Book Beat; 88

We're talking about a book called In The Night Kitchen. Which is one of a series of very fine children's books done by Maurice Sendak the book is published by Harper and Row and we would back Mr. Sendak in just a moment. This is a book each week introducing you to leading authors and critics. This program is made possible in part by the National Book Committee and the American Booksellers Association. Your host is Robert Crumb a daily columnist for The Chicago Tribune and a contributing editor of The Sunday Literary Supplement of the Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post where he was a bachelor get into the business of doing books for children. I don't know. It just it just so happens in this. So one thing I always wanted to do and even when I was a child I wanted books for children. Really. Yeah. And it really is the only thing I can do. Thank heavens that's what I'm doing as an adult. And it really isn't for children. I don't preconceive a child audience it's like for me you know like almost any writer or every writer writes for himself or

does for himself these are done for me. And as it happens children tend to read them more than adults do. And if they like them fine and if they don't. When did you start doing books for children when you were on. Yes I was illustrating books I was very young with my brother Jack who was also a writer of books for children so I began professionally when I was about 21 and been doing it ever since. I'm done. Well I've illustrated over 60 books. And I've written and illustrated about 10 books I think because you got the call account for where the Wild Things Are. Yes I was in 63 63. How much is it. Oh helps tremendously. I guess that's the most prestigious certainly chilling writing right. Well it puts you on the map so yeah I mean a lot of people thought I had just in my store had arisen in the firmament with the wild things and how fortunate I was to have had it with my first book.

When they were horrified to hear that I was rated about 50 bucks or more at that point. But it's very important and it brings it to the attention of a lot more people. And I was I was lucky because often one doesn't win an award for a book one thinks is good. Yeah I like the wild things it's a good book and there's great pleasure in having got to call the God for it. Well I would think it would scare children in a nice way in the delight because kids love to be scared. Yeah. Well that's the whole idea is that kids do look to be scared. And the ones who are afraid to give this book to kids because it might scare them have no idea of the pleasure children get through this and of course it isn't really scary. I mean if kids go through the book and they watch the hero and he's obviously very cool about the whole thing. And I don't know of a child who's been frightened by I know a lot of the adults who've been frightened by. Really. Oh yeah yeah yeah they pretend I think the kids yeah. And I say well I don't know if I should give this to Little John it's a little sad because it's like. I'd like to show where the Wild Things Are Just for fun because we've been

talking about frightening. And the kind of friendly fun or anything so friendly grotesques. They're big boobs actually. Yeah. Would you get the idea for these particular animals. Well I don't know they I mean they just sort of. Spring to mind but. As time goes by I see all kinds of things in them like my my relatives in one form or another. And largely I think this is the idea that that kids often have as children when you're very small and then somebody council house my uncle or aunt. Yeah and they come swooping down on you and you see these enormous heads which are enormous when you're a child and they say oh I'm going to eat you up which is an affectionate term and they twist your jokes like don't want to stand the pain and then I think children tend often to feel I mean are these reasonable human beings and will they really eat me. And all you see are these bloodshot eyes and faggy teeth and gold in the mouth and. And I think the wow things are kind of recall of what addles will look like if there's another one just show one more here's another one which shows of course to.

Your little. Boy writings one of them. Surely. But you know what you know they could in a pinch I guess but he tends to control them all through the book. After all it's his book it's his dream it's his fantasy he can't do what he wants you know. Well it's a wonderful and wonderful book and I thought it was very discerning of the Caldicott people to give the award for it. In the Night Kitchen you've had a little complaints I think from my brands because of course the little boy wakes up and. And has this fantasy but you show him nude you know and this offended apparently some of our stuff here and I write. I believe so. Do you really get a wide reaction from this. Well I was surprised. Not really wide reaction but some people didn't verbalize it but I knew this was what was causing them some amount of distress and it surprised me. I honestly didn't know. I believe it is the first book in this country that has frontal nudity. I didn't intend it to be that.

I wasn't setting out to you know make a breakthrough of any kind and I was surprised because it is a child and of course children and children have no hang ups about you know nothing offensive but when in doing a book for children have to remember all the grown up hang ups so this wasn't a real problem in the book but there were there were some complaints about you know well let's thing really as to why I did it I mean as though it were a purposeless thing and as far as I'm concerned the fact that he's having a fantasy which is very. Big and meaningful to him he has to offer himself up to it entirely and to do that to do it honestly and truthfully he had to be naked and simple as that. Yeah when you're showing a course in the. I guess he's sitting here I know he's falling into a bowl of dough at that point. Yeah. Yeah. And he's happy. Sure. But when you get the idea for the show you know what do you get your ideas and lets you have dreams.

Yeah I have lots of dreams but I don't recall him anymore than most people do. Now this is an old idea this might be like a 10 year old idea of some kid falling through a night City which is Manhattan of course and being baked almost baked. It's a very old idea and I've never been able to pull together isn't it just springs to mind. Boom and then you get out paper Illustrated. It's a fantasy and the truth of the fantasy takes a long time till it works itself out of the unconscious into the creative head or whatever you want to call it. And it took about I guess nearly 10 years roughly before the idea fell together in such a way that I knew it was good and I loved it and I wanted to run a gel was you know what reaction you get from kids. Well on this this is this is new so I haven't had too many reactions I want to go into but the wild things as wild reactions I mean I get tons of mail from children and they draw their own wild things and they invent stories to go with it. Their stories are much more horrific than mine because in their versions he often gets eaten or Max eats them and you get these very bloody

drawings from kids. But they did they genuinely seem to turn out with the book and they enjoy it a lot. And I've just begun to get mail in the kitchen which is nice the kids are just writing in here and it's a relief to hear from them you wait for that. You really do. And a lot as I said previously I don't write for them especially I don't consciously think of them when the book is out it is their book and their perceptive audience and they're bored easily and they and they and they hate easily in terms of book. And if they don't like it they they tell you and you know very quickly what kind don't they like what sort of thing don't they like. I think they hate being condescended to by adults I mean they know so much. They really do. And it must be very tiresome for them to hide all the things they know from their parents and grown up friends around the house because grownups will assume that they don't know certain things. And the kids do but they know it scares their parents for them to tell them how much they know and then they get these books which pretend to them that they don't know what they know. And it must be

terribly boring and tedious to be treated in this way as if you were a kid as if you were some dumb kid when they know when they've suffered and they've heard it and they felt it. And it's rough being small you can get mad and you can hate everybody in the house but you can't leave because kids are very pragmatic and smart at the same time if you leave who's going to feed you. So hang around for a while. Tell yourself you're going to ball game next day you have to make it and it'll be alright in a while anyway. Well you obviously are. It seems obvious to me have a have a chance imagination which is never left you which is great because I think so many adults. As kids they were very promising. And they got to be adults and they became very stodgy and run of the mill and useless. Well that said I mean like Blake said I can paraphrase and exactly but the best part of us as adults is the part of us that is still the child in intact and certainly Blake was capable of bringing out alive in himself whenever he wanted to. Hopefully I can do something like that when I am working on a book I do go into another dimension I

do. I can't recall incidents of my childhood but I recall emotional states of my childhood and certain smells would conjure up things and when I'm working I can really be there. I really can be there and I have a wonderful time and then it's hard to kind of drag so back into being 42 again. Takes a long time to get there. Well have you been drawing long enough now I guess you have to show that. The children who read your early books are now giving them to their children. Yes indeed that's there in college the usual thing for a for a first edition of the book. Yes it does go on and on. Which is very nice but they are in college and they're married I have kids who wrote to me when I wrote my first book in 57. And they now have children of their own and I feel as though I don't have children I've brought up a generation of kids and they're pretty fine kids. I like them. You have nephews and nieces. I have a nephew and he's in there to try out ideas on them or no. And I do use them.

I've used them as models and you know I've stolen things out of their heads things they've said that I've put down. And of course they've had to read and look at ad nauseum all the works of their uncle which has been tiresome to watch agree for them but I think they're pretty proud and they turned out pretty well. Saw the other day by a little girl eight and a half and remind me I'll send you a copy maybe you could steal something of that because. She walk in the woods and finds a potion probably lost by some witch she says POS a joint and she takes a shot speaking of her mother who turns it into a succession of animals and finally when she gets to be a goat she eats the tables and chairs. Little girl doesn't like this very well so she gives her drink of coke. Which straightens her out which is good I like this kid. And then the mother said What happened to the table and chairs in the last line is you wait the mom I'll explain that to you later or you know kids do write great stories I get a lot of them and they're very inventive and you wonder why they publish you know. Yeah they really should.

Well occasionally sure does get them together you know because they have a kind of spontaneous ingenuity and they don't get hung up on plots or any silly things like that they just go from one thing. Yeah. Do illustrators in this country bear much resemblance in style and seemed illustrators all over the world generally speaking yes. Because a lot of the influences the illustrators in this country came from European and we didn't have anything here originally. And England was the golden country for book illustrations in the 40s and 50s and 60s especially in Germany and Switzerland in 1950 so our styles really are combinations of European styles and influences. I think largely We leads now and we turn out more books and graphically they're probably superior in many ways to what's going on in the rest of the world and in the old I'm straight as you like would you like art rock comparisons now other agonise very very beautiful illustrator and technically he's a master but I find of extremely boring so much life in them.

Now well I mean he will look the same whether he can be illustrating Hans Christian Andersen grammar whatever. He's always author raconteur the charge of the Light Brigade I mean it makes no difference and he just coolly walks in and out of one book after another and it's very un exciting. He's predictable all the time and the great fun in illustrating a book is you turn into whatever is written the book if you've collaborated with somebody. The great fun is to become. I be saying Who have you happened to be collaborating with. And turn into that person and make drawings that a suitable only to that book and that stylistically fit only with that book and then dump the style. So your style varies very much then. Yeah I believe in that and dumping stuff. Well they certainly do it where the Wild Things Are and in the Night Kitchen if you gave them to someone who did head to New York instead of the same man do these inclination would be to say no. Yeah it's very consciously done. And I mean that I don't want repeats. It's not just not to repeat for the sake of not repeating but because no two books of the saying there's no chance you'll get a split personality battles at some doing that's hopelessly been accomplished a

lot given up being concerned about that. Shel Silverstein is one of my favorite host. I know shell Well like you he's a very good artist Lafcadio the liner shot back and. The Wishing trees of the world and that what he did on the animals the measuring animals don't bump the gloom you know. He reminds me a little of you in the wild things in the way he had magic things and I think it's a challenge mind also. He's that kind of person too. How many illustrators children's illustrators either children's book illustrators either in the country who can make a living. Full time. I don't know if I can answer that well because I really don't know I think I mean among the friends I have my colleagues do well they're only illustrating books for children. I mean to be as many as 100 for example. I would be guessing and would be guessing I really don't know. Strikes me as a very unless you happen to hit the top plate to the top. Which of course is a beautiful place to be.

Seems to be a rather precarious way to well what's great also that so many of these books go into libraries and go into libraries forever and ever and ever. Unlike a grown up book which is a bestseller or whatever and then. It's gone after a certain amount of time a children's book will if it's a good children's book will stay around for decades for literally decades while you're still in print. I think with the exception of two or three they're all still in print these ones you did all by yourself or with the ones that I worked with other people and all the tools are in print. Yeah you know it is amazing. Yes it's a long list it's a good backless then it just goes on and on and it's extraordinary. You mentioned Isaac Bashevis Singer. One other people have you collaborated with Randall Jerrell. Only two books of the Randall Gerald two of the best books written for children. I think he was a superb man to work with died in that traffic accident yes it was really tragic. He was a young man and but happily he there was a third story which he'd written which was found after his death it's complete and I will be illustrating that eventually. Ruth Krauss it was an early

collaborator of mine and the superb children's book writer Elsa Minarik wrote the little Bast Henri's o variety of people. I've had good luck with the people I work with. They've really been great and I like close collaborating I like talking it over very quickly. I mean that's the fun of it. You know climbing inside their heads you know when you let them influence you then oh yeah oh yeah well you know there is a stopping point you know where I want to hear everything they feel about their books but they mustn't tell me what to draw. I mean they must assume that from our discussions I will have called what's important. Yeah. And if I'm good I'm going to get it in their book. But that's where it's never fail. I mean who hasn't. No but I mean permanently on a book you can't illustrate that book. I've done books which I've regretted illustrating But I mean I've never had one that you couldn't illustrate that the author said they don't like it or the publisher then I go you said they don't like it. No it usually has been a book that I've done and it was acceptable.

I may have been uneasy about it you know doubtful. And then when it was published and time will go by and I will I will hate it with a ferocity and that my instinct at the time was wobbly and it speaks for itself in the books things what formal training did you have did you go to our school. I went to high school I didn't want to go there. College are very eager to get out and work and I did immediately after high school I worked for comic book houses and display houses. But the only formal training I did have was at the Art Students League for about three years. And that was more fun than unschooling. I keep talking about yeah I had John growth who was a very good art teacher at school and Domi and Goya which were who really my big art teachers. I mean studying composition. And English illustrator so it was it was easy training I enjoyed it and and I didn't feel I was going to school which I hated like rat poison.

John showed me around Paris once during the war he was a workhorse more artist he was a war correspondent. He's a wonderful teacher because he doesn't hang anybody up and he just lets them do what they want to do and he just gently prods you in certain directions. But he doesn't force you. And he's the best teacher. He's also a terrific man. Yeah marvelous. Columns A to give to book. And I think it's in was like two years of straight work. Having originated the idea and having to go through with the idea and then illustrating it and then you face the printing thing which is. Dreadful. You have to go through the proofing and getting your pictures to supervise the plates and yeah look at us it was supervised by certainly and there on the spot driving everybody crazy in the printing plant which my publisher Harper is very good and they allow me to get down there and put my 10 cents in. Yeah and that's a lot of doing and that's a lot of hard work to get a book printed. Well well I would think it would be easy to get color that an artist would approve.

That's right and these guys really really try me like they're very subtle those colors and I mean those reds are dirty and those blues are dirty and but I want them dirty I was looking for that and they have to cue in know what you want. And there's lots of going back and forth on a thing like that. The fun of it is when it all happens and you all get this feeling. Brotherhood at the printing plant which I love because I love the smell of it and the feel of it in the sheets coming off the press and all of us but it is very hard work and very frustrating work and you end up pretty much what you want but never happily. Yeah it's never quite what you hoped for. What are you working what various media do you work in. Well usually pen and ink is my favorite. And what I call tempera in the kitchen book I wanted something that the stylist is looking for something that reminded me of what I liked as a kid which was in the 30s which is Mickey Mouse coloring book type things with simple bowl line. So I abandoned the pence of this book and I picked up the magic

marker which is hell to work with. Right. Yeah the Magic Marker really is a most unfriendly instrument but I stuck it I stuck along with it right through the whole book and Evan there attempt it again but it is achieved what I was looking for which was that 30s kind of fat look. I keep calling it fat like I don't know why they had that round child I was a very fat child and I hated it like poison. I was fat so I was about. 11 or 12 I think. But not just fat but fat. You know the photographs are horrendous to look at. I look like a wild thing without the bristles. And you know. What children's books did you like when you were books. Yeah I didn't read children's books. I just I don't even think I knew the existence I remember in school we went to the auditorium on Friday and we were read to by a teacher whose stories and you know and it was a torment because you

had to sit like this. And I require I think this is true only as a screen memory writing about I remember teachers walking up and down the aisles to make sure we sat with hands clasped while we listened to the story and if you sat through the whole thing with dance class you were given. A Mickey Mouse heads a gummed head which was then pasted in the book for good behavior that you sat through the whole thing and it sounds bizarre I know but I do recollect that. I'm surprised you want up like you should grant that I am too and I think maybe the reason I didn't read it outside of school but nobody read books that I knew as a child in Brooklyn we all read comic books and traded comic books and I loved them and I still love comic books. I love the idea of comics. But can you remember why you want to do a children's book when you were a child. I don't know I just want to do books I had a fantastic passion you know for the for the book I was doing comic books or comic strips when I was young in high school at the Comic Strip. But I remember the first book My sister gave me which was the prince and the pauper

who venture a great book to great but it took me a long time to get to read it but because I was so enamored of the book I mean it was so beautiful stood like so high and it had red cloth binding and very shiny cover and its paper WAS SO NICE AND HIS you could almost eat it it was a real kind of sensuous experience. And I recalled that and it must have been a big thing in my life to have had the book because the idea that one could make such a thing or could be involved in the making of such a thing. It was miraculous. Which is why I like bindings and papers and the whole bit. When I was going to say there's one very important thing about books that some publishers somehow managed to overlook this heel of the book and the Larry a book I mean and you just you laid the paper. It's crucial I mean kids love that too if you watch kids they often just will feel surfaces you know there's a paste on the binding they will go around the edge of the paste on it is a it's a journey into a book. I remember it took me a long time to read The Prince of the four I was gratified just by the object itself. And then suddenly as I recall oh it's

to recant you know and then I got through it it was never a favorite story of my particularly but I love the pictures I remember that I still have the collection of children's books. Yes I am a collector and I collect old children's books and contemporary children's books and English illustrated books and German toy books and I have a house full of books and we had Henry James and Melville and I know people. Well some of the I think some of the best artwork in the world is in kid's books. It certainly is true today. Yes I mean there are very few places one can be illustrated now in a way that you can show your talent off tremendously and children's books is one of them. You don't and you do all the work to an advertising law. No not no I mean to occasionally I will if I'm not working on a book and I'm frustrated and nervous and. Someone will call at that moment say we have this I will do it just to draw a picture for a couple of days and calm down. But on the whole I don't like to do it it's not gratifying work especially when it's not anywhere as gratifying as working on a whole book which takes up like a year or more of your time which is wonderful if you like

comic strips How do you like peanuts. So I'm not a Peanuts faster really. I know people are always surprised and I don't so much read comics and I must confess. So it's not it's not so much a Peanuts fan I'm not a comics I mean when they were you know see them really you know straight at any adult books. No I didn't I did gnash book when I was about which was a fluke 25 was a book of his poetry very unsuccessfully done by me that is. And I feel very uneasy doing a book like that. It's not right for me I know it's not right for me. And. I now know what it is I really like to do and I stick with that. Why do you think Innes. I don't know you have a piece of talent. And as you get older you kind of get the geography of it how big it is and what shape it is and you make errors along the way until you know the size of your town and then when you do there's that wonderful feeling of doing just what you know you can do within the confines of your talent.

You get out of it you don't have the language in the right and you know it to prove to yourself that you can do this and that the hell with it I mean you don't want to do it you can't do it and then you learn to love what you do and then you refine within your limits you refine it and refine it and hopefully get better as you get older. So I have no need to do anything but what I'm doing at least consciously I know I may be a big lie because but I'm not conscious of wanting to do what I want as an editor do in a children's book. She works so he works very very closely with you because like in this book in kitchen there are only like three hundred eighty odd words but they have to be very very good words. I mean the kids really have to hear these words and you want them to go back and you want them to memorize them as well and kids love a book they really reciting and get it. And words are crucial and so many people put down the words in a picture book because you know just a few words in lots of glory just illustration but the gorgeous illustration is quite meaningless without words that are meaningful and truthful and essential and poetic. Hopefully Well it's certainly

a partnership. Again the words in the end if you work with a strong editor they will pick out in the end that word is wrong or ought to break the sentence so there is wrong every small thing becomes of crucial importance of the editor is very important in this kind of thing that you get a flow and also a picture book for kids is a trick you really I mean why should any child who tires easily really with any object go through a whole book turning page and you've got to lure them on and tempt them on and the sound of your language. I don't have a copy of that of where the wild things are or in print. I really don't know it's it's a MUST be a hundred thousand and maybe more than that and yeah it's was a kitchen going into another printing it. I don't know it's fairly recent It's been doing extremely well but I don't know if it's gotten over its first print with a mention that well we've been talking with Maurice Sendak about his new book In The Night Kitchen and also about his various other books including Where the Wild Things Are which won him the Colleton award. Bob told me from the Chicago Tribune thank you for being with us I hope we see you again next week and Maurice. Delighted to

see you. Thank you both. Life eventually says in your. Book Pete has been made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is the national educational radio network.