Daniel Pinkwater. From Upstate New York.
I had long ago expected the new book from Daniel Pinkwater to be something of a kid’s novel overlaying a telling of The Iliad and / or The Odyssey. Unless I’m missing something, it wasn’t. When I saw the cover for the first time, it became clear that it would be a retelling of the ancient Turtle related Creation myths.
I am somewhat flummoxed by some reader reaction that I’ve seen in the blogosphere, to the effect that it ended abruptly. I don’t really see that. It ended the way it had to. It’s a more or less complete book which doesn’t trail off, unlike… say… The Education of Robert Nifkin. (I duck my head as someone hurls a book at me.)
Okay. Footnote this passage, toward the end, and I do so because I have an excuse as it is a mash of political references and this is a political – oriented blog.
Sholmos Bunyip, wearing a gold Roman breastplate and a gold helmet, was standing on the suggestum, chanting and mumbling. Most of what he was saying was gibberish and nonsense syllables, but now and then there was a phrase I could understand.
“Humma humma… goo goo… manifest destiny (1)… waka waka (2)… power to the proletariat (3)… ish Kabibble (4)… New World Order (5)… remember the Maine (6)… hoo hoo… thousand points of light (7)… we don’t want to fight, but by jingo (8)… oop shoop… guns or butter (9)… lebensraum (10)… no child left behind (11)… city on a hill (12)… I feel your pain (13)… walla walla bing bang (14)… day that will live in infamy (15)… who put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder? (16)
He was clean out of his mind, glassy-eyed, and a little scarier than the thousands of prehistoric carnivores listening to his weird speech. I knew what he was doing. He was the warm up guy. He was getting the crowd ready for the appearance of Kkhkktonos.(17)
(1) Originally used by the Jackson Democrats desiring the territorial expansion from the Atlantic on the Pacific. We can thank James K Polk for “annexing” much of Mexico — annexing being an interesting term in this context, as is “liberate”.
(2) Fonzie the Bear. I suspect it has an earlier origin.
(3) Phrase that spurs on the Communist Revolution, I suppose. Leads to the Dictatorship of the Prolatariat, which doesn’t strike me as a terribly positive thing.
(5) Long been around, long been seized upon by conspiracy theorists and, I guess conspiracy analysts. Wikipedia tells me it started with Wilson, which makes sense in terms of the fear of the “One World Government”. HG Wells wrote a book in 1940 which posited the positive nature of such a thing — Overly idealistic, methinks, it sits on my bookshelf. It may have been re-triggered into popular conciousness when George H W Bush talked about it in his speeches to describe the new post-Cold War world political environment.
(6) … and thus a murky set of events hyped up by Hearst’s tabloid papers leads the US into the Spanish – American War.
(7) George H W Bush’s call for action for private charity organizations to fight poverty. Mocked by Neil Young in the lines “We’ve got a thousand points of light… for the homeless man”.
(8) Sounds a lot like Theodore Roosevelt, our burly and jingoistic president.
(9) Lyndon Johnson’s lament during the Vietnam War. Solved as “Guns AND Butter”. Didn’t seem to work.
(10) The Nazi’s version of “Manifest Destiny”.
(11) George W Bush’s educational initiative. Full of standardized tests. Disliked by every school teacher I know of, including my mother.
(12) John Winthrop used it in 1630. Ronald Reagan used it, as did John F Kennedy, for their political purposes.
(13) Bill Clinton in 1992 as a way of suggesting that he is in touch with the plight of the common people. Mocked in various ways, as political pandering, and easily ponderable of what else he feels.
(14) 1958 song “The Witch Doctor”.
(15) Remember Pearl Harbor.
(16) I admit to having to google this up. It seems the verb should be “threw” and not “put”. A Bing Crosby song.
(17) Ancient Norse God, Kronos, allowing the destruction / creation parable to be completed.
June 11th, 2007 at 5:42 am
Ha! Pretty good! Not many mistakes. Is it Kronos, or Chtonos? Or both? Art is not completed until it is read/viewed/heard/digested–what you make of the book is more important than what I thought I was making.
June 12th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Hm. I should buy an expensive frame and hang this on my wall or something. Or maybe I shouldn’t.
I passed over footnote #4, dagnabit. A comedian from the Catskills, I think? I don’t know for sure. Sounds familiar, though.
8 years the quote the found its way onto the back of “4 Fantastic Novels” — “Have read your work continuously for the last eight years” — was born. I can’t say that is apt for the last sixteen years. Maturity sets in, or something like that, responsibilites beckon — even if I still push aside any number of those. For the record, I was sick of the semi-serious non-fiction books I had on my sidebar a while ago, so I dumped them all and placed that group of Pinkwater books up there.
I’m tempted to brazenly ask for a blurb, just so that I can cleanse the slate from the one famous person who has commented on this blog of mine, um… Lyndon Larouche… somewhat obliquely but nonetheless unmistakenly. But then that would be, at 2, the most schizophrenic list of notables in all of World History. We are truly living in interesting times. So I think I’ll just use a lot of ellipses and piece together something breathtankenly positive.
The Neddiad. I grapple with this comment: http://thrownwithgreatforce.blogspot.com/2007/06/isnt-this-nicely-designed-cover-cool.html
Only because the cover told me personally much about the book, and seems thematically completely appropriate. But then again I am in the category of immediately sales thrown in with: Will I be able to put this book into the hands of A SINGLE PERSON WHO ISN’T ALREADY A PINKWATER FAN? Not a chance. So from a marketing point of view, I haven’t a clue. From an artistic point of view, Neat-o keen!