Melville's Bookcase

This past spring I walked into the Rosenbach Museum & Library for the first time. The Rosenbach houses many works of literature, including illustrator-author Maurice Sendak’s papers. Others attending a workshop were arriving at the same time and I wandered through the crowd to an impressive bookcase. When the workshop began, it was announced that Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) had died earlier that week. Since I had been on the road, I hadn’t heard the news. The rest of the day took on a feeling of serendipity as I walked through the Sendak exhibit and talked to a curator about the books in the museum’s library.

Later in the day, I learned that the bookcase in the entry had been Herman Melville’s bookcase and a favorite of Maurice Sendak. I stood by the bookcase, just feet from Maurice Sendak’s only mural, and studied the old volumes.

 

Today I was reminded of the book, Dear Genius, and looked up the letter from Ursula Nordstrom to Sendak in 1961. Apparently Sendak had mentioned that he felt Melville had “a lot of furniture” in his books, meaning facts. And, at the time, Sendak felt that his world was “furniture-less.” Nordstrom, the great editor, replied in a prophetic and supportive way.
 

August 21, 1961

To Maurice Sendak 

. . . I loved your long letter and hope it clarified some things for you to write it. Sure, Tolstoy and Melville have a lot of furniture in their books . . .
 

You wrote “my world is furniture-less. It is all feeling” . . . You also wrote “Knowledge is the driving force that puts creative passion to work”—a true statement, and also very well put. But it would include self knowledge for some as well as knowledge of facts for others . . . 
 

You wrote "It would be wonderful to want to believe in God. The aimlessness of living is too insane." That is the creative artist—a penalty of the creative artist—wanting to make order out of chaos. The rest of us plain people just accept disorder (if we even recognize it) and get a bang out of our five beautiful senses, if we're lucky. Well, not making any sense but will send this anyhow . . . . 

From Ursula Nordstrom
 

I remember standing in front of Melville’s bookcase again and again that day last spring. Sendak spent a lifetime finding lost, abandoned furniture to place in the rooms of his illustrations. Self-knowledge and making order out of chaos seems to me to have been the passionate story revealed through his art. He made the world more understandable and orderly, sometimes for children, sometimes for adults. Melville’s bookcase is at home among Sendak’s stories and illustrations.

 

Letter excerpt (page 145) from:

DEAR GENIUS: THE LETTERS OF URSULA NORDSTROM collected and edited by Leonard S. Marcus (HarperCollins, 1998).

Selected books:

NUTSHELL LIBRARY, story and pictures by Maurice Sendak (Harper & Row, 1962). 

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, story and pictures by Maurice Sendak (Harper & Row, 1963). 

IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN, story and pictures by Maurice Sendak (Harper & Row, 1970). 

OUTSIDE OVER THERE, story and pictures by Maurice Sendak (Harper & Row, 1981). 

BRUNDIBAR, retold by Tony Kushner, pictures by Maurice Sendak (Hyperion, 2003). 

HIGGLETY PIGGLETY POP! OR THERE MUST BE MORE TO LIFE, story and pictures by Maurice Sendak (Harper & Row, 1967). 

THE SIGN ON ROSIE’S DOOR, story and pictures by Maurice Sendak (Harper & Row, 1960).

LITTLE CORNER ACTIVITY:

1.    Read The Sign on Rosie’s Door.

2.    Find markers or crayons and construction paper plus string and tape.

3.    Help children make a sign for a door at home using words and/or drawings.

4.    Assist children in making a group sign for a school door.

5.    Encourage dress-up and putting together a musical show.

6.    Invite an audience to enter the door with the sign to see the musical show.