[Literature] I just today read Max at Sea, the excerpt for Dave Eggers’s novel The Wild Things. The novel is based on the movie Where the Wild Things Are, co-written by Eggers and director Spike Jonze, which in turn is based on Maurice Sendak’s children’s book by the same name. Aside from the movie’s trailers, this feature from the New Yorker is our first true glance at how Sendak’s story is being expanded upon.
To be able to read a novel’s worth of words abreast the ten-sentence story we’ve grown up with is interesting much in the same was as reading any novel that has a movie version: the novel allows us to really get into the protagonist’s head. If you didn’t already think the plot seems absurd, this excerpt will validate any assumptions of it being so: “By his rough calculations,” Eggers writes as Max sails further away from civilization than he had hoped, “he had to be at least seven million miles from where he cast off.” Eggers does an exceptionally good job at presenting the story as if to group of Max’s peers: fraught with hyperbole and exaggeration, and with a lot of glee interspersed in between.
Also from the New Yorker is an exclusive interview with Eggers on writing the novel, co-writing the movie and a few of his other projects. An interesting tidbit he sheds on keeping true (and not) to the book when writing the movie:
From the beginning, though, Maurice was clear that he didn’t want the movie or the book to be timid adaptations. He wanted us to feel free to push and pull the original story in new directions.
You may preorder The Wild Things here at McSweeney’s, or its fur-covered edition here. The books release this October.
