‘I don’t set out to make children happy’: RIP Maurice Sendak

That he was in his 84th year doesn’t soften the blow of Maurice Sendak’s death of complications from a stroke earlier this week. The beloved author and artist of Where The Wild Things Are and In The Night Kitchen remained productive until the end, publishing Bumble-Ardy, his 18th book, a mere eight months ago.

His brilliance was in full flower, too, on his two-part appearance earlier this year on the satirical American late night show The Colbert Report. It’s a programme that’s difficult to see in the UK. Its sister show, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, screens on cable channel Comedy Central, but Colbert is nowhere to be found, and any attempt to view videos on its official American site from outside the USA is met with a stern ‘content not available in your country’ message (although there are ways round that, but you didn’t hear it from us.)

In Sendak’s spirit of telling you things you need to hear, then, we’ve compiled some of the high points from the great man’s appearance, that you might realise just why he’ll be so sorely missed, and maybe go about your day being a better person than had you not read them. And, if you feel like sticking it to the man and finding that way around the regional blocking, here are the interviews themselves. First though, here’s a bonus video of his view on e-books. Godspeed, sir.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mPEZj21NmE&rel=0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3]

 

 

– ‘There is something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children. It’s quite amazing.’

– ‘Newt Gingrich is an idiot of great renown, I’ll give him that. There is something so hopelessly gross and vile about him that it’s hard to take him seriously, so let’s not take him seriously.’

– ‘I don’t write for children […] I write, and somebody says “that’s for children.” I don’t set out to make children happy, or make life better for them, or easier for them.’

– ‘I like [children] as few and far between as I do adults. Maybe a bit more, because I really don’t like adults at all, frankly.’

– On why he wouldn’t write a sequel to Where The Wild Things Are: ‘Because that is the most boring thing imaginable.’

– On Colbert’s own mooted Wild Things sequel: ‘It is so bad that not only will it sell, it will make pots and pots of money for you.’

– ‘It is a miracle that I have lived this long without having destroyed a person. I still have a little bit of time.’

– Colbert: ‘What do you think of the current state of children’s literature?’

Sendak: ‘Abysmal.

Colbert: ‘There’s so much of it though.’

Sendak: ‘That’s what makes it abysmal.’

– On the central flaw of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie: ‘you should open the door and say “get the hell out of my house.”‘

– To Colbert, on what it takes for a celebrity to write a popular children’s book: ‘you’ve started already by being an idiot. That is the very first demand.’

– ‘Most books for children are very bad.’

– Sendak’s blurb for Colbert’s children’s book: ‘The sad thing is I like it.’

– ‘All you need to do is get a popular illustrator who has a horrible sense of design, no taste for type, nothing about what the aesthetics of what a picture book could look like, and you will probably make a lot of money.’

– On Colbert’s illustrative efforts: ‘I would leave it alone, because it has a kind of delicacy and irrationality and terrible quality of ordinariness.’

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