{"id":20381,"date":"2011-12-27T13:00:52","date_gmt":"2011-12-27T18:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=20381"},"modified":"2011-12-25T12:49:13","modified_gmt":"2011-12-25T17:49:13","slug":"maurice-sendak-on-bumble-ardy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/27\/maurice-sendak-on-bumble-ardy\/","title":{"rendered":"Maurice Sendak on ‘Bumble-Ardy’"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re out this week, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>

Maurice Sendak. Photo by John Dugdale.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/em>Maurice Sendak is set to publish his first full-production book since <\/em>Outside Over There<\/a> (1981). For the past thirty years, Sendak has been collaborating with other writers, illustrating old texts, designing sets and costumes for opera and ballet productions, creating advertisements and book and magazine covers, and making the occasional HBO cameo as an old-world rabbi. But with <\/em>Bumble-Ardy<\/a>, Sendak is reemerging in the form that he has, since 1963\u2019s <\/em>Where the Wild Things Are<\/a>, come to define: children\u2019<\/em>s stories.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Bumble-Ardy is a pig, raised by an aunt, who is built like a house and who lives in a house that looks like a ruin. This aunt is doing her best with poor Bumble, a child who was orphaned when his parents \u201cgorged and gained weight. \/ And got ate.\u201d That tragic turn of events may have been for the best, as Bumble\u2019s lousy parents never once got around to throwing the boy a birthday party (his birthday is June 10, the same as Sendak\u2019s). So, on his ninth birthday, Bumble secretly invites over terrifying hordes of local swine, who arrive in disguise for a bacchanalia of \u201cbirthday cake and brine.\u201d The party ends in hoggish chaos, in tears and threats of slaughter\u2014and, finally, with a measure of forgiveness. <\/em><\/p>\n

Why the decision to go with a pig? Why not a hedgehog? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always loved pigs: the shape of them, the look of them, and the fact that they are so intelligent. I think I like them more than I like little human boys.\u00a0The prospect of drawing pigs was something I could look forward to, and I needed something to look forward to. This project was done under very difficult circumstances. Somebody very important to me was dying painfully, horribly, slowly, and it leaves you questioning everything. <\/p>\n

You\u2019ve described yourself as a \u201cscavenger,\u201d an artist who studies and draws heavily from past masters. Who were you in dialogue with in this book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nobody. Which, as you said, is unusual for me. It\u2019s a very strange book, in terms of my feelings for it. It came from a deep place. I was intensely involved in the vanity of the parents. I mean, how does the child live with that? I remember I once watched this baby whale separated from its mother. The baby whale is panicked and it looks for its mother among the other whales, and they know it\u2019s not their baby. They turn away from it, and you\u2019re left to wonder, How does the baby live, how does the baby feel? Can\u2019t the others see that he\u2019s one of them? Bumble is an outcast. This was an experiment in what it\u2019s like to feel … deeply rejected.<\/p>\n

The aunt does have love to give the boy, doesn\u2019t she?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yes. And she wants him to love her. But I think children are suspicious, and they have a reason to be. Though the aunt loves Bumble, he refuses to recognize that. I think his little answer to her love is so curt: \u201cYou bet,\u201d he says. Which is an odd and unaffectionate retort to her affection. And yet it was necessary he maintain that slight distance. He\u2019s unsure, he\u2019s unsafe, he\u2019s unconvinced.<\/p>\n

The irony in that last phrase is subtle. Even if there\u2019s some lingering bitterness in it, it isn\u2019t quite the major note of doom, of dreadful longing, that we encounter at the end of, say, Outside<\/em> Over<\/em> There<\/em> or Mili<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, that\u2019s right. That final note here is more guarded, self-protective. And yet there is still a kind of doom. You wonder\u2014well, I<\/em> wonder\u2014Is he going to be all right? I mean, really, is he going to be all right? The orgy he has is a way of testing himself. How much can he resist? How much can he understand? How much can he live through<\/em>?<\/p>\n

In reading Bumble-Ardy<\/em>, I was reminded of that terrifying image from Outside Over There<\/em>, when the infant is being hauled out the window by goblins, replaced by a horrible, uncanny ice decoy, while her older sister looks the other way. Is Bumble another \u201cice baby,\u201d another kind of living stillborn? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t quite thought of it in those terms, but I like that identification. It resembles what actually occurred to me as a child. Terrible things happened and were not explained. My parents were ignorant peasants from the old world. They came here and knew nothing. My life in Brooklyn was in constant danger because of my bad health. There was danger everywhere. The Lindbergh baby, the hundred-million-dollar baby\u2014there we were, potential victims, all of us. Not even wealthy parents could protect their children. So what did kids do? You had to form a kind of fake life, to protect yourself. Because you learn very quickly that parents can\u2019t protect you. It leaves a lurking fear. You never feel safe, never believe, really, that your parents are any safer than you, or could protect you from the unknown.<\/p>\n

And the friends that Bumble-Ardy invites into his aunt\u2019s house aren\u2019t really his friends. They\u2019re in disguise, and he doesn\u2019t even know who they are. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly. They don\u2019t ever look at him. They don\u2019t see each other. You don\u2019t feel as though there\u2019s a connection between him and them. There\u2019s no relationship there. They\u2019re these orgiastic, crazy, fantastical creatures.<\/p>\n

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

Do you think about Bumble now that you\u2019re finished with the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help thinking of Bumble now in light of what I\u2019ve been reading in the newspapers about that kidnapped and murdered Hasidic boy, Leiby Kletzky. I can\u2019t get that grainy news photo out my mind. It\u2019s taken from a street camera. We see him from the back. He has one arm extended out. It\u2019s a very painful little picture because it\u2019s him, you know, it\u2019s him<\/em>. And that little extended arm, saying to the world, Somebody, take my hand. It breaks my heart.<\/p>\n

In the past, you\u2019ve spoken of listening to music while you draw. What were you listening to with Bumble-Ardy<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are certain pieces of music that are always attached to certain books. And there is a logic to my choices, even if I don\u2019t always know it. Here, I chose Verdi. I don\u2019t like early Verdi, and I love very late Verdi. I\u2019m eighty-three. When he was eighty-three, after Aida<\/em>\u2014it\u2019s too bad he didn\u2019t say this\u00a0before<\/em> Aida<\/em>\u2014he said, \u201cEnough already, enough.\u201d \u00a0He said that he was done, finished, kaput.\u00a0And then he met this young man, Boito, composer of Mefistofele<\/em>, who told him, \u201cYou have more in you, old man. You have more in you!\u201d So Boito wrote libretti for Otello<\/em> and Falstaff<\/em>, and, by the time they were done, Verdi was eighty-five or eighty-seven and died. But, in my opinion, those are the two greatest Verdi operas in existence. Those pieces are unbelievably fresh, young, fantastically beautiful.<\/p>\n

I went from Verdi to Schubert, who I\u2019ve largely ignored because of Mozart, who is my great hero. I began to listen to Schubert\u2019s chamber music and I began to realize that this was another dear friend. I could sniff under his music, what was underground. I could sense, like a dog, or like a pig, what was going on. And I fell deeply in love with Schubert\u2019s sonatas and quartets and piano pieces. Schubert is one of the most honest artists I know.<\/p>\n

What kind of hero is Bumble? He\u2019s courageous in a way but he isn\u2019t the King of the Wild Things, and he\u2019s not quite in control of the mayhem. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Bumble is battling with a basic sense of confusion\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t know how old I am.\u201d He gives up when his aunt says, \u201cYou\u2019ve had your party. Never again!\u201d He replies, \u201cI promise, I swear, I won\u2019t ever turn ten.\u201d It\u2019s my favorite line in the whole book. It\u2019s both comical and terrifying. It\u2019s this self-annihilating moment.\u00a0There is a sense that he is frozen. He doesn\u2019t progress.\u00a0But, you see, Bumble is my less mature self.\u00a0He is the little boy who wasn\u2019t sure he\u2019d live, let alone grow up.\u00a0I\u2019m not afraid of annihilation. I\u2019m not afraid of death. But I just want to know more<\/em>. I want to know more before I go.<\/p>\n

Are birthdays important to you? Are birthday parties? <\/strong><\/p>\n

No, not at all. My eighty-third birthday party was supposed to take place in June. Happily, there was this endless storm that had come over the world, and we lost all power and everything went black and nobody could come. I guess that\u2019s what I get for sharing a birthday with dear Bumble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re out this week, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! Maurice Sendak is set to publish his first full-production book since Outside Over There (1981). For the past thirty years, Sendak has been collaborating with other writers, illustrating old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[3695,3694,3687,2029,3692,2981,3691,3697,3689,3696,3688,3693,3690],"class_list":["post-20381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-aida","tag-boito","tag-bumble-ardy","tag-hbo","tag-leiby-kletzky","tag-maurice-sendak","tag-mili","tag-mozart","tag-outside-over-there","tag-schubert","tag-sesame-street","tag-verdi","tag-where-the-wild-things-are"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMaurice Sendak on 'Bumble-Ardy' by Avi Steinberg<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"December 27, 2011 \u2013 We\u2019re out this week, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we\u2019re away. 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We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! 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