Credited To The Bard

(Source)

Where The Wild Things Are Gay

Maurice Sendak, author of the beloved children's classic, Where The Wild Things Are, has come out at the age of 80. From an interview in the New York Times:

Was there anything he had never been asked? He paused for a few moments and answered, “Well, that I’m gay.”

“I just didn’t think it was anybody’s business,” Mr. Sendak added. He lived with Eugene Glynn, a psychoanalyst, for 50 years before Dr. Glynn’s death in May 2007. He never told his parents: “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.”

Children protect their parents, Mr. Sendak said. It was like the time he had a heart attack at 39. His mother was dying from cancer in the hospital, and he decided to keep the news to himself, something he now regrets.

A gay artist in New York is not exactly uncommon, but Mr. Sendak said that the idea of a gay man writing children books would have hurt his career when he was in his 20s and 30s.

His latest book is one he started about four years ago, right after Dr. Glynn became sick with lung cancer. The illness and setting up of round-the-clock care in their home were just “so unbelievable,” he explained. Mr. Sendak is mostly finished with it, but he admitted that for the first time, “I feel extremely vulnerable.”

He is afraid — not of death, which is as familiar to him as a child’s teddy bear — but of not being able to finish his work: “I feel like I don’t have a lot of time left.” After Dr. Glynn’s death, Mr. Sendak said he was “still trying to figure out what I’m doing here. I wanted to take his place,” he said. “His death became a demarcation.”

Welcome, Mr. Sendak. And thank you.

Moby Dick Via MTA

There's a new service out of NYC called Daily Lit which will email you chapters of classic novels and famous texts for easy reading via your PDA. If you've got a train or bus commute and you have a Blackberry or similar device, you can catch up on the classics, 1000 words at a time. It's a free service, all you have to provide is your email address and how often you'd like to be sent chapters. If you finish early, you can respond "send next chapter immediately." I'm slogging throught their list looking for something that appeals to me. Sense And Sensibility? Ugh, no thank you. Anna Karenina in 430 parts? Uh, no. It looks like they have about 700 books so far. So much for Brick Breaker and Solitaire. You don't have to be in NYC to use the service, obviously.