The Wild Things
Dave Eggers
Book adaptations of films are often rushed hack jobs with a shelf-life as short as that of the movie’s run. Not this one.
It all started with Maurice Sendak’s seminal 1963 children’s picture book Where The Wild Things Are, about the adventures of a young boy named Max.
That was adapted into a well-received feature film by director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, 1999), who co-wrote the script with Dave Eggers, author of the feted memoir A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000).
Which brings us to this book, which takes the story in the movie and develops it in different directions. Max here is “some combination of Maurice’s Max, Spike’s Max, and the Max of my own boyhood”, explains Eggers in his acknowledgements.
Happily, all that pedigree has led to a worthy work in the notoriously tricky genre of child-centric fiction. It is often all too easy for writers to be condescending or be guilty of simplifying their protagonists, thoughtlessly equating childhood and childishness.
The best books, however, tap into the rich emotional lives of youngsters and Eggers’ portrayal of seven- year-old Max has the ring of truth about it as the boy struggles with an often confusing world that leaves him feeling powerless.
Dressed down by his mother for deliberately flooding his older sister’s room and frustrated by what he feels to be the injustice of it all, Max dons a wolf costume and sails away to a strange island.
He finds a group of rambunctious giant beasts there and declares to them that he is their king. They could be seen as the id of the psyche made manifest and one of them declares: “We want what we want. We want all the things we want. Oh, and we want no more want.”
Max has to think of a way to satisfy all these desires and live up to his responsibility as king in a chaotic world that is sometimes frightening, sometimes exhilarating and often unpredictable.
It turns out that growing up can be the wildest adventure.
If you like this, read: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle. This 1993 Booker Prize winner looks at the world of Barrytown, north Dublin, through the eyes of its 10-year-old protagonist.
(ST)