Running Into Maurice Sendak

We're doing a couple of days of winter day trips this week, and yesterday I found myself on the Maurice Sendak Memorial Highway in Ridgefield, Connecticut. I'd forgotten that for many years he'd lived there.

It turns out his home and archive will be open to the public next year, though only by appointment. I don't know what will be in the archive, since last year the Maurice Sendak Foundation and UConn announced that a large number of his materials would be "hosted" at the Northeast Children's Literature Collection at UConn, though the Foundation would continue to own them. For what it's worth, I think this is an entirely logical arrangement, since the Children's Literature Collection has the resources to store materials in climate controlled surroundings best suited to preserving them and the staff to provide access to them to scholars and students.

If I'd realized Sendak's house was in Ridgefield, I would have driven by.

Maurice Sendak Going To UConn

This isn't hot-off-the-presses, having been announced a couple of months back. But it's newish for me.

The Maurice Sendak Foundation has chosen the University of Connecticut to maintain Maurice Sendak's papers. According to Arthur Yorinks in a Hartford Courant article, Sendak's materials, close to 10,000 items, will be kept in the Northeast Children's Literature Collection, which is at the Thomas Dodd Research Center. I've had some terrific experiences at the Northeast Children's Literature Collection. Ate dinner there once and Lois Lowry was sitting at the very next table. Yeah. And then there was the time I gave someone a Band-aid to give to Anita Lobel while I was there.

But this is about Maurice Sendak.

Sendak was a Connecticut resident with connections to UConn. He was a guest in Professor Francelia Butler's classes back in the '70s and '80s and received an honorary doctorate in 1990.

This is great news for the Northeast Collection, which also has Tomi de Paolo's, Natalie Babbitt's, Richard Scarry's, and Barbara Cooney's papers. 

That Interviewer Sure Got An Earful

I've never been a fan of the cliche about  famous old people who say all kinds of dreadful things and everyone thinks they're honest and charming because, I guess, they're old and famous. So I probably didn't appreciate the interview with Maurice Sendak in The Believer as much as other readers will. Or maybe I should say that I appreciated it differently.

I have to admit, I roared when Sendak complained heartily--and graphically--about Salman Rushdie and claimed he called the Ayatollah about him. And like Sendak, I am not a fan of Roald Dahl. Over all, though, articles like this make me determined to continue watching VH-1 and reading books columns with the hopes that keeping up with the world will prevent me from spending my declining years going on about how good things used to be back in the golden days of my youth.