As you likely know, Sendak died earlier this year. I'm not one to speak ill of the dead, but I think this passage from an interview that Sendak did last year speaks for itself:
SENDAK: Bush was president, I thought, “Be brave. Tie a bomb to your shirt. Insist on going to the White House. And I wanna have a big hug with the vice president, definitely. And his wife, and the president, and his wife, and anybody else that can fit into the love hug.”
GROTH: A group hug.
SENDAK: And then we’ll blow ourselves up, and I’d be a hero. [Groth laughs.] To hell with the kiddie books. He killed Bush. He killed the vice president. Oh my God.
GROTH: I would have been willing to forgo this interview. [Sendak laughs.]
SENDAK: You would have forgotten about it. It would have been a very brave and wonderful thing. But I didn’t do it; I didn’t do it.
Sometimes you have to trust the tale more than the teller.
10 comments:
As I posted on Strommie's link on FB:
"On the night that Maurice wore his terrorist suit and made mischief of one kind and another..."
I think if most (or at least a lot of) people are honest, we all entertain dark fantasies at some time in our lives. Generally, it simply isn't sensible to share them...particularly when they involve assassinating the POTUS. But I don't know...if you're someone who made a handsome living on your imagination--and on spinning somewhat dark tales at that--you might be a little less inhibited about such things.
Don't let this ruin a great book for you, is what I'm saying...
Don't let this ruin a great book for you, is what I'm saying...
Yep. Trust the tale, not the teller.
Brian, I feel the same way about Mein Kampf. Good Book, but the author was kind of a horrible person. Ha! Ha!
Don't be ridiculous. Mein Kampf is very poorly written.
Brian actually is talking about a point that I've had to make before concerning Yeats. At points in his life Yeats was a bit of a fascist sympathizer, which wasn't unusual at all in Europe in those days. He also dabbled in the occult. But that doesn't make his poems less worth reading.
Brian: i never read Mein Kampf, but is it possible that it wasnt poorly written as much it was written in a way/language that doesnt translate well to english?
I haven't read the whole thing, but what I have read really
Is pretty bad. Somewhere between John Galt's speech and the Unabomber manifesto.
Freud and (the late 19th/early 20th century) Paul Ehrlich translate well from German (I'm sure there are better literary examples, but all the contemporaneous German-speakers I can think of off the top of my head were scientists).
Also...I was joking. As in, the reasonable thing to say was, "don't be ridiculous by comparing Maurice Sendak to Hitler."
Sendak isn't Hitler, but he isn't Mother Theresa either. To publicly admit fantasies about killing a sitting president (or anyone else for that matter) is irresponsible, particulary when one sits in a position of relative authority. There is a big difference between commiserating among friends privately and publicly calling for someone to be killed.
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