The whole time I was reading Emma Brockes' 2011 interview with Maurice Sendak this weekend in The Believer, I kept thinking how rare it is to hear the word schnooks these days. And how awesome it would be if he were still around.
Even when he frags the Daddy Types demographic:
BLVR: You can't be as crazy as all that. You managed to stay in one relationship for fifty years.Maurice Sendak | "I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence." [believermag]MS: Yes! And he was--well. He was so much like my brother. He was a psychoanalyst. I was very proud of him. He was a man who loved music and reading. And when I worked in the studio, he would be reading. He never smoked and he died of lung cancer, utterly ridiculous. I had that friendship for a long, long time. I didn't miss having children, and it wasn't because I was gay. It was because I knew I wouldn't know how to do it. I knew it. Long before I even knew I was gay. When I was a child, I knew I couldn't do it. And I did not want to learn about it. And I thought, If you're an artist, you should not have children.
BLVR: Because they'll come second?
MS: Of course. Or if they come first, your art will come second. So what are you going to do? There's a young artist in this town who's remarkably gifted, and I've been tutoring him on the side. And he had this marvelous girlfriend, and I saw what was happening. And I said, "Look, don't marry. Happily you can live together without any stench." And they married and within eight minutes she was pregnant. And now they have a child, and all they do is complain about not having time and having to get a job. Fuck you! Why didn't you listen to me? We don't need that baby.
