Forget the Honey Badger. Maurice Sendak don't care.
Over the past two nights, Stephen Colbert released his two-part interview with the Where the Wild Things Are author and let's just say the whole thing is excellent and well worth watching.
While there's plenty of silliness (Colbert makes some creative, uh, "edits" to In the Night Kitchen), the interview also hits on serious topics ranging from society's treatment of children (who Sendak says he doesn't particularly like) to the gloomy rule of thumb that the worse something is the more likely it is to sell. (Which is good news for the children's-book industry.)
Sendak is wonderfully ornery throughout and, even when Colbert goes into high-gear righteous windbag mode, he gives as good as he gets. At eighty-three, the National Book Award-winner is incisive and wickedly funny, and you get the sense of an artist with a bracingly critical mind who simply doesn't edit his thoughts. The whole thing winds up with a drawing lesson and some marker sniffing, and it's a joy to watch Sendak actively not giving a damn.
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