I got a letter from Daniel Pinkwater today.

I believe I read somewhere that he became a born-again Christian several years ago and has written books related to that topic, but I could be wrong. Maybe I'll do some digging.

I did find this, though, dated March 04: "Writer Daniel Pinkwater will leave his gig reviewing children's books with Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday to become NPR's foreign correspondent from the Middle East."

FROM the Middle East? He's over there somewhere?

I like his work too though. Jerry Spinelli was very nice when I met him, as was Ed Emberley. Anyone else remember Ed Emberley?

Jill Pinkwater wrote at least one classic book - Buffalo Brenda. It does a wonderful job of encapsulating everything middle and high school were, and everything you wish they had been.

puerile minds think alike... I was just going to post this.

Best birthday gift for a ten year old EVER.

"Oh, squirrel," said the moose, "why don't you let me put all those nuts of yours in my pocket? I'll take them wherever you like, and you won't have to run back and forth with one nut at a time."

"Oh no," said the squirrel, "you'll play some sort of trick on me."

"No I won't," said the moose, "I'll just put your nuts in my pocket, and take them whereever you say."

"No I won't," said the moose.

"Oh no," said the squirrel, "you'll get me into trouble."

"No, honestly, said the moose, "I just want to help you."

"Really?" asked the squirrel.

"Sincerely," said the moose.

"All right, I'm going to trust you," said the squirrel. "You may put my nuts in your pocket."

"I just realized," said the moose, "I don't have a pocket. Let's forget the whole thing."

Moral: Animals are stupid.

I translated that Borgel tale into German recently!

http://www.pinkwater.com/pzone/photos/dinner.jpg

I once had supper with Vonnegut.

How was it? I’ve always thought that the two of you would hit it off.

It was at the New Jersey Librarians Jamboree, which they held, for some reason, in Pennsylvania.

Which he never misses.

Well, his girlfriend was getting a prize, so he was there. It was at this resort which is a honeymoon resort that advertises on television in the New York, New Jersey area.

The place with the bath inside the giant champagne glass?

They have a heart-shaped tub and in the TV ad they had a honeymoon couple drinking champagne in the bubble bath, in the sunken heart-shaped tub.

The “beautiful Mt. Airy Lodge”! I used to live in New Jersey, and I remember these things.

In point of fact, the clientele of the Mr. Airy Lodge are all teenage newlyweds who have never been away from home before. The place is a made over God knows what it was, resort I suppose. The reason that we went was because it was irresistible. I said, “Do we get the optimal suite, do we get the sunken tub, you know, the whole thing?” “Sure,” they said, “if you come, we’ll put you in the mega bridal suite.” We really could not resist it, so we motored over to Pennsylvania and we get there and we go over to reception and there’s… (click)
(A long pause is followed by two drunken misdials to Mr. Pinkwater’s New York home.)
(Pretending to have talked through the entire time we had been disconnected) …laughed and laughed, and then we…

You know, it’s an entertaining story what just happened here on this end. First of all I have a confession to make, I’ve been drinking a few beers.

I suspected as much.

Well, after drinking four beers, I realized that I can’t reach the bathroom with this phone. However, I figured out that I could reach the back door. SO, I was trying to get out the back door to use the restroom, taking advantage of what I knew would be a long Mt. Airy Lodge story, when I accidentlly pulled the phone cord out of the wall. Then, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I’d hung up on you to run toward the indoor plumbing, where I found, much to my surprise, that Linette had just mopped. SO, I fell headlong toward the bowl, just missing the rim of the toilet with my face. I think that I twisted my knee.

Well, you were having more fun than I was. (back to the Mt. Airy Lodge story) So, I go in there and it’s steamy and there are paper cups half full of coffee and torn open envelopes of Sweet-n-Low and a sort of fat, hair-suited, Slavish guy behind the counter and I think… “mob.” And we were then shown to an interesting room in which the plate glass windows were not openable. They were sealed. The central air conditioning was not functioning. It was a freak hot day in the spring. There was cheap, pile carpet on the floor. There was a big bed with a canopy and a mirror in the top of the canopy. I’ve always wondered about that particular fetish. And the stench in that room suggested that for twenty years people had been fucking in that room. It was “funky,” in the old, traditional use of the term.

But it turned you on, right?

Not me.

Jill?

We didn’t have rubber gloves… which we always use. And there was a Zenith television set with a round screen, a black and white Zenith with a circular screen. Also, I have to tell you, the walls of the entire establishment were carpeted with the same cheap, tarry smelling carpet.

People had fucked on the walls too?

I believe so… I think that it was expedient because the plaster was coming up so they just carpeted it over. They just got a hold of a truckload.

What they couldn’t mirror, they carpeted.

In the bathroom, which was carpeted up the walls, there were carpeted steps leading up, the you descend down into, not a heart-shaped, but a cheap Sears pressed metal tub that was recessed in that a platform had been built that you ascend and then you descent into the standard sized bathtub such as you would find in your normal home or your average trailer. And there was candle wax on the carpet around the tub from when there had been romantic moments. And under the TV set, which was on little legs, was a pile of duck feathers, feathers from a wild duck. Now that puzzled me. First of all, someone had failed to vacuum them up which started a chain of thoughts about the room… I was like a shot asking for another room, one with windows that opened. They had to put us in the servants’ wing. Only the help could open their windows. In that room, which was also carpeted up the walls, I killed a bug bigger than anything I saw in Africa. It was the size of a chipmunk. I had to pound it with my shoe for a good five minutes to get it to stop twitching. Also, they played rock-n-roll over the loudspeakers twenty-four hours a day throughout the complex.

As a kid I used to watch those commercials and they turned me on. (At this point I actually start singing the theme from their TV ad campaign.)

The people who go there are oblivious to the fact that it’s a horrible slum. First of all, they’ve never lived in a place that had carpeting, so that’s exciting. And then they have sex, and that’s novel. And, for the rest, there’s rock-n-roll everywhere, playing on speakers around the clock. So it’s a kind of paradise. Or hell. (They moved out at their own expense to the Holiday Inn across the street)… So, it turns out that Kurt Vonnegut was going to be there, and so I said, “Oh, I’m going to sit with Kurt,” and I simply shifted around the place cards so that we were together at the speakers’ table. And the person in charge said, “No, no, you’re messing it up. It has to be boy, girl, boy, girl.” And I said, “I don’t care. I’m sitting with Kurt. Us novelists are going to sit together.” Well, here come Vonnegut and I introduce myself and he… remembers me.

From where?

From a fan letter. I sent him a good fan letter. Of course, he never answers his mail, but he said, “I remember your letter. I even pinned it up over my desk for a while.” So that made my evening. Then we dined and told each other stories. And, of course, I told him the best stories that I could come up with. For every story that I told him, he topped me. You know, he’s a better writer. Also, every time he ordered a drink, I ordered the same drink and he never ordered the same drink twice. I don’t drink. I mean I can drink, but I can’t drink. That’s the thing. One drink is all I need to be as drunk as I get. There’s nothing gradual about it. So, having a drink, I was in trouble at once, and then I think that I had five drinks. So, by now I didn’t feel any drunker, of course this is my assessment. Perhaps to an impartial observer I would have appeared drunker. He looks at the program and says, “Oh my God, you’re the speaker.” And I said, “That’s right, Kurt.” Then he said, “But you’re shitfaced. How are you going to give a speech? What’s it about?” And I said, “I don’t know, Kurt. I make up on the spur of the moment.” He said, “You do? I work a week on something like this.” Then I thought, “Oh shit, Vonnegut prepares for these.” Then he saw that I was finally scared, which was his intention of course, and he said, “Tell you what. I’ll tell you a joke I haven’t used yet. I’ll give it to you. It will get you out of this horrible trouble you’re about to get in.” He told me a joke that I didn’t think was that funny. It wasn’t bad… I didn’t use his joke… I got up. I gave a speech. It was excellent. But, you know, I was born to be a minimalist. As garrulous as I am in conversation, I’m extremely economical on the page. Writing all these children’s books, not to say later writing all of these pieces of fluff to do on NPR, just increases my ability to write short. It’s harder to write short and I take pride in the fact that I can get it all said in a small space. So, what happened was, this speech I gave ran three minutes on the clock. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It went where it was going. There wasn’t a word wasted. My wife, who was sitting some distance away, or she says this never would have happened, reminds me that my face was very red and that I was chortling a lot. Which I thought was good because it indicates that the speaker’s enjoying himself, and puts the audience in the right frame of mind. I ended with, “I seem to have concluded,” whereupon I went and sat down. There was no applause. There was muttering. Now, I would have thought that after three days in this hell hole… By the way, the food was execrable… I would have thought that anything that would have moved events along so that we could get out of there would have been welcomed. But, in fact, there was a period of years following this in which librarians didn’t ask me anywhere, which is just as well. Vonnegut said it was one of the best talks he ever heard. But he’d been drinking the whole time too.

The whole interview is here:
http://www.crimewaveusa.com/pages/articlepages/pinkwater.html

The alarm clock woke me up at 7:17 a.m. and I called into work saying I couldn't come in. This is because I was so engrossed in an interrupted dream that I was hoping if I went back to sleep, it would continue. I dreamed I was at a Daniel Pinkwater summer camp/conference where we got to meet him, have delicious lunches, read books and swap stories about Pinkwater, staying at these fantastic log cabins during the night. It was so vivid and delightful.

I love this man so much.

Lizard Music was many years before David Icke. PINKWATER KNEW!!!

The Irving and Muktuk books (well, the two I've read) are the funniest picture books ever. I must look really weird standing in the children's section of the library trying to contain my laughter. The twist ending of "Bad Bear Detectives" is genius.

Irving and Muktuk (polar bears), discussing the accusations of muffin-stealing:

"You make one mistake, and the coppers are all over you!"
"It isn't fair. Of course, we've made more than one mistake."
"Remember that time we robbed the muffin factory?"
"That was a good one."

The woodcut illustrations in Lizard Music were great too.

http://www.theyggyssey.com/

This is great (so far).

On the Amazon page for The Neddiad:

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars--what else?, May 8, 2007
By Daniel Pinkwater
I have read all the reviews of this book so far. Most of the reviewers liked it pretty well. Did any of them actually get what it's about? Not really. Do I know what it's about? Well, I'm the author. Am I going to say what it's about? Nope--that would be telling. I hope you will read it, and make up your own mind. If you hate the book, you can always make it a present to someone whose taste you don't respect, or use it for pressing flowers, or a doorstop.

found a new copy of this marked down to $5, was so excited:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c0/c2861.jpg

so far i reread yobgorgle, which was a fave growing up, and then borgel, which i don't remember ever reading before. excellent

Never read Yobgorgle, but that collection also has the Baconburg Horror, which is wonderful, and features possibly my favorite restaurant name: The Deadly Nightshade Diner - We Never Close.

i remember yobgorgle

i also remember that my brother thought his middle name, manus, was hilarious, and would always refer to him as "daniel manus pinkwater"

zomg clotpoll thank you for the news!

The Neddiad was great.

cannot wait to read his stuff to my daughter

So apparently Lizard Music is going to be reprinted by the New York Review of Books Children's Collection.

Also I highly recommend his book of short NPR pieces, Fish Whistle. There's a nice story in there about this somewhat mentally ill veteran (who he wrote into one of his books) who would make speeches in Bughouse Square demanding that the British leave Kenya, and would graffiti "FREE JOMO KENYATTA" all over town. He also sent a little bit of his army pension with encouraging letters to Kenyatta every month. And after Kenyatta was released and Kenya got independence, the Kenyan government got in touch with the State Department to track him down to see if he was interested in being ambassador.

Lizard Music was the first book I ever read of his. It felt like a backstage pass to a cool secret world. Even though Walter Cronkite was unfortunately before my time, I felt like I had a very deep relationship with him after Lizard Music.

He talks about the real-life Chicago chicken man in Fish Whistle, too – recommendation cosigned with love.

Oh was just coming here with the NYRB Classics news:

http://craphound.com/images/51f8rirLRAL.jpg

I just read his most recent one, Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl. There's even less actual plot than usual, and I feel like it's a lot stranger than either the Neddiad or the Yggysey; it keeps you off-balance with one bizarre anecdote or occurrence after another, and you hardly notice that none of these things quite connected. There's also a chapter in which everyone gets high. So it's pretty great.

lol

love this guy. one of my heroes

Wait, did I ever get around to nominating Lizard Music for the the SF poll thread?!?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6itbXNgVjc

Wow! In the flesh!

http://missionsunknown.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/pinkwater-photo.jpg

In many ways Lizard Music made me the man I am today.

you and me both

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/talking-pineapple-question-state-exam-stumps-article-1.1064657

This is the best thing to happen to high-stakes testing....in history!

i've taken a kaplan course before: the animals ate the pineapple because they were annoyed, and the owl spoke the wisest words. this is some bogus controversy to stir up anti-pinkwater sentiment.

Really funny to me that they brought Ken Jennings in as the assessment expert.

very disappointed in jennings:
'Is this a joke? The story makes no sense whatsoever. The narrative has no internal logic, the “moral” is unclear, and the plot details are so oddly chosen that the story seems to have been written during a peyote trip. (The prose is clunky too, but I hate to pile on.) In fact, it reads like one of those random, fill-in-the-blank “Mad Libs” stories that seven-year-olds annoy everyone with on family vacations. A ninja and toothpaste? What does that even mean?'

They apparently altered the story to make it weirder, but still.

They should have got Louise Rosenblatt to comment. I know she's dead, but still.

Seen a couple of articles on this. Have to say after reading the full text that the question are p dumb and annoying in a typical "questions for discussion" way but not difficult or inconclusive.

Parents freaked out over this probably not "readers" imo.

ie story is grebt and legit as hell. questions could be better, tho the more I think about it, the better the "wisest animal" is in that it reproduces the dilemma the owl resolves.

For our Kaplan-trained test takers, a question that sets up the obvious Owl as the wisest is a pineapple: it's gotta have a trick up its sleeve!

But pineapples don't have sleeves.

Headlines on this would be more accurately: test-driven US schoolkids struggle more than ever with ambiguity

I had a bunch of the hardcovers when I was young: Lizard Music, Alan Mendohlson the Boy from Mars, and both of the Snarkout boys titles in paperback.

I think it is time to re-read Lizard Music...

It's straight up voight-kampffff material -- not ambiguous at all -- UNLESS YOU ARE A REPLICANT. those parents are androids.

Moral: Never bet on an eggplant.

OK, here is the deal. There are these companies that make up tests and various reading materials, and sell them to state departments of education for vast sums of money. One of the things they do is purchase rights from authors to use excerpts from books. For these they pay the authors non-vast sums of money. Then they edit the passages according to….I have no idea what perceived requirements. Here is the story as it appears in BORGEL, a novel I wrote. Borgel, who is 111 years old is telling this story and similar ones to his great-great nephew while riding on a bus:

The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant

Once there was a race between a rabbit and an eggplant. Now, the eggplant, as you know, is a member of the vegetable kingdom, and the rabbit is a very fast animal.

Everybody bet lots of money on the eggplant, thinking that if a vegetable challenges a live animal with four legs to a race, then it must be that the vegetable knows something.

People expected the eggplant to win the race by some clever trick of philosophy. The race was started, and there was a lot of cheering. The rabbit streaked out of sight.

The eggplant just sat there at the starting line. Everybody knew that in some surprising way the eggplant would wind up winning the race.

Nothing of the sort happened. Eventually, the rabbit crossed the finish line and the eggplant hadn’t moved an inch.

The spectators ate the eggplant.

Moral: Never bet on an eggplant.

I don’t know how the test publishing company changed the story. I gather they decided to call the rabbit a hare, and made the eggplant into a pineapple. Also there appears to be something about sleeves. And they made up questions for the students to answer. I would not have done any of these things. But it has nothing to do with me. I cashed the check they sent me after about 8 months, and took my wife out to lunch at a cheap restaurant. I believe, she ordered eggplant.

it's always time to reread Lizard Music

just started re-reading snarkout boys for the first time in like 20 years last night and it is as great as ever

Yep.

my favourite detail is how bad guy nussbaum was kicked out of a south american army for frightening chickens

every time this thread is revived i'm worried my hero is dead

I need to go back and reread some Pinkwater. My omnibus collections are going unloved.

the shit in the underground bar in snarkout with the baked potato and butter and salt and beer occasionally inspires me to try the same thing at home, it never matches up to that scene tho.

i actually think avocado pie and avocado and cheese danish sound pretty good

every time this thread is revived i'm worried my hero is dead

^^^

dude is all-time. looking forward to reading some of this stuff with my kid(s)

I've already started, FAT MEN FROM SPACE is gold for ages 4 and up

he and his wife have a ton of picture books too

I wish the stuff that has been reprinted recently was packaged/marketed bit better. The older paperbacks and hardcovers are somehow more appealing.

nyrb edition of lizard music is mad nice

lot of it does seem out of print tho

http://fuckyeahdanielpinkwater.tumblr.com/post/14878913918/a-poem-by-jonathan-quicksilver

Dude has a weekly podcast?!

http://www.pinkwater.com/podcast/showarchive.php

Also here
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pinkwater-podcast/id274051892?mt=2

I got a letter from Daniel Pinkwater today
I opened and read it, it said they were suckers

I think I checked out this edition of Lizard Music from the library roughly a hundred times as a kid. Considered getting the center image tattooed on me
http://thecarnivoreproject.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345295c269e201630541cbd4970d-200wi

Excited that the podcast has Young Adult Novel. My favorite!

abbot, can you scan that letter?
i love this guy pretty deeply.

I had that edition of LM!

A bunch of audiobooks available for free: http://www.pinkwater.com/audiobooks/

aw man :(((

Jill Pinkwater
1941 -2022 pic.twitter.com/2HAVsFWVIg

— Daniel Pinkwater (@DanielPinkwater) October 4, 2022

I just want to say...not just that I love her, that's obvious, but that she is the single greatest person I have met, ever. And quite a few things that people tend to like and/or respect about me are actually Jill. I don't feel grief, I feel gratitude.

— Daniel Pinkwater (@DanielPinkwater) October 4, 2022

I got really excited to see this thread get bumped and then the fear started to set in halfway through the scroll. RIP to a real one.

(Daniel's really on a tear with the picture books lately though! Kat Hats has the vibe of one of the novels, complete with shaggy dog journey, and what can one even say about Vampires of Blinsh?)

I know this isn't the sort of book that people are talking about when they say they love Daniel Pinkwater but I read "The Big Orange Splot" to my 3 year old almost every day and it's seriously one of the very best picture books of all time.

Since I started teaching middle school a few years ago, I've kept going back to Jill Pinkwater's books and appreciating how extraordinary they are. No one captures that goofy, brilliant, unexpected middle school sense of humor quite like she does. And those dialogue cascades that she does, where every kid is talking at once and you can tell immediately who said what - I can't think of any other writer who does that, and yet it's exactly what it sounds like when you ask a class of middle schoolers a question they want to answer.

Ok, so… https://www.indiewire.com/news/breaking-news/benny-safdie-dwayne-johnson-reunite-lizard-music-1235149946/

Not who i’d have envisioned for the Chicken Man.