In a recent NPR Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross, he said that the following two lines from his latest book Bumble-ardy sum up his work and his life:
When his aunt returns she says, "Okay smarty, you've had your party but never again." Bumble-ardy replies, "I promise, I swear, I won't ever turn 10."
Sendak said that he worked on Bumble-ardy while taking care of his longtime partner, Eugene Glynn, who died of lung cancer in 2007.
"When I did Bumble-ardy, I was so intensely aware of death," he says. "Eugene, my friend and partner, was dying here in the house when I did Bumble-ardy. I did Bumble-ardy to save myself. I did not want to die with him. I wanted to live as any human being does. But there's no question that the book was affected by what was going on here in the house. ... Bumble-ardy was a combination of the deepest pain and the wondrous feeling of coming into my own. And it took a long time. It took a very long time."
Read the interview here.
2 comments:
How many times did we read this book to our son as a child? Hundreds, at least. Our son is thirty-two now. What a blessing this man brought the Barone family.
I read Where the Wild Things Are to my kids so many times that I've had it memorized for decades. At one point, on a 300 mile slog through Virginia, my then 2- and 3-year old sons kept demanding that we read them the book while they sat in the back seat, turning the pages. Not surprisingly, I was sometimes on the wrong page, as was my dearly beloved. No matter, just the sight of the book makes me smile at the memory. RIP, Maurice, and thanks for the memories you helped us all create.
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