Archive for Interviews & Appreciations

Maurice Sendak: Best of NPR’s “Fresh Air”

January 2, 2012 / / No comments

I love soaking up all the “best of” lists that come out this time of year, all those recaps of the year in film, music, art, and books. It gets expensive though, because I try to load up on all the stuff I missed. Driving in the car a few days ago, I was moved to hear the end of an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” between Terry Gross and Maurice Sendak.

Sendak, at age 83, sounded vulnerable and wistful, full of sadness and self-knowing, bravery and hard-earned wisdom, nearing life’s end and yet unblinking. I urge you to click here and hear him for yourself, because there’s a feeling to his words that only sound can convey. It’s the difference between hearing a song and reading the lyrics on a page.

On the terrific NPR website you can read the manuscript in full. Aren’t we fortunate to live in an age when such things are so easily accessible? Here’s the piece of this amazing, profound interview that I heard as I drove up Murray Avenue, across 32, and wound my way home through the dark wintery streets, finally arriving in my driveway, car still running, not shutting it off until the interview concluded:

SENDAK: I’m not unhappy about becoming old. I’m not unhappy about what must be. It makes me cry only when I see my friends go before me and life is emptied. I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again. And it’s like a dream life. But, you know, there’s something I’m finding out as I’m aging that I am in love with the world.

And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio and I see my trees and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old, they’re beautiful. And you see I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music.

You know, I don’t think I’m rationalizing anything. I really don’t. This is all inevitable and I have no control over it. “Bumble-ardy” was a combination of the deepest pain and the wondrous feeling of coming into my own and it took a long time. It took a very long time, but it’s genuine. Unless I’m crazy. I could be crazy and you could be talking to a crazy person.

GROSS: I don’t think so.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: My guest is Maurice Sendak. He has a new children’s book called “Bumble-ardy.” We’ll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: Let’s get back to my phone conversation with Maurice Sendak, the beloved children’s book author who’s best known for “Where the Wild Things Are” and “In the Night Kitchen.” He has a new book called “Bumble-ardy.”

What are your physical restrictions like? Can you walk OK? Can you get around?

SENDAK: No, I can’t walk OK. I’d love to walk. That’s why I’ve been doing that since the ’70s when I had my first coronary. I have heart trouble and I’ve had a very bad time after Eugene died and I was very sick and they thought I would die and I came back to do “Bumble-ardy.” And I have nothing but praise now, really, for my life. I mean I’m not unhappy.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

SENDAK: I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more. And I’m in a very soft mood, as you can gather…

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

SENDAK: …because new people have died.

GROSS: Yeah.

SENDAK: They were not that old. And so it’s what I dread more than anything is the isolation.

GROSS: Yeah.

SENDAK: But I have my young people here, four of them who are studying and they look at me as somebody who knows everything, those poor kids.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SENDAK: SENDAK: If they only knew how little I know. But obviously I give off something that they trust, because they’re all intelligent. Oh God, there are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.

GROSS: Well, listen – yeah.

SENDAK: You know, I have to tell you something.

GROSS: Go ahead.

SENDAK: You are the only person I have ever dealt with in terms of being interviewed or talking to who brings this out in me. There’s something very unique and special in you, which I so trust. When I heard that you were going to interview me or that you wanted to, I was really, really pleased.

GROSS: Well, I’m really glad we got the chance to speak because when I heard you had a book coming out I thought what a good excuse…

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: …to call up Maurice Sendak and have a chat.

SENDAK: Yes, that’s what we always do, isn’t it?

GROSS: Yeah. It is.

SENDAK: That’s what we’ve always done.

GROSS: It is.

SENDAK: Thank God we’re still around to do it.

GROSS: Yes.

SENDAK: And almost certainly, I’ll go before you go, so I won’t have to miss you.

GROSS: Oh, God what a…

SENDAK: And I don’t know whether I’ll do another book or not. I might. It doesn’t matter. I’m a happy old man. But I will cry my way all the way to the grave.

GROSS: Well, I’m so glad you have a new book. I’m really glad we had a chance to talk.

SENDAK: I am too.

GROSS: And I wish you all good things.

SENDAK: I wish you all good things. Live your life, live your life, live your life.

You can go here to find “the best of fresh air 2011.” It’s so easy to download these interviews for free, or subscribe to podcasts, and play them on your iPod at your convenience — at the gym, on a walk in the neighborhood, wherever. Again, it’s just incredible that we have these resources available to us. It another reason why it’s so important to value, and Support Public Radio.

Now I think I’m going to find a window and look at some trees, and take time to see how beautiful they are.

Happy 2012, folks.

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Category: Around the Web, Interviews & Appreciations / Tags: , , , , , ,

The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers

December 15, 2011 / / No comments

I’ve been enjoying Linda Perlstein’s wonderful book, Not Much Just Chillin’: The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers, which you might recall from a previous post, here.

I’m not really interested in conjuring up a new review for it, since most of it has already been said. For example, from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Perlstein’s interpretation of what’s going on inside [middle schoolers] hormone-charged world is information every educator and parent should have . . . . A fascinating and important book.”

But as a writer, as someone who finds this stuff useful — applicable, insightful, helpful, necessary — I just want to say: Thank you, Linda Perlstein, great job. Very impressive, not only the detailed, intimate research, but somehow organizing that mound of raw data, as it were, into such digestible (and entertaining) form.

I’ve been working on a book about middle schoolers, seventh-graders to be precise, and at the same time sharing a house with a seventh-grader of my own. This book feeds and informs that work. So as always, I’m reading it with pen in hand, underlining, starring, writing in the margins, endlessly fascinated, sympathetic, horrified, amused, saddened. Such an age of change and uncertainty.

I share the above as an example of my marginalia. I nodded during that passage, because it exactly echoed the central theme of my 2008 book, Along Came Spider.

Anyway, here’s another brief passage I loved. Perlstein is writing about Jackie Taylor, a seventh-grader, her inner thoughts and musings:

If there were a giant question box in the sky, to which you could submit any query without fear of embarrassment, Jackie would ask two things: How do you make out? and What happens after you die?

There it is in a nutshell, don’t you think?

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Category: Along Came Spider, Interviews & Appreciations, the writing process / Tags: , , , , ,

Confession: I Finally Got Around to Reading “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier

December 13, 2011 / / No comments

–

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

––

I’m not a ticker by nature. You know tickers, right, those bird-watchers who have the list in their back pockets, and are all too delighted at each new sighting to check another one off the list. Yellow warbler, good, that’s done.

I worry about those people. I sit up at night, fretting over the shallowness of that experience. Is that all they want, I agonize, just to check it off and be done with it?

I suspect that some readers are the same way. Read it, read it, read it. Done, done, done. What’s next?

Where’s the reflection? When did it become a race?

Better to read one book well, and deeply, than to race through a dozen.

That said, it felt good to finally get around to reading Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, the book that rekindles the question, “Do I dare disturb the universe?”

By the way, you know where that quote’s from, right? Only one of the greatest poems ever.

I thought The Chocolate War was brilliant, expertly written, full of youthful rebellion, combativeness, anger, sorrow, energy, brutality — and still timely today. A stunner, frankly. There are not many times when I feel I could have written someone else’s book, and it would be misguided and presumptuous for me to say that here, but I did feel a kinship with Cormier. I understood him down to my bones, recognized his choices, knew exactly what he was trying to achieve.

Cormier’s book is darkly beautiful, the characters vividly drawn, sharp and jagged. There’s the cold manipulation of Archie Costello, the puppet-master. Jerry’s confusion and inner conflict, his unresolved emotions, the way events took on a life of their own beyond any decision or intentionality. And all that catholic school stuff, yes, I remembered that,  too. The 70s were my era, and the tone of this book rang clear and true. Cormier got it all right. The novel’s themes are closely connected to my own book, Bystander, but Cormier goes deeper, darker, older. If Bystander is right for middle school — a somewhat gentle introduction to bullying, a story that peers over the precipice but never makes that leap into the void — then The Chocolate War goes a step or two beyond, grades 8/9-up. It takes you into the black. Where I stopped short, by design, Cormier plunges bravely onward.

Stop it, stop it. But nobody heard. His voice was lost in the thunder of screaming voices, voices calling for the kill . . . kill him, kill him. Goober watched helplessly as Jerry finally sank to the stage, bloody, opened mouth, sucking for air, eyes unfocused, flesh swollen. His body was poised for a moment like some wounded animal and then he collapsed like a hunk of meat cut loose from a butcher’s hook.

On a different note, in my upcoming book, Before You Go, the main character, Jude, is a runner. I had to think about that, and describe his running, here and there, nothing much. A metaphor, for sure, alluding to deeper themes, but also something as concrete and specific as sneakers on the sidewalk.

Well, here’s a paragraph from The Chocolate War. A quick description of a minor character, Goober, who likes to run. Want to read a great passage?

The Goober was beautiful when he ran. His long arms and legs moved flowingly and flawlessly, his body floating as if his feet weren’t touching the ground. When he ran, he forgot about his acne and his awkwardness and the shyness that paralyzed him when a girl looked his way. Even his thoughts became sharper, and things were simple and uncomplicated — he could solve math problems when he ran or memorize football play patterns. Often he rose early in the morning, before anyone else, and poured himself liquid through the sunrise streets, and everything seemed beautiful, everything in its proper orbit, nothing impossible, the entire world attainable.

All I can add to that is, wow. Just slack-jawed wow. Poured himself liquid through the sunrise streets. Liquid! The portrait of Goober  goes on for another remarkable paragraph, where Cormier turns the phrase, “The neighbors would see him waterfalling down High Street . . .”

Waterfalling! The noun as verb, the image startling and yet crystal clear, natural not forced. Waterfalling down High Street.

Run, Goober, run. See Goober run. Liquid, waterfalling.

Damn. That’s great writing.

ADDENDUM:

A librarian friend chimed in with this comment, via email:

Saw on your blog that you finally read The Chocolate War.  Amazing book, huh?  It gets banned EACH AND EVERY year, as you can probably imagine, for being – and I quote from some of the language in the bans and challenges – “pornographic,” for foul language, for its “portrayal of violence and degradation of schools and teachers,” for its “blasphemy” and because it is “ humanistic and destructive of religious and moral beliefs and of national spirit.”  One challenge, in a Georgia high school, cited “ I don’t see anything educational about that book.  If they ever send a book like that home with one of my daughters again I will personally burn it and throw the ashes on the principal’s desk.”  And my favorite, from someone who wanted to ban it because the ending was…get this…too pessimistic.

A book like that, you just HAVE to read.

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Category: Bullying, Bystander, Interviews & Appreciations / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Picture Book Pledge

December 2, 2011 / / One comment

I discovered this great post from The Arts Room blog, where they are taking their 2nd Annual Picture Book Pledge just in time for the holidays.

Please follow the link above to read about the pledge, find some book recommendations, and see a charming video about the diabolically clever new picture book, Press Here, by Herve Tullet.

Well done, Arts Room! And you too, Monsieur Tullet.

Along those lines, my friend, illustrator Matthew Cordell, has been banging on a similar drum. But Matt’s drum, “A Children’s Book Challenge,” is on Facebook. Because he’s sooo New Media.

You can get to it by clicking like a madman here. Be sure to click the “like” button when you arrive.

By the way, and seriously, Matt is amazing — and so productive that I want to punch him in the face. (But in the nicest, sweetest way possible.) Just look at this list of titles — the guy doesn’t sleep! It’s especially great that Matt is now writing some of his own books. Here’s an upcoming one (January 2012) I’m particularly excited about.

Matt blogged on this topic in a post titled, “Reawaken Your Love for the Picture Book”:

The children’s picture book is not doing so well. People aren’t buying it like they should. I don’t have all the facts and numbers (I’m not that guy), but I know enough to tell you that. Maybe it’s because of tough economic times. Maybe it’s because of e-bookery or general gadget-y (short attention span) distractions. Maybe it’s because parents aren’t reading to their kids enough. Maybe it’s because education is accelerating young readers at a newer, faster pace, and rushing them over the picture book form. Maybe it’s because it’s been forgotten how important, irreplaceable, and (when stars align) how spiritual the picture book experience is to both children and adults.

A couple of paragraphs later, Matt issued this challenge (which is funny to me, because Matt is such not an in-your-face, “issue a challenge” kind of guy):

This is my challenge to you, dear readers. Go into a book store (not a website, but a store with a roof, walls, people, books you can hold and browse over) and spend some time in the children’s book section. Find something incredible (it ain’t hard). Then, when you’re all filled up, buy just one picture book. And in a week’s time, repeat. Buy one picture book a week for your kid(s), some other kid(s) you love, or for yourself or some other grown-up you love. I can identify that it’s hard to get, at first, but adults can also enjoy reading picture books. And if you absolutely can’t swallow that concept, you can’t escape appreciating them for the amazing artwork alone. It’s like buying amazing art that can sit on your coffee table (or wherever you keep your favorite books with your favorite images) for, like, 16 bucks or whatever. Someone you know needs more picture books in her/his/their life/lives. You need to experience, again, what you loved when you read picture books as a kid.

Lastly, in the spirit of sharing, here’s the most recent picture book I purchased. I discovered it on a school visit to my native Long Island and immediately thought — and upon closer inspection, still think — that this is a perfect picture book. Seriously. It’s flawless. And I don’t say that about many picture books.

Wait, whoops . . .

You know, I’ve never much cared for Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go, which has become the knee-jerk graduation present for every kid in America. My recommendation: give that graduate The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, and encourage him to make his mark on the world.

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Category: Around the Web, Interviews & Appreciations / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’d Follow Joan Didion’s Mind Whatever It Roams

November 21, 2011 / / 3 comments

I just read Joan Didion’s new book, Blue Nights.

She’s just an amazing writer, so precise. I’d follow her mind anywhere. And this book is particularly remarkable, not only for the content, but for the style — the texture of the thought as much as the thoughts themselves, if the two can separated. Brief and fractured, at times clear and direct and yet elusive, slippery, the book takes on the qualities of a prose poem.

It struck me that Didion in this book writes as an elderly woman in her late 70’s, from that specific place, the way her thoughts (and sentences) keep circling back, almost forgetful, picking up dropped threads, weaving them into loose patterns, drifting back again, and plunging forward as if reluctantly, yet determined to arrive . . . at something. There’s a frailty here, the uncertainty of any old brittle-boned body, picking a cautious path down the sidewalk, fearful of losing her balance, falling. Reading it, I thought of my own mother, age 85 or 6, who knows anymore, and the new palpable fear she experiences stepping off a curb, walking to the mailbox, wondering when gravity will be her undoing. And yet out into this perilous world she bravely steps.

Two things:

First, look at this photograph, the peculiar pose, that thin right arm, hand rested on her right shoulder, and that clear-eyed gaze. What an intimate photograph by Anthony Dunne.

Second, let us now marvel, and reread over and again as we gape with admiration and open-jawed awe at the punctuation, pace, and mastery of writer Joan Didion (pp. 140-141, Blue Nights):

—–And yet:

—–And still:

—–Despite all evidence:

—–Despite recognizing that my skin and my hair and even my cognition are all reliant on the estrogen I no longer have:

—–Despite recognizing that I will not again wear the red suede sandals with the four-inch heels and despite recognizing that the gold hoop earrings and the black cashmere leggings and the enameled beads no longer exactly apply:

—–Despite recognizing that for a woman my age even to note such details of appearance will be contrued by many as a manifestation of misplaced vanity:

—–Despite all that:

—–Nonetheless:

—–That being seventy-five could present as a significantly altered situation, an altogether different “it,” did not until recently occur to me.

Here’s an earlier photo, similarly shielded, creating an interesting echo. Which brings me to the third thing: I’d love to have lunch with this woman, just sit at the same table, talk. Hey, a guy can dream.

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Category: Interviews & Appreciations, Readings, the writing process / Tags: , , , , ,
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