The one who wrote Coraline, and co-wrote the book of Good Omens and made the TV show, also the Sandman comics writer and co-creator who made the Sandman TV show. Quite nice really.
The book I'm reading, Crazy In Poughkeepsie, has a quote from you on the cover! Have you ever been to the real life Poughkeepsie? We've got a cool bridge.
I have. (In fact I tore my meniscus at the beginning of October running for a train in Poughkeepsie.)
“Crazy in Poughkeepsie” is Daniel Pinkwater’s standalone, demi-sequel to 2020’s “Adventures of Dwergish Girl,” a YA novel about a sort-of Catskills leprechaun girl whose coming of age involves moving to human civilization, learning the art of pizza-making, getting involved with community radio, venturing to New York City to drink papaya juice and learn mystic secrets from a junk-store owner, and, ultimately, resolving an existential threat to human civilization based on weaponizing a large cohort of Civil War ghosts (she gets help from an ancient witch).
If that sounds like a lot, it would be, but not for Pinkwater, whose 100+ books revel in eccentricity, excess, compassion and surrealism. Reading Pinkwater is a bit like the scene in Mary Poppins where Julie Andrews opens her kit bag and pulls a series of impossibly large objects out of it, more and more, making it seem unremarkable (but no less delightful for it).
In “Crazy,” Pinkwater introduces us to Mick, who’s just come home from his first overnight camp experience. While he was away, his older brother, Maurice, has gone trekking in Nepal to find a guru (Maurice has been sold on gurus from superhero comics where having a guru is a surefire way to acquire mystical powers).
Maurice’s guru-sojourn has been a success…sort of. High in the mystic mountains, Maurice met Guru Lump Smythe-Finkel and his dog, Lhasa (a “kali” dog). The Guru was behind in the rent on his cave, so he leapt at Maurice’s offer to fly back to Poughkeepsie and live in Mick’s room.
Mick is a little put out at first, but after all, he’s just had the time of his life in a cabin with six other boys of awful hygiene and habits. By comparison, having a neat, well-behaved old man and his old, friendly dog as roommates is just fine. Maurice, meanwhile, has a favor to beg of Mick. It turns out that Guru Smythe-Finkel doesn’t want to teach Maurice mystical powers — he just wants to teach him how to meditate! Mick thinks meditation is sitting still and thinking, but as Maurice explains, it’s worse than that. Meditation is sitting still and not thinking.
In true big brother fashion, Maurice dumps his Guru on Mick and goes back to community college to study accounting. Maurice begins to take long, daily walks with Guru Lump and Lhasa the kali, leaning how to beg (thought Guru Lump explains that it’s not technically begging!).
Things get into high gear when they run into one of Mick’s camp-friends who has fallen in with the Dwergish Girl of the previous volume. She has gone crazy, she explains, and he is trying his hand at juvenile delinquency. They become fast friends and soon discover a haunted butter-churn factory (Poughkeepsie is full of abandoned factories). The ghosts of the butter-churn factory inspire the mission that’s at the heart of “Crazy” — escorting the ghost of a beloved whale to the whale afterlife.
Pinkwater says that his books aren’t a celebration of weirdness. For me, this is a kind of koan, because reading Pinkwater’s books growing up made me the mutant I am today. What does it mean when the guru whose books about being weird tells you that his books are not about being weird? I have pondered this for years, and I think maybe it means that Pinkwater’s books are not a celebration of weirdness — rather, they reveal how abnormal normal is. Pinkwater’s characters and scenarios aren’t weird — rather, the “normal” we insist upon is so thin on the ground that it is the true weirdness. Indeed, the weirdest thing about “normal” is our unwillingness too acknowledge that it is not to be found outside of our fantasies of living in a normal, predictable world.
The Pinkwaterverse is a place of delight and camaraderie, wordplay and weirdness, magic and epic sojourns. Each Pinkwater novel is a novelty and unmistakably part of his vast literary legacy. “Crazy in Poughkeepsie” is a trip to whale heaven, an afterlife that we can all aspire to.
I loved “Dwergish Girl”. Thrilled to hear there’s a sequel…
