of his work has been beloved by children and families for years.
The New York Times began their article on Sendak like this:
[Sendak was] widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century... [and] wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche.I understand this quite well, as the only book we own of Sendak's is his picture book Brundibar, created with Tony Kushner (who wrote the text) in 2003 and based on an opera originally composed by a Czech Jew who died at Auschwitz and originally performed by children in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. It's darkness is captivating. I've often wondered to myself the affect of this book on my children as I read it to them occasionally. It is a beautiful and haunting story. The other book we know quite well from several library borrowings is In the Night Kitchen, which I've thought often of writing about in this blog, with its enticingly nocturnal journey through an idyllic New York landscape and the baking of bread with a naked little hero ("nangu boy" as my boys call him in Hindi) named Mickey at the center of the story.
But I digress just a tad. What I've thought about most often the last couple of weeks since his death is this very conversation he had on Fresh Air, where he opened up so genuinely about his choice not to have children. Here is someone who has touched the lives of children in ways a parent can only dream. And yet Sendak, like so many other children's book authors, has created worlds centered around the hero child, with the parent in the proverbial background, either asleep, sick, overworked, you name it. I don't have his books in front of me, so I hasten to say this will fall short of any sort of true literary analysis, but from what I recall in reading his books, some more recently than others, the parent figure is both villain and savior. Their actions, either purposeful (like a punishment) or inadvertent (like an illness), tend to pave the way for the break of independence that sends the child off on his or her journey, and yet the very bond of the relationship lures the hero back home in to the arms of the waiting, perhaps even remorseful, and loving parent. This brings to my mind an inherent conflict: in what ways do we truly shape our children, as they explore the world on their own terms. And as well, Sendak's seeming understanding of what one gives up to be a parent, at the expense of oneself or even one's child hangs like a cloud over his landscape. For certain, endless articles and books have been written on these subjects, but I come to this from a purely emotional place.
My love for my children has changed my life, as have the choices I've made to be a parent. And my own journey to the land of the monsters, with the fear and trembling along the way, reminds me that Sendak's work is much more universal than what sits before us on those beautifully illustrated pages. We are all seeking that same unconditional love and acceptance, along with an ever-present desire for independence from those most close and devoted to us... our partners, our children, our parents, our friends. It is the loneliest and most exhilarating place all at once. And Sendak's greatest gift may have been that he led us to that place where we abandon the familiar in search of the new; and when we go back home, we have all changed for the better.