'Cause it's sunlight where we flew, though the trail is cold above

[sovay]

It is the equinox. Strictly speaking, I slept through the changeover: I fell asleep at the end of summer and woke with leaf-light on the walls. It wasn't hurting me.

rushthatspeaks has posted on Daniel Pinkwater and Surrealism. The tag is my girlfriend dared me. I regret nothing.

greygirlbeast correctly described a band I've been needing for years: Giant Squid. They're like drowned Tom Waits. With more scientific names.

The father of a friend of mine won two Ig Nobels at this year's awards ceremony. First prize, one week . . . ?

If the rest of the season is going to be like this, I can live with it.

Comments

[sovay]

Greatly enjoyed some of his books, especially the one with Attila the Pun.

Oh, God. I can't tell if I've read that one or just seen, well, the pun. Does the book have any other distinguishing features (chickens, epic poetry, giant calculating avocado machines)?

Congratulations to him! (Or is that what one says? I hope so.)

I don't know: it's much harder to make "I'm so very sorry" sound like a congratulation in print . . .

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Does the book have any other distinguishing features (chickens, epic poetry, giant calculating avocado machines)?

It's been so long since I read it--twenty-six years or so, I should think--that I'm not really sure. I remember that Attila the Pun was a ghost, and I think he'd been Attila the Hun's younger and less successful brother or something like.

I think it was one of the books that involved a restaurant owned by an eccentric adult friend of the child viewpoint character. The restaurant had a special called something along the lines of "the Bulgarian [Russian? Yugoslavian?] Boy Scout's Lunch" which was a hotdog, [something else (borscht? sauerkraut? an apple?)], and a cigarette [or maybe a packet of cigarettes?]. It hadn't sold very well, so in one scene they were using them up, which meant the viewpoint character eating the food part and the restauranteur smoking the cigarettes.

I wonder if the smoking part hasn't been taken out in modern editions, assuming it's still in print. Which would be a pity, as I don't think stories like that encouraged me to smoke. (After all, I don't.)

[sovay]

The restaurant had a special called something along the lines of "the Bulgarian [Russian? Yugoslavian?] Boy Scout's Lunch" which was a hotdog, [something else (borscht? sauerkraut? an apple?)], and a cigarette [or maybe a packet of cigarettes?]. It hadn't sold very well, so in one scene they were using them up, which meant the viewpoint character eating the food part and the restauranteur smoking the cigarettes.

That sounds entirely like Pinkwater.

I wonder if the smoking part hasn't been taken out in modern editions, assuming it's still in print.

I doubt it. In the five-novel omnibus I picked up last week, the narrator of Alan Mendelsohn, Boy from Mars (1979) still smokes a nickel cigar every time he sees his (terribly Freudian) psychologist, just to guy him.

(I do doubt that any Pinkwater outside of Lizard Music is in print right now, but that's because he hasn't been for most of my life, even when he's being published.)

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

That sounds entirely like Pinkwater.

Yes. I think I should re-read some of his work.

I doubt it.

Hopefully your doubts are justified.* Do you happen to know when the omnibus was published?

...but that's because he hasn't been for most of my life, even when he's being published.)

Interesting. I suppose I do remember reading him mostly out of libraries. Those books might well have been printed a decade ore more before I read them. I would have hoped my younger self would check publication dates, but I suppose that if I did I've forgotten them.

ETA:
The bibliography on Pinkwater's Wikipedia entry tells me that Attila the Pun: A Magic Moscow Story was published in 1981. So I suppose that when I read it it was probably four or five years old.

In the process of reading up on Pinkwater, I came across this, which I thought rather interesting. Have you seen this piece, or heard about the story?

*I feel strange defending depictions of smoking, as it's not a habit I particularly care for, but my objections to bowdlerisation and removal of period detail are far more important to me.

[sovay]

Have you seen this piece, or heard about the story?

Yes—I could have sworn I posted a link about it, but can't find the post now. That's weird even by Pinkwater standards.