For whatever reason, I never read Where the Wild Things Are as a child, or at least don’t remember it. But reading it to my four-year-old son now, answering his questions and seeing Max’s journey to an island of monsters through his eyes, makes me appreciate it in different ways.

Sendak’s book gives you a glimpse of that natural manic depressive inside every small child, and Eggers’ longer novel version fleshes it out even more, in ways that parents of small children can appreciate. Max’s broken home, his divorced, working mother, his rocky relationship with his sister in the novel all cut a much more sympathetic figure than the boy in a wolf suit in the children’s book. And the Wild Things, with their own childlike jealousies, fears, and neuroses reflect and amplify the emotional battle raging inside Max’s head when he runs away.

I watch my son struggle with being a wild thing himself; one minute he’s sweet and funny and creative, and the next he’s running into the walls and hitting his baby sister. Every time he draws me a picture when I’m not feeling well, every time he cries when he’s afraid I’m angry with him, every time he asks my wife to snuggle with him in bed after an exasperating battle to brush his teeth, I see that same war of emotions inside him bubbling to the surface as he seeks our approval and searches for that feeling of stasis that Max so desperately wants. I probably wouldn’t have read either the original or this version the same way if I wasn’t a parent. And if you’ll excuse me now, I need to go hug my kids.

This language of Lego isn’t just something our family has invented; every Lego-building family must have its own vocabulary. And the words they use (mostly invented by the children, not the adults) are likely to be different every time.

I always referred to the pieces by the number of bumpy connectors, then modified them by their width or height (a skinny six or a four block). I just noticed my four-year-old son doing the same thing the other day when we were making a building at the Museum of Science and Industy’s new Lego exhibit.

via kottke

[T]he trailer was and remains to be a revelation. I remember sitting in the theater and seeing it the way I remember seeing full-length films. It all begins so quietly, forest sounds and footsteps. We see Max, in his famous wolf suit, being carried by one of the Wild Things. As if to prepare the audience for the experience that is to come, the Wild Thing says to Max “I really want to show you something.”

… Sure, the film was a letdown, but I didn’t need it. The experience I longed for was fully contained in this little gem. The emotions, the energy, the music, it was all there. The same way a tight little pop song can be more effective and memorable than a lengthy concept album, this trailer captured the spirit of Maurice Sendak’s book in its entirety.

I don’t really have any answers to this any more. I only know that, as I tour and tour about, I keep meeting readers – intelligent, passionate readers who go out of their way to support books. Over the last few years there has been an explosion in literary festivals, readers’ groups and reading series. When the range in your local book shop collapses, your library dumps its stock and your media barely acknowledge your interests, it seems that you don’t, as a reader, give up and stop reading, or just buy the Fast Seller you’re peddled by the only part of the UK’s publishing machinery that’s still functioning – you fight back, you get organised, you dig about for books that you’ll genuinely love, you reach out to others of your kind. Which – as a reader and a writer – I find wonderful and promising …

If that energy and intelligence steps up to the next level of organisation, there could be hope for us. And I need never go on another TV or radio show and find that, however the discussion was described beforehand, what we’re really meant to talk about is how poetry is dead, or the novel is rubbish, or the short story is irrelevant. Fuck that, quite frankly. Really. Fuck that with vigour and from a strange direction. It truly leaves me more than annoyed.

My one experience with chewing tobacco—”chaw” as it was called where I grew up—came on a baseball field. I played American Legion ball in the summers after my junior and senior years of high school. Tobacco was forbidden in the scholastic leagues, but American Legion was a dippin’ and spittin’ free-for-all, so every kid with a taste for the stuff packed a huge wad in his cheek before every game. I didn’t chew or dip myself, but one afternoon while I was sitting on the bench, I let one of my teammates talk me into putting in a plug of Beech Nut. I gnawed on it, rolled it around in my mouth like I knew what I was doing, and practiced spitting into a cup by the dugout fence. Just about the time the novice-tobacco user wave of nausea and dizziness started to hit me, the coach pointed to me and said, “Wood, get ready. You’re pinch hitting.” I struck out on three pitches, the last two looking. I haven’t touched the stuff since.

Every World Series ring since 1922. I’m partial to the 2006 Cardinals ring of course, but the 1973 A’s and 1992-3 Blue Jays are pretty cool too.

via @mattbucher

Essentially, Twitter left a ball and a stick in a field and lurked on the sidelines as its users invented baseball.

He compares this phenomenon to a long distance relationship, where people try to pack in as many wonderful experiences as they can into brief visits, versus marriage, where couples experience small pleasures with each other every day:

Although many long-distance relationships survive, they are difficult to sustain. When you have to travel far to meet your beloved, you want to make every trip a grand and glorious occasion. Usually you don’t fly from one coast to another just to hang out and share downtime and small talk. You go out to eat and to the theater, you make passionate love, and you have intense conversations. You have a lot of thrills, but it’s hard to make it work because in the long run it’s casually spending time together and the routines of daily life that bind two people to each other. And of course, in a long-distance relationship, a lot of the time you’re not together at all. If you really love the other person you’re not consistently happy, even though your peak experiences may be amazing …

If you are happily married, or even somewhat happily married, your internal life will be very rich. You will take all those small events and, in your mind and in the mind of your spouse, weave them together in the form of a deeply satisfying narrative, dirty diapers and all. It won’t always look glorious on the outside, but the internal experience of such a marriage is better than what’s normally possible in a long-distance relationship.

View from the Street, October 30, 2009

West Loop, Chicago

So while I share the excitement over Electric Literature, a new literary journal with plans to distribute its content on the web, to Kindles, through iPhone apps/e-books/audiobooks/videos, and even serialized on Twitter, I have to ask, “Why is that such a groundbreaking business model?” Don’t get me wrong, I wish I had the free time, VC money, and swingin’ Manhattan lifestyle to pull that off, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that people prefer to read on their choice of glowing screen these days. Figuring out ways to deliver quality content through all those channels is just common sense, and paying through the nose to print thousands perfect-bound copies would be the crazy idea. Ventures like Electric Literature and CellStories are just being prudent.