Wild Visionary

Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context

Golan Y. Moskowitz

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781503614086, 9781503613812
• eBook ISBN: 9781503614093
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria ebraica

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Series Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: From Limbo to Childhood
• 1. Where the Wild Things Acculturate: Roots and Wings in Interwar Brooklyn
• 2. Love in a Dangerous Landscape: Queer Kinship and Survival
• 3. Surviving the American Dream: Early Childhood as Queer Lens at Midcentury
• 4. “Milk in the Batter” and Controversy in the Making: “Camp,” Stigma, and Public Spotlight in the Era of Social Liberation
• 5. Inside Out: Processing the AIDS Crisis and Holocaust Memory Through the Romantic Child
• Conclusion: A Garden on the Edge of the World
• Appendix: Timeline of Selected Life Events, Works, and Influences
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Series List