Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, discussed Maurice Sendak’s posthumously-published “My Brothers Book” in a column for The New Republic. Spitz writes that while the book is “unintelligible as a story, mostly unoriginal as art, [and] emotionally distant,” it “may send us back to Sendak’s other work with new critical insights.”
Spitz notes that one aspect of Sendak’s life that has not been analyzed is his sexuality; Sendak was gay. “’My Brother’s Book’ offers us a chance to return to Sendak’s prodigious body of complex, fascinating, sometimes troubling work and reexamine it through lenses that have not yet been tried. When an artist’s sexuality, or indeed any other core aspect of his identity, is denied public acceptance and affirmation, that denial cannot but find its way into his work,” Spitz writes.
“Although ‘My Brother’s Book’ is ostensibly an elegy for Sendak’s brother Jack, who died in 1995, Guy may well represent [Sendak’s parter] Glynn as well, who died in 2007. Jack and Guy seem to love each other with an overweening passion. We see them nude or draped in gossamer cloths but minus clearly identifiable male genitalia.” writes Spitz. “The loneliness and occasional anger of Sendak’s protagonists may be another element of his work that suggests the as yet unexamined influence of his sexuality.”
“In a time of growing tolerance, we may anticipate a reconsideration spearheaded by this final work, the one in which Maurice Sendak says his farewell to a life that was not always kind to him,” Spitz concludes.
The piece, “Maurice Sendak’s Sexuality,” appeared online on February 21.
