Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Who could resist a place where chickens sing, avocados think and real estate agents are extraterrestrials?
Feb 4, 2000 | A woman in her 20s asks Daniel Pinkwater one of life's great questions: "Daniel," she writes, "what is Gorgonzola?" He explains: "If cheese were a religion, then Gorgonzola would be God. Or at least Jesus. And that," he adds, "is a religion I'd subscribe to." Another reader wants to know how to keep her boyfriend's cat from sitting on her head. "Motor oil," he suggests. "Works every time."
Welcome to Planet Pinkwater, where real estate agents are extraterrestrials, chickens sing and avocados are capable of simulating intelligent thought. In this world, Pinkwater, the author of more than 60 books for children, has all the answers -- many of which have practical applications in our world as well.
"I am the guru for those who don't listen," Pinkwater tells me in a telephone interview. He has a voice that makes you want to listen, though: not exactly the gorgonzola of voices, but definitely the cambozola -- smooth, rich, laced with pockets of something sharp, dark and very odd. This voice has served him well in a parallel career as a radio personality. He is a regular commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered." And his Chinwag Theater, which features reviews of current children's fiction and Pinkwater reading from his own work, airs on public radio nationwide.
In person, the egg-shaped Pinkwater is apparently a less convincing presence. He admits that, when he reads in public, children have been known to quiz him about his work to make sure that he is the real Daniel Pinkwater.
"They expect someone with a little more forehead," he says. "Someone who walks upright."
Pinkwater looks less like a novelist than a chef, the rotund author, say, of an award-winning cookbook called "Blue Cheese and You." The resemblance isn't entirely coincidental: Food plays an important role in practically all of Pinkwater's books, as it does in his life. When I reach him on the phone, he asks that I call him back in "the special room" of his upstate New York house: the kitchen. Our conversation gets started with a description of the apple bundt cake which he will eat later in the evening. ("Good thing this is a phone interview, or you would have had to share," I remark. His response: "Oh, no. I would never do that.")
Like a chef -- a slightly mad chef, perhaps -- Pinkwater's genius lies in the combination of unlikely ingredients. "Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars" begins as the story of a boy who doesn't like his new junior high school and skips rapidly through the worlds of psychiatry, used-book stores, mind control and the Japanese language to end up on a plane of existence called Waka-Waka, where the natives have lost control of the sacred plant from which they make a drink not entirely unlike hot chocolate.
"Slaves of Spiegel" tells the story of a pan-galactic contest to make the single most disgusting snack imaginable. Mankind's entry, "one Venusian cranshaw melon, a whole ham, three giant radishes (weighing at least 6 pounds) from Glintnil, five Bartlett pears, a kosher salami, one quart of Vermont maple syrup, two pounds of raw oats, and a Spanish olive," is only the runner-up.
How did Pinkwater become the chef of the absurd? He claims that his first ambition was to be a sculptor: "I wanted to make large and amazing things out of heavy materials," he says, and he spent four years at Bard College trying to do just that. He won't describe the result of his labor, but notes that there was "a remarkable unanimity of response" to the work.
"It was like when you're in a social situation and someone does something incredibly embarrassing. Your eyes close down. You just pretend not to see it."
When his sculpture teacher asked nervously, "You're going to be a writer, aren't you?" Pinkwater gave up the plastic arts and, after a brief stint as an illustrator, began writing children's books.
Twenty years later, Pinkwater still denies that his writing has had any success. "I have tried 80 times to write a commercial novel, and I've failed 80 times," he says.
If you believe that, you're probably the sort of person who would douse your boyfriend's cat with motor oil. His work has shaped a generation -- two generations, really, or three -- of readers. Beginning with "Lizard Music" (1976) and "Alan Mendelsohn" (1979), on through "The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death" (1982), "The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror" (1984) and "Borgel" (1990), to "The Education of Robert Nifkin" and the omnibus "5 Novels" (both in 1998), Pinkwater has acquired a cult following among current and former children.
Another four-novel collection (including "Yobgorgle," "The Worms of Kukulima," "Borgel" and "The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror") is due to be published this spring by Simon & Schuster, along with a new series of chapter books, which will come out in April. The first is entitled "The Magic Pretzel."
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