Skip to content

You Probably Don’t “Have Time” for this Maurice Sendak Interview

You Probably Don’t “Have Time” for this Maurice Sendak Interview

May 9, 2012 SVadmin Comments 2 comments

Terry Gross of NPR’s “Fresh Air” interviewed Maurice Sendak four times over several decades, the first time in the mid-1980s and most recently several months ago. Her show yesterday was a compilation of all those interviews, a full hour dedicated to Sendak.

Radio is not so fashionable these days, and most of us don’t “have time” to listen to interviews, but I have to say this is the finest work Terry Gross has ever done. You get a real sense of Sendak’s tortured and in the end joyful and completely realized life as an artist and as a human being.

In one of the interviews, Sendak explains to Gross why he stopped doing book signings for children, and why he stopped visiting kids in their classrooms: he realized that he had become one of those frightening and problematic adults that many of his monsters were meant to depict!

One little boy who had been standing in line with his copy of “Where The Wild Things Are” — upon being pushed forward by his father for Sendak’s signature — defiantly and bravely screamed “Don’t crap-up my book!!!”

Sendak loved this kid, and took the father aside to plead mercy for him.

In the course of these four interviews over the years, he developed a trust in Terry Gross and clearly a fondness for her. In the last interview several months ago, Sendak — who had always been obsessed with death (in a good Buddhist way, it seems to me, although he was actually a secular jew and a dedicated atheist) — in the last interview he told Terry “I’ll cry my way to the grave,” and a little later, “I’m not afraid of death” and a little after that “I’ll probably die before you, which is good because I won’t have to cry over you.”

Sendak, a very very sweet man. RIP.

Listen to the compilation of the Terry Gross interviews with Maurice Sendak here if you … “have time:”

CLICK FOR MAURICE SENDAK INTERVIEW

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Blog, Poetry
Artists, Buddhism

Post navigation

PREVIOUS
Background on the Foreclosure Crisis In Nevada County
NEXT
“We Are Star Dust”

Join Our Mailing List

2 thoughts on “You Probably Don’t “Have Time” for this Maurice Sendak Interview”

  1. Releoryi says:
    May 9, 2012 at 8:22 pm

    I enjoyed the interview but my soul wept at the end as his life seems so empty in his thoughts at the end.. He seemd so void of something. There was something about that interview that I found haunting and strange. When my parents died, they looked forward to an afterlife….I walked awy in eace with each do their deaths, This poor man (at least in the interview at the time) was empty..he was grateful to have grown old but empty. He wept as he missed all of his friends who had died but ever so wanted to see his brother again.

    I respect his body of work. His spirit cried out during that interview in a way that it felt like screaming to me…a scream that does not stop. I was touched and feel haunted by all of this.

    I hope that screaming spirit within him found peace.

  2. Pingback: You Probably Don’t “Have Time” for this Maurice Sendak Interview… « UKIAH BLOG

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

DONATE TO THE FOOD BANK OF NEVADA COUNTY

(CLICK IMAGE)

DONATE TO NEVADA COUNTY RELIEF FUND (click image below)

Erika Lewis, Shaye Cohn, Craig Flory – Got A Mind To Ramble

Jack Kornfield: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part I)

Tara Brach: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part II)

Subscribe to Sierra Voices Journal

Recent Posts

  • Mask News We Can All Use
  • Chaos agent: Right-wing blames US Capitol riot on notorious instigator banished by Black Lives Matter
  • How to stop an Insurrection Caucus: These reforms could reduce GOP extremism and save our democracy
  • The U.S. Capitol raid was a failed self-coup previously seen in dying regimes
  • Accountability for the Attempted Coup

Recent Comments

  • (Posted by) Don Pelton on GOP Warns Dems About Court Packing (Cartoon)
  • Criminal Incompetence, Malignant Ignorance Will Lead to Hunger and Violence on A Nice Depression Now Benefits the GOP in 2022 and 2024
  • togel singapura hari ini on How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme — Again
  • Ao Corrente on How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme — Again
  • forex forum on How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme — Again

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009

Categories

  • Aging
  • Articles
  • Atlas Obscura
  • Authoritarianism
  • Black Lives
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Blog
  • Buddhism
  • Cartoon
  • Climate Change
  • Corona Virus
  • Corruption
  • Disenfranchisement
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Election Fraud
  • Environment
  • Farming
  • Fascism
  • Fire!
  • Food Insecurity
  • Foreign Policy
  • Forest Management
  • Gender
  • Health Care
  • History
  • Humor
  • Hunger
  • Ignorance
  • Labor
  • Local
  • Masks
  • Medical Care
  • Men
  • Middle Class
  • Mining
  • MMT
  • Modern Monetary Theory
  • Music
  • Native Americans
  • Pandemic
  • Parenting
  • Poetry
  • Police
  • Politics
  • Press
  • Race
  • Reviews
  • Revolution
  • Right-wing terrorism
  • Russiagate
  • Science
  • Technology
  • Trump Virus
  • Tyranny
  • Uncategorized
  • Voting
  • War
  • War on Government
  • Water
  • Watersheds
  • Wildfires

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© 2021   All Rights Reserved.