Here’s a little nugget slipped into today’s NYT‘s interview with Maurice Sendak, who is celebrating his 80th birthday this Monday at a Gala at the 92nd St Y: he’s gay!

His fascination with the [Lindberg] kidnapping, like many of the other details of his life, has been repeated endlessly over the years in the hundreds of interviews he has given. Was there anything he had never been asked? He paused for a few moments and answered, “Well, that I’m gay.”

“I just didn’t think it was anybody’s business,” Mr. Sendak added. He lived with Eugene Glynn, a psychoanalyst, for 50 years before Dr. Glynn’s death in May 2007. He never told his parents: “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.”