Recent Reading: Daniel Pinkwater and David Sedaris

Recently I finished two different books by two different authors that could be described as humorous. The first book is Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music. It is quite a silly book written for children. The mathematician Jordan Ellenberg described it as a book that got him excited about reading as a child.

What made me understand that a book could lift a cover off the world and show you how strange things were, especially normal things, were the novels of Daniel Pinkwater, especially “Lizard Music.” I first wanted to become a writer to spread the gospel of “Lizard Music” as I understood it.

To give an idea of what this book is like, I would like to quote three passages. The first is Pinkwater's biostatement at the end of the book.

DANIEL PINKWATER has written about one hundred books, many of them good. Lizard Music was almost the first one he wrote, and remains his personal favorite. It is entirely his own work, and the story that it was discovered as as a manuscript inserted in a bale of banana leaves, probably to increase the weight, is merely legend, and without foundation in fact.

The second passage gives you some idea of Pinkwater's attitude about food. 

(Bear in mind that Pinkwater's one novel written for adults, The Afterlife Diet, could be fairly described as a story about heaven for fat people. I have fond memories of reading this book not long after it came out by checking it out from the main branch of the Detroit Public Library.)

But first, I suggest we stop at the refreshment stand for a bite of something nutritious. It's almost two o'clock, and I expect we're both hungry." There was no way to hurry Charlie. He said that he didn't believe that people should talk about serious things while they were eating, so I had to listen to him carry on about the differences among various old violins while he put away six hot dogs. I had a hot dog myself, and a root beer (kindle location 945). 

Here is the third passage:

I guessed it must be afternoon. I checked my watch--I had forgotten to wind it. I asked Reynold for the time.

He looked at his pebble. "It's 4:37." I set my watch.

"By the way," I asked, "how does that thing work?"

"What the pebble?" Reynold asked. "It doesn't work. We wear them to show off for visitors. Most lizards just guess about the time." I put my watch in my pocket (kindle location 1629).

Ok. So that was Daniel Pinkwater's novel for children, Lizard Music. 

 

The other book I read recently that I wanted to write a bit about is Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris. When I read the passage quoted below I thought it captured some of the same ideas I had about the transition from the Trump to the Biden administration.

Neither Amy nor I care about the news anymore, at least the political news. I am vaguely aware that Andrew Cuomo has fallen out of favor, and that people who aren't me will be receiving government checks for some reason or other, but that's about it. When Trump was president I started every morning by reading the New York Times, followed by the Washington Post, and would track both papers' websites regularly throughout the day. To be less than vigilant was to fall behind, and was anything worse than not knowing what Stephen Miller just said about Wisconsin? My friend Mike likened this constant monitoring to having a second job. It was exhausting, and the moment Biden was sworn in to office I let it all go. When the new president speaks, I feel the way I do on a plane when the pilot announces that after reading our cruising altitude he will head due north, or take a left at Lake Erie. You don't need to tell me about your job, I always think. Just, you know, do it.

It's so freeing, no longer listening to political podcasts--no longer being enraged. I still browse the dailies, skipping over the stories about COVID, as I am finished with all that as well. The moment I got my first shot of the vaccine, I started thinking of coronavirus the way I think of scurvy--something from a long-ago time that can no longer hurt me, something that mainly pirates get. "Yes," the papers would say, "but what if there's a powerful surge this summer? This Christmas? A year from now? What if our next pandemic is worse than this one? What if it kills all the fish and cattle and poultry and affects our skin's reaction to sunlight? What if it forces everyone to live underground and subsist on earthworms? (kindle locations 1996-2013).