Dementie ontwricht de verbeelding van een verhalenverteller

Robert Munsch is in ons taalgebied niet zo bekend, al zijn er wel boeken van hem in vertaling verschenen, o.a. zijn (bijna-)debuut The Paper Bag Princess (1980), hier eerst Prinses Papierzak (Malmberg, 1980) en later De prinses in de papieren zak (Jenny de Jonge, 1995). En Jenny de Jonge, met haar neus voor talent, deed er in 1995 meteen twee titels bij, Davids vader (David's Father, 1983) en Varkens (Pigs, 1992).

Ook Philippe Werck van Clavis merkte hem op en publiceerde in 1984 Mummel Mummel Mummel (Murmel Murmel Murmel, 1982) en veel later, in 2019 bracht Clavis De gigantische koffer (The Enormous Suitcase, 2017) en Wij verhuizen (Moving Day, 2018) uit.

 

Op 14 september jongstleden verscheen in de The New York Times een mooi, lang artikel c.q. interview door Katie Engelhart over & met verhalenverteller Robert Munsch. Verhalenverteller was hij meer dan schrijver. Hij putte zijn inspiratie uit talloze optredens voor kinderen, zowel in zalen als in schoolklassen.

Maar Munsch was een ingewikkelde persoon, had last van bipolaire stoornissen en moest zich twee keer inspannen om uit een alcoholverslaving te komen.

 

En nu, dat is de kern van het artikel, is bij hem dementie vastgesteld. 

 

Once a compulsive reader, Munsch can no longer make it through a book. The problem is not that he can’t remember what happened in the chapter before, but rather that the text itself — the perfectly ordinary prose — seems off. “It’s like when you taste an egg and it doesn’t taste right,” Munsch told me. Also, he’s often too tired to try. Too tired to go outside, even. “My life is shrinking that way.”

“I can feel it going further and further away,” Munsch says, of the way he used to think and work. Dementia and Parkinson’s disease have interrupted what once felt like a limitless supply of new stories. (Foto: Haruka Sakaguchi for The New York Times.)

Onmiddellijk na de diagnose wist Munsch dat hij het onwetende einde niet wou afwachten.

 

Shortly after his diagnosis, Munsch applied for and was approved for “medical assistance in dying,” or physician-assisted death, which was legalized in Canada in 2016. “Hello, Doc — come kill me!” he joked. “How much time do I have? Fifteen seconds!” Munsch watched one of his brothers, a monk, die slowly from Lou Gehrig’s disease, as those around him pushed for more treatment — ostensibly because it was God’s will. “They kept him alive through all these interventions. I thought, Let him die.” 

Munsch doesn’t want to linger that way. He thinks he will choose to go “when I start having real trouble talking and communicating. Then I’ll know.”

But he can’t wait too long because, under Canada’s law, he must be able to actively consent on the day of his death. “I have to pick the moment when I can still ask for it,” Munsch explained. 

The hitch is that nobody can tell him exactly when his capacity to consent will desert him. If he misses his chance, he said, turning to Ann, “you’re stuck with me being a lump.” 

Ann is zijn partner, met wie hij ruim veertig jaar is getrouwd. Lou Gehrig’s disease heet hier ALS.

Munsch aan het verhalen vertellen aan eersteklassers van de St. Denis Catholic School in Toronto, 1991.

 

Nog een citaat, einde interview.

 

Munsch is now at that unsettling, if sometimes brief, stage in the neurodegenerative process in which he is symptomatic but still self-aware. 

This allows him to watch himself lose himself. He wonders if, in a year, he will be “a turnip.” Recently, Munsch’s eldest grandchild, who is 7, asked him if he was sick and if he would die. “Yes,” he answered, because he believes in being honest with children.

 

Een goed en ontroerend interview. 

 

Engelhart, Katie. 'When Dementia Steals the Imagination of a Children’s Book Writer'. The New York Times, 14 september 2025.