On the first anniversary of Maurice Sendak’s passing, I’ve gathered here some posts for those who want to consider what he has meant and continues to mean – as an artist, a writer, and (for those who knew him) a friend. It’s strange to think that it’s been a full year since he passed away. It was odd, in my classes this semester, to call him “the late Maurice Sendak.” He had always seemed eternal, though no person can be. His work, of course, is eternal. And that’s a consolation.
Also consoling, even joyous, is the imminent publication (next month) of Maurice Sendak: A Celebration of the Artist and his Work (edited by Leonard Marcus). Earlier this year brought us Sendak’s last completed work, My Brother’s Book, a tribute to William Blake and Sendak’s brother Jack. I expect that, at some point, we may see the publication of his truly last (and not-quite-finished) work, No-Nose, which Catherine Keener read at his memorial service last July. (Sendak finished the text, but not all of the art.) Until then, we have his rich and powerful body of work to read and re-read, taking us to the land of the wild things and back again. And again.
- Annotating My Brother’s Book: Some initial thoughts on Sendak’s use of Blake’s pictorial language. A guest post by Mark Crosby. Blake scholar Mark Crosby shows us how Blake’s work illuminates My Brother’s Book.
- The Most Wild Thing of All: Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012. My tribute to Sendak, including extracts from an (otherwise unpublished) interview I did with him, back in 2001. At the bottom of the post: links to many other tributes and obituaries from around the web.
- The King of the Wild Things Is Dead. Long Live the King. Maurice Sendak (1928-2012). My obituary for Sendak, which ran in the Comics Journal. A longer version appears as the introduction to Gary Groth’s interview, in the latest print issue (see below).
- Tributes to Maurice Sendak: Artists Respond. In the wake of Sendak’s passing, many people created visual tributes. These are a few.
- Eat, Drink, and Be Merry. My review of Sendak’s Bumble-Ardy.
- Maurice Sendak, Uncensored. A few thoughts on (and quotations from) Gary Groth’s Comics Journal interview.
- In or Out?: Crockett Johnson, Ruth Krauss, Sexuality, Biography. In which I meditate on how to address (or not) Maurice Sendak’s sexuality in my biography of Johnson and Krauss.
- The Maurice Sendak tag will take you to other posts.
Mary Galbraith
Philip Nel