Paul Zindel
Paul Zindel was an American author, playwright and educator.
In 1964, he wrote The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, his first and most successful play. The play ran off-Broadway in 1970, and on Broadway in 1971. It won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was also made into a 1972 movie by 20th Century Fox. Charlotte Zolotow, then a vice-president at Harper & Row (now Harper-Collins) contacted him to writing for her book label. Zindel wrote 39 books, all of them aimed at children or young adults. Many of these were set in his home town of Staten Island, New York. They tended to be semi-autobiographical, focusing on teenage misfits with abusive or neglectful parents. Despite the often dark subject matter of his books, which deal with loneliness, loss, and the effects of abuse, they are also filled with humor. Many of his novels have wacky titles, such as My Darling, My Hamburger, or Confessions of A Teenage Baboon.
The Pigman, first published in 1968, is widely taught in American schools, and also made it on to the list of most frequently banned books in America in the 1990s, because of what some deem offensive language.
“Be yourself! Be individualistic!' he called out after me. 'But for God's sake get your hair cut. You look like an oddball.”
“I really hate it when a teacher has to show that she isn't behind the times by using some expression which sounds so up-to-date you know for sure she's behind the times.”
“There was no one else to blame anymore. No Bores or Old Ladies or Nortons, or Assassins waiting at the bridge. And there was no place to hide-no place across any river for a boatman to take us. Our life would be what we made of it-nothing more, nothing less.Baboons.Baboons. They build their own cages, we could almost hear the Pigman whisper, as he took his children with him.”
“For Sale: Complete set of encylopedias. Never used. Wife knows everything.”
“There's no one else to blame. No Bores or Old Ladies or Norton or Assassins waiting at the bridge.”
“In fact, the thing Lorraine and I liked best about the Pigman was that he didn't go around saying we were cards or jazzy or cool or hip. He said we were delightful . . .”
“Dennis had just kissed her once, and she was screaming for a hamburger.”
“The speeches! They were filled with borrowed things--borrowed over and over again until the words were nothing more than a series of clichés.”
“The mustard lined his lips. At one point a strand of sauerkraut was smeared against his chin.”
“He was practically pushing the hot dogs down his throat.”
“When are you getting married?''After graduation, stupid.”
“If you leave me, I'll want to die. Love, Elizabeth Carstensen.”
“But now Nature starts doing things. The hormones start rolling and those old testicles start producing and all the rest of it--like breathing. You don't go around asking for it. It happens. It happened to me when I was twelve.(Sean)”
“This sex thing. We never used to be hung up like this. Nature doesn't give little kids problems except when there's some kind of an accident--like that eight-year-old South American girl that had a baby. But that's practically a mutation, right?”
“I find everything demoralizing,' Dennis said.”
“Once inside, Dennis almost keeled over from the smell of cooked cabbage. Why was it that any girl he took out had a house with an incredible smell?”
“She thinks she knows everything that goes on inside me, and she doesn’t know a thing. What did she want from me – to tell the truth all the time? To run around saying it did matter to me that I live in a world where you can grow old and be alone and have to get down on your hands and knees and beg for friends? A place where people just sort of forget about you because you get a little old and your mind’s a bit senile or silly? Did she think that didn’t bother me underneath?”
“Our life would be what we made of it--nothing more, nothing less.”