A whole year since Sendak died

10 or 12 people who were alive when I wrote MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE were not alive to read it. After Sealts died and Hayford was silent and then died and Shneidman died, the great tough-guy encourager was Sendak.

Joyce Deveau Kennedy would have loved reading about herself in the preface.

It was Joyce who planted the notion that Sendak should illustrate Melville's PIERRE.