{"id":7104,"date":"2017-02-02T15:08:54","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T15:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/?p=7104"},"modified":"2017-02-02T16:37:22","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T16:37:22","slug":"wild-outside-in-the-night-maurice-sendak-queer-american-jewishness-and-the-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/2017\/02\/02\/wild-outside-in-the-night-maurice-sendak-queer-american-jewishness-and-the-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild, Outside, in the Night: Maurice Sendak, Queer American Jewishness, and the Child"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following guest blog post is by Golan Moskowitz<\/strong>,\u00a0a doctoral candidate at Brandeis University, where he received a joint M.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Women\u2019s and Gender Studies. \u00a0Mr. Moskowitz is the 2016 recipient of the Billie M. Levy Travel and Research Grant, an annual research grant awarded to scholars to encourage use of the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection. \u00a0Mr. Moskowitz\u00a0is also a visual artist with a B.A. in Art from Vassar College.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Children\u2019s books are serious business.\u00a0 So thought the late Maurice Sendak (1928-2012), who believed that the apparent simplicity of the children\u2019s book \u2013 along with children\u2019s talent for intuition and interpretation \u2013 made it an ideal form for burying complex messages. Among the most serious of artists to ever write children\u2019s books, Sendak offered messages about how the wider society might neglect or threaten unusual individuals, but also how those individuals might harness fantasy, animal strength, and improvisation to endure and survive.\u00a0 As a recipient of the Billie M. Levy Travel and Research Grant, I had the privilege of studying several of the collections in Archives and Special Collections, which enriched my understanding of Sendak\u2019s relationships with children\u2019s authors Ruth Krauss (1901-1993) and James Marshall (1942-1992), as well as with children\u2019s literature scholar Francelia Butler (1913-1998). Sendak absorbed much of Krauss\u2019s critical stance toward social conventions of constrained gender and sexuality.\u00a0 He found solidarity with Marshall\u2019s good-natured cynicism and candidly shared some of his controversial intentions and interesting underlying beliefs with Butler.<\/p>\n

Selling over eighty thousand copies by its fifth year in publication, A Hole Is to Dig <\/em>(1952), children\u2019s literature scholar Leonard S. Marcus writes, first established the twenty-four-year-old Sendak as \u201ca talent to reckon with.\u201d[1]<\/a> To write the book, which was published as \u201ca series of definitions reflecting childlike logic (many supplied by children themselves),\u201d[2]<\/a> \"\"<\/a>Krauss studied children at the progressive Bank Street School, collecting definitions offered to her by the toddlers and preschoolers on 3×5-inch index cards.[3]<\/a> She assembled and typed lists of these definitions; some that did not make it to the final version included: the stomach is a \u201cfood factory,\u201d a match is \u201cto light cigarette,\u201d a chimney is \u201cSmoke comes up and Santa Claus comes down,\u201d and a shell is \u201cLobsters \u2013 snap your hand off.\u201d[4]<\/a> The Krauss papers also include hand-written comments on Sendak\u2019s sketches for the book.\u00a0 The author advised against pictures of children sitting on books (to get higher up), as books should not be treated \u201ctoo rough.\u201d\u00a0 She also asked that for the caption, \u201cdogs are to kiss people,\u201d Sendak include among the other children being licked (each by a different dog) \u201cone polygamous child with many dogs.\u201d [5]<\/a><\/p>\n

Krauss\u2019s input sheds additional light on the young Sendak\u2019s forming artistic values.\u00a0 To better access his own vitality and humor, he was learning to revere books as sacred objects while demystifying the dominant, often clich\u00e9d narratives of the social order. [6]<\/a> \u00a0Extraneous doodles in Sendak\u2019s layout sketches for A Hole Is to Dig<\/em> reveal the young artist\u2019s self-liberating impulse during his work on the book. One sketch depicts two nude figures with a relaxed line, one leaning on the other, genitalia exposed.\u00a0 Beside them, a small girl reclines with a dog, kissing the dog on the mouth. [7]<\/a> Such free-flowing sensuality surely helped Sendak resist the self-policing of a closeted gay son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants \u2013 an essential exercise for an artist to strengthen honest expression and resist clich\u00e9. Sendak applied such subversive, child-like flow to the close relationships of his own life, including with \"\"<\/a>Krauss, whom he loved dearly.\u00a0 When he later visited her on her deathbed, he kissed the withering writer on her lips with tongue, eliciting a giggle that emanated the mirth and energy that was sadly fading from her body.[8]<\/a> Sendak might have seen himself as something of a playfully welcomed intruder and an anomaly in the social matrix of heterosexuality \u2013 not belonging, but carving out a relational position for himself with play and affection.\u00a0 One of his unused sketches for A Hole Is to Dig<\/em> depicts a child on his mothers lap with the caption, \u201cMarriage is so your brothers and sisters could get married when they grow up and then you could be the only child.\u201d\u00a0 A comment below reads, \u201cThis needs some \"\"<\/a>rephrasing.\u201d [9]<\/a><\/p>\n

Sendak viewed illustration as a means for illuminating hidden interpretations or expressing his own emotional truth between the lines of the text. He enjoyed the illustrator\u2019s prerogative, for example, in his Hector Protector<\/em> (1965), which enlivens a short, ambiguous rhyme: \u201cHector Protector was dressed all in green; Hector Protector was sent to the Queen. The Queen did not like him, Nor more did the King; So Hector Protector was sent back again.\u201d Sendak\u2019s illustration of the poem creates a face-off between a scandalized, rotund Victorian queen reading Mother Goose and a wild boy, phallus erect in the form of an extended sword, riding on the back of a masculine lion. A serpent tangled around Hector\u2019s sword in the shape of two coiled circles and a lunging head further emphasizes the phallic element (pp.15-16) [image at top]. One young male reader responded to the drawing with a letter to Sendak, asking, \u201cWhen I grow up will mine be as big as Hector\u2019s?\u201d Describing his drawings for this book as a sort of revenge against critics who found his work too explicit for children, Sendak admitted, \u201cI very consciously, obviously used and played with the snake in just those ways. Those pictures are so obvious it is embarrassing.\u201d [10]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Sendak\u2019s dark sense of humor and questioning of social boundaries was shared by artist and writer James Marshall. Sarcasm and morbid jokes helped them protect themselves against the potential pain that could result from clashing so starkly with aspects of mainstream, bourgeois culture. Both artists were gay men in an era that predated mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ people, especially in the field of children\u2019s literature. A handmade birthday book [11]<\/a>\u00a0from Marshall to Sendak brims with delightful snark and suggests a level of solidarity that was rare for the reserved Sendak \u2013 a man who once confessed, \u201cMy rough time comes when [a] book is over and then I have to go to dinner with people and I am expected to go uptown and act like a grown-up at a party.\u201d[12]<\/a>\u00a0Marshall and Sendak, however, much enjoyed their visits with each other.<\/p>\n

Marshall seems to have appreciated the latter\u2019s identification with German high culture, playfully inscribing a copy of one of his books to Sendak \u201cFor Wolfgang<\/span>, Carl<\/span>, Gustav<\/span> Maurice.\u201d He accompanied the inscription with a drawing of a boy blowing a horn, dressed in the German Romantic style of Sendak\u2019s Outside Over There<\/em> (1981). [13]<\/a> Like Sendak\u2019s proclivity for empathetically illustrating pigs, even coming from a culture that treated swine as abject and impure (Bumble-Ardy<\/em>, House of Sixty Fathers<\/em>, Swine Lake<\/em>, etc.), Sendak\u2019s identification with Germany may have reflected his own sense of difference or rejection. Germany and its art were queer love objects for a WWII-era Jewish child of an Eastern European, Yiddish-speaking family \u2013 much of which was destroyed in the Holocaust. Like his homosexuality and his veneration of childhood and artistic pursuits, Sendak\u2019s identification with German culture signified a socially rebellious impulse to sometimes \"\"<\/a>honor his own personal tastes and sensory drives even against the expectations of the wider public and of his family heritage. But as children, LGBTQ people, those resisting acculturation, and others who follow their inner drives understand, Sendak knew early on that integrity to an unusual calling could cost him the privilege of social belonging, even as it offered distinction.\u00a0 An unused panel by Sendak for A Hole Is to Dig <\/em>paired the caption \u201cLonely is to be like a star\u201d with the image of a solitary boy staring up at a star.<\/p>\n

My research at the Dodd Center adds important elements to my dissertation, which explores how Sendak contributed to shifting conceptions of modern childhood in relation to his own boyhood internalization of his immigrant family’s losses in Europe during WWII and the years surrounding it, as well as his \u201cqueer\u201d difference as a gay, physically frail artist. The project examines Sendak\u2019s articulations of how marginalized human beings – including refugees, traumatized individuals, and LGBTQ people – navigate a social order that neglects or threatens them. I am grateful to Melissa Watterworth Batt and Kristin Eshelman for ably administering the Dodd Research Center\u2019s collections, generously facilitating my visit, and making it such a pleasant and productive one.<\/p>\n

-Golan Moskowitz<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Leonard S. Marcus, \u201cChapter I: The Artist and His Work: Fearful Symmetries: Maurice Sendak\u2019s Picture Book Trilogy and the Making of an Artist,\u201d Maurice Sendak: A Celebration of the Artist and His Work<\/em>, ed. Leonard S. Marcus (Abrams, 2013) 18.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Vincent Giroud and Maurice Sendak (curators), Sendak at the Rosenbach<\/em>, exhibition catalog, Rosenbach Museum, April 28-Oct. 30, 1995, 8.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Marcus (2013) 18.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ruth Krauss, list collected from the class of Dorothy Walker, Group G., January 12, 1951. Ruth Krauss Papers, Series 2, Box 8, Folder 261: \u201cA Hole is to Dig Teachers\u2019 Notes, Jan 11-12, 1951,\u201d Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> For unknown reasons, the published drawing does not accommodate this request.\u00a0 Ruth Krauss, letter to Sendak (\u201cThursday,\u201d n.y.), Ruth Krauss Papers, Correspondence to Sendak, Series 1, Box 2, Folder 63. Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Typed definitions from the class of Margaret Jane Tyler, Group F, January 11, 1951, Ruth Krauss Papers, Series 2, Box 8, Folder 261, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Maurice Sendak, layout pencil sketch for A Hole Is to Dig<\/em>, Ruth Krauss Papers, Series 2, Box 8, Folder 270: A Hole is to Dig Layout Sketches by Maurice Sendak, n.d., Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> \u201c\u2018Don’t assume anything\u2019: A Conversation with Maurice Sendak Philip Nel,\u201d 2001, rpt. in Conversations with Maurice Sendak<\/em>, ed. Peter C. Kunze (Jackson: U. Press of Mississippi, 2016) 138.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Ruth Krauss Papers, Series 2, Box 8, Folder 282: \u201cA Hole is to Dig Cover Paste-up Dummy and Copy (Images not used in book), n.d.,\u201d Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Maurice Sendak, Interview with Francelia Butler\u2019s children\u2019s literature class, April 1976, 19. Francelia Butler Papers, Series 2, Box 9, Folder: \u201cSendak, Maurice \u2013 Children\u2019s Literature,\u201d Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a>\u00a0James Marshall, birthday book for Maurice Sendak, Maurice Sendak Collection of James Marshall, Box 2, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Maurice Sendak, Interview with Francelia Butler\u2019s children\u2019s literature class, April 1976, 26. Francelia Butler Papers, Series 2, Box 9, Folder: \u201cSendak, Maurice \u2013 Children\u2019s Literature,\u201d Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> James Marshall inscription to Maurice Sendak in Sendak\u2019s copy of James Marshall, The Stupids Die<\/em> (1981), Maurice Sendak Collection of James Marshall, Box 1, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following guest blog post is by Golan Moskowitz,\u00a0a doctoral candidate at Brandeis University, where he received a joint M.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Women\u2019s and Gender Studies. \u00a0Mr. Moskowitz is the 2016 recipient of the Billie … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[253,3,9],"tags":[373,208],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NKyO-1QA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7104"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7147,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7104\/revisions\/7147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}