A frail child beset by a seemingly endless parade of illnesses, Mr. Sendak was reared, he said afterward, in a world of looming terrors: the Depression; the war; the Holocaust, in which many of his European relatives perished; the seemingly infinite vulnerability of children to danger. The kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932 he experienced as a personal torment: if that fair-haired, blue-eyed princeling could not be kept safe, what certain peril lay in store for him, little Murray Sendak, in his humble apartment in Bensonhurst?

An image from the Lindbergh crime scene — a ladder leaning against the side of a house — would find its way into “Outside Over There,” in which a baby is carried off by goblins.

As Mr. Sendak grew up — lower class, Jewish, gay — he felt permanently shunted to the margins of things. “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy,” he told The New York Times in a 2008 interview. “They never, never, never knew.”

His lifelong melancholia showed in his work, in picture books like “We Are All in the Dumps With Jack and Guy” (HarperCollins, 1993), a parable about homeless children in the age of AIDS. It showed in his habits. He could be dyspeptic and solitary, working in his white clapboard home in the deep Connecticut countryside with only Mozart, Melville, Mickey Mouse and his dogs for company.

It showed in his everyday interactions with people, especially those blind to the seriousness of his enterprise. “A woman came up to me the other day and said, ‘You’re the kiddie-book man!’ ” Mr. Sendak told Vanity Fair last year.“I wanted to kill her.”

But Mr. Sendak could also be warm and forthright, if not quite gregarious. He was a man of ardent enthusiasms — for music, art, literature, argument and the essential rightness of children’s perceptions of the world around them. He was also a mentor to a generation of younger writers and illustrators for children, several of whom, including Arthur Yorinks, Richard Egielski and Paul O. Zelinsky, went on to prominent careers of their own.

Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies at 83

A Puzzle in Pictures: Winogrand in 1960

Well it’s a funny question – it’s a bit like saying do serious painters need to know how to use paint, and for me I would say absolutely.  You must know all the technicalities of your medium, it’s not just expressionist grunting – there are layers and layers behind even the simplest page.  It’s only the tip of the iceberg of a huge linguistic knowledge behind it.  But you should read good books, and I’m a complete intellectual snob about this point.  There’s plenty of magnificent books out there that aren’t crap, and this is how you learn what it’s all about really.

I knew someone who refused to read a single word while they were writing their book because they were afraid of being influenced and becoming generic…

Well perhaps they should have been influenced.  If you’re writing crap then the only way to improve is by being influenced by things that aren’t.

Duncan Fallowell, Book Cornered – Apartamento Issue #09

Adam Gopnik, Facing History: Why we love Camus.

Expreso Ritmico: Cuban album design of the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.