Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context

by Golan Y. Moskowitz

Wild Visionary reconsiders Maurice Sendak's life and work in the context of his experience as a Jewish gay man. Maurice (Moishe) Bernard Sendak (1928-2012) was a fierce, romantic, and shockingly funny truth seeker who intervened in modern literature and culture. Raising the stakes of children's books, Sendak painted childhood with the dark realism and wild imagination of his own sensitive inner child, drawing on the queer and Yiddish sensibilities that shaped his singular voice.

Interweaving literary biography and cultural history, Golan Y. Moskowitz follows Sendak from his parents' Brooklyn home to spaces of creative growth and artistic vision--from neighborhood movie palaces to Hell's Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Fire Island, and the Connecticut country home he shared with Eugene Glynn, his partner of more than fifty years. Further, he analyzes Sendak's investment in the figure of the endangered child in symbolic relation to collective touchstones that impacted the artist's perspective--the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the AIDS crisis. Through a deep exploration of Sendak's picture books, interviews, and previously unstudied personal correspondence, Wild Visionary offers a sensitive portrait of the most beloved and enchanting picture-book artist of our time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Judaism

312 pages, Paperback

Published December 8, 2020

Reviews

[Patricia Lane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must confess I probably would not have picked this up if not for my Gardner Museum book group; we read it because Sendak's designs for theater, opera, and dance will be featured in a special exhibition this summer. It's very dense and academic and can be a bit slow-going at times. That said, the author draws from a wide variety of sources and the insights into Sendak's family background, upbringing as a Jewish child in Brooklyn during and after WWII, adult life as a closeted gay man, and his unique and intense appreciation of children's capacity for fantasy as a way of surviving difficult traumatic circumstances, were eye-opening, to say the least. There is also an interesting look at the history of children's publishing in the U.S. and how it has evolved. When I return this to the library I plan to spend time in the children's section reading and examining all of Sendak's work again with new appreciation!

[MJ Halberstadt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned so much, about history and Judaism and America and, of course, Sendak... but I also feel invited, by this book, to think more deeply about the present, and about the roles sexuality and race play in the formation of culture, art, and identity. I starred and underlined the paragraph that bridges pages 170-171 -- which is at the heart of what I read from the text.

[Spencer :3]

dnf’d at pg. 66 (ignore this, this is a reminder for if I want to pick this up again)