Unsung genius Daniel Pinkwater
So a couple weeks I was out with a special person in my life and we stopped Pegasus Books in Rockridge, a suburb of Oakland. While there I looked at some used books and came across The Education of Robert Nifkin, by Daniel Pinkwater. I read the book this week, and was reminded of what a genius the man really is.
My being a Pinkwater fanboy goes way back. When I was about 14 my family was on one of our horrible never ending camping trips. You see, my dad would pile all of us into his ’69 Ford Maverick (replacement for the old Dodge my mom “accidentally” set fire to) every couple years during the summer and we would drive from one end of the country to the other, sleeping in crappy WWII era army surplus sleeping bags and a big dumb tent, usually on rocks and rattlesnakes. Dad would burn himself at least once a trip on his Coleman stove and the car would break down at least a couple times. To this day these trips remain one of the great mysteries of my life, as I for the life of me I can’t get what any of us got out of it, especially the old man. He did nothing but bitch and moan the whole time (or argue with mom), my sister hated it (and would relieve her boredom by torturing me), and I liken it to what I imagined hell would be like (early visions of hell. I was destined to learn what hell was really like when I dropped out of college and worked graveyard shift in a medical lab).
Anyway, we would be on these trips for a month or more and I had nothing to do but count cars, listen to my parents fight, or books (my dad was not big on car games or, for that matter, anything that involved noise from the back seat). As an added bonus the Maverick did not have a functioning radio. So while on one of these trips I picked up the only book that looked remotely interesting at a stand in a truck stop, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, by Daniel Manus Pinkwater.
To say the book was an eye opening experience is an understatement. I had been a avid reader for a while by then but most of the books I read were about adults. The vast majority of “young adult” novels about kids in high school or grammar school were pretty Norman Rockwell-esqe. More or less good kids with good attitudes who were generally well adjusted, happy young Americans. This book was about a couple of chubby introverted kids who hated school, were generally more intelligent than everyone around them, and had weird, messed up family lives. It was like I had discovered my long lost brothers. For the first time in my life I felt slightly less alienated rather than more.
Of course, the kids had some wild adventures involving the worlds greatest detective, a professional wrestler named the Mighty Gorilla, the terror of orangutans, a former South American army major expelled for terrorizing chickens, and a massive thinking computer hooked up to a giant avocado (of death). To say Pinkwater injects a level of surrealism into most of his stories is a bit of an understatement.
Anyway, his books are technically done for young adults, although honestly they are better read as an adult IMO. Also, some of his young adults smoke, drink, and play massive amounts of hooky, so maybe not the best for the soft brains of American youth. Nevertheless, each is in it’s own way brilliant.
What makes them even better are the titles. Here are a few of the better ones that I have read: Fat Men from Space, Lizard Music, Alan Mendleson the Boy From Mars, Wallpaper from Space, Blue Moose; and Return Of The Moose, Spaceburger : A Kevin Spoon and Mason Mintz Story, Fish Whistle: Commentaries, Uncommontaries and Vulgar Excesses, Jolly Roger, A Dog Of Hoboken, and I Was A Second Grade Werewolf are a few good ones, but he has dozens.
Anyway, if you hated high school, were a geek, didn’t fit in, and enjoy surrealism I’d say try out Daniel Pinkwater. If you were popular, fit in well, were well liked, and actually got laid in high school than go jump off a bridge. (Saved By the Bell Bayside AV Club image courtesy of the TV show t shirts)
I’ll be watching Furious Five tonight, I think, which will probably make for a pretty good review tomorrow, although I am headed to a small Warhammer tournament so I don’t know when I will write it up. Thanks for reading, and have a great day.
