Best. Pinkwater Book Review. Ever.
Well, actually the best review of a Pinkwater book came from a webpage from 1997 (or 1998?) on The Education of Robert Nifkin. It started with “This is the time of year that pre-schoolers experience alphabet envy” and discussed how the “letters jump of the page”. But, this one — from 1982 — comes in second:
In the first few pages of “Young Adult Novel” we read that Kevin Shaprio’s mother is locked away in a madhouse and his father is a living vegetable as a result of an explosion in a methane factory. Kevin’s sister works the bars near the local bus depot as a prostitute, and Kevin supports himself by stealing and selling drugs in the schoolyard. How about that for an opening for a comic novel for preteens?
The novel then goes on to describe a slapstick confrontation between a group of Dadaist students and a straight-arrow school administration, during which the students create a campus hero out of a little creep who much prefers to be left alone. The story is, I suppose, to be taken as a rollicking lower-school version of the film “Animal House,” but I found it distressing.
Mr. Pinkwater has been rightly praised as a children’s author who does not treat his audience as if they are all little darlings, and I agree that children are essentially little monsters with a thirst for the forbidden. But I have considerable reservations about how assiduously they should be pandered to in this matter. Vulgarity is something children should be allowed to work out for themselves, if for no other reason than it is more fun that way. If adults are forever illuminating the dark corners of children’s lives, they deny them self-discovery. Of all the debts of gratitude I owe to my mother and father, the one I feel most keenly is that we never had a candid discussion about sex. Instead, they extended to me the wondrous coutesy of leaving me alone.
In “Young Adult Novel” Mr. Pinkwater smothers his young readers with a racy bonhommie that smacks too much of adults who think they are getting close to young people by slam dancing with them, an enterprise distressing to children and degrading to adults.
I orignially read it as part one of three in Young Adults, thus I tend to forget that it was once published as a piece of work unto itself. But it is worth noting that when it came time to publish it in “5 Novels” — the second and third parts were left out because the publisher found it too vulgar. This one was acceptable.
I wonder if this was the review that sparked Pinkwater to write that it was his “devout hope that in time he may be able to produce acceptable books about cute furry animals — and for the older reader — stories about high schools in California with really good athletic programs and uniformly attractive students.” Mysteries run around the place.
Events at good old Himmler High School continue apace. The second part features the kids getting out of meetings with a psychologist by telling him (as they surmise he’s obsessed with the topic) that they masturbate all the time. The third part continues apace, and has a sex scene.
I don’t know. I was 16 when I read this. It’s not “The Blue Moose”.