Wild Things...

I finally finished reading Wild Things by Dave Eggers the other night. Dave Eggers is responsible for writing the screen play for Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are, and Wild Things is essentially an extension of that screen play. There are moments in Wild Things where Max makes different decisions than Max in the movie and things play out a little differently. I like how Eggers explains it in the Acknowledgements at the end of the book
"I found other pathways...and generally added my own interpretations to the story of Max. The children's book Max is, after all, a version of Maurice, and the movie Max is a version of Spike. The Max of this book, then, is some combination of Maurice's Max, Spike's Max, and the Max of my own boyhood."
It's put so well, and makes so much sense. Each of the Wild Things is a little bit of Max's psyche with fur and teeth, and each and every one of us has a Max in them. Max takes us back to what it is like to be a child, at once so sure of yourself, but a second later completely crushed. Parts of you that want to be gentle, while other parts just want to destroy everything in sight. The book, as with the movie, was touching, and a little heartbreaking, watching Max come to terms with his Wild Things, and then leave them, lovingly behind.