Mark interviews Daniel Pinkwater

When I was in the fifth grade, my family moved from the suburbs of Atlanta to rural New Jersey. My dad was with the phone company and that’s how they treated people, they moved them around a lot, keeping them rootless and dependent. So, in 1976 at the tender age of eight, I was forced to leave behind my friends in Atlanta. I don’t want to brag, but I was pretty popular in Atlanta at the time of my departure. I had a purple chopper bicycle and a little, but loyal, gang of friends. Sure, I was a smart ass and got a knife pulled on me every now and then, but all in all, it was pretty cool being Mark Maynard in the suburbs in the early 70’s. I had people to read Mad magazine with and see Star Wars with every single day. What else could a kid want?

Then when I moved to New Jersey things changed. Instead of living in a neighborhood where I could walk to school, I found myself in a dark forest, where our nearest neighbor, a Hungarian immigrant who like to shoot beavers for sport, liven a mile away. Gone too were the days where I didn’t have to get up at six in the morning and commute an hour just to get beaten up at school. I compensated by taking up needlepoint and getting a lot closer with my old, arthritic sheep dog, Yogi. It may sound like a pathetic page taken right out of Michael Jackson’s diary, but I remember singing songs to Yogi and crying. I think that this is the “rock bottom” that people talk about in AA. Not everything was bad though. Living without friends gave me the gave me the opportunity to watch a lot more TV. In fact, within a year, I had not only doubled my weight but also my knowledge of trivial TV facts. Nothing much very good happened to me out from in front of the television for the next seven years or so, except for the fact that I began reading (when there was nothing on one of the three TV stations we could get).

My somewhat obsessive reading started with L. Frank Baum, progressed through Roland Dahl, and then finally found a place to stop and call home with the books of Daniel Manus Pinkwater. When I found his first book it was like I’d found a new best friend, someone who was as smart and as cynical as I was, someone who could look down on everyone else with me, someone who liked me, no in spite of the fact that I was fat and ugly, but because of the fact that I was fat and ugly. If you’ve ever read one of his books (and I still haven’t met anyone that has), then you’ll know what I mean.

Now, here it is almost twenty years later; I’m extremely popular and modestly handsome in an introspective, super-modely kind of way, all the kids that used to torture me work in gas stations, and I’ve got the most critically acclaimed magazine in North America. Not only this, but I have been given the opportunity to say thank you to the man who changed my life, the man who pointed the way from childhood to Vonnegut and Salinger, the many who gave me the courage to keep taunting the morons who would beat me up for it, Mr. Daniel Pinkwater. It was with my heart in my mouth and a few beers behind it that I called to say thank you.

Oh, I should also add that he and I had spoken once before this conversation, briefly, in order to set up and interview time. He had called my home and caught me unprepared, in the middle of fixing dinner. He asked if I wanted to interview him right then ant there and I said no. He called me a “big sissy” before hanging up. He also said that he planned to tell me only lies, so beware.

For those of you that aren’t interested in children’s books, he’s also a commentator on National Public Radio and has written a few adult books. Not “adult” adult, but ones for grown-ups.

(I try to keep up my end of the quick and witty repartee but I fall sadly behind having ten times the amount of alcohol in my system and one fifth the vocabulary at my disposal.)


Mr. Pinkwater please.

You’re speaking with Mr. Pinkwater.

Are you on the other line?

No, there’s a radio playing.

You picked up very quickly, that’s why I asked.

I’m a fat man, but extremely quick.

You frighten me to some extent.

Well, this indicates that you’re a person in possession of good instincts… If you’re an evildoer, then you’re right to be afraid, but if you’re a man of good will, then you have nothing to fear.

You know that I’m a man of good will, you’ve read my work. (referring to the issue of Crimewave that I’d sent to him)

I wouldn’t say that I’ve ‘read’ it.

You didn’t read any of it?

Well, I read this and that. I ran an eye over it.

So, you were not impressed then I take it.

I was impressed.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

I didn’t say that I was favorably impressed. (he laughs)

You NPR types, the way you twist words.

(indignantly) I’m an ‘NPR type’ now? That’s your opinion?!

Well, it looks as though you’ve gotten to be that way.

Oh, no. That’s not my mission.

You don’t count yourself among the cultural elite then?

It’s my mission to bring them over to ‘my’ side.

Are you still doing NPR? I haven’t heard your voice in a while.

Well, I am still doing NPR, but they’re addicted to the news.

Here (in Atlanta) they’ve started doing traffic reports.

You mean ‘national traffic reports’?

No.

I’m going to make a note. I’m going to suggest this to my masters, that they do a national traffic report. (imitating a traffic reporter) “There’s a lot of traffic in the Boston area, now we’re shifting over to Columbus, Ohio where the traffic seems light…” I’ll just tell you that years ago I was asked and commissioned for a sum of money amounting to hundreds, hundreds of dollars, to do a Christmas play which would be aired on “All Things Considered” and rather than actually write something fresh, I adapted a book of mine, “Blue Moose,” and Daniel Shore, senior news analyst Daniel Shore, took the part of the moose. I felt this was me striking a blow for culture in the face of news.

It’s funny, I’ve just noticed that I’ve got your book “Chicago Days Hoboken Nights” on the shelf facing out so that you’re looking down on me while we’re talking.

That shows that you have nerves of steel… Is this the interview, are we doing the interview now?

Yeah.

Well, I should tell you that I’m smoking a Hoya DelMonterey Excaliber Number One Moduro. This cigar, had I paid money for it, would have cost me something like a finf.

Why didn’t you have to pay money for it?

Well, it was a gift from an admirer.

Do you have many admirers? I’m curious about that. I’ve never met anyone other than myself who’s ever read your work.

I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t admired me once they’ve met me.

Have many people met you?

No.

That’s kind of what I imagined.

I just feel that it would be spreading myself too thin.

You don’t want to give too much.

I am admired when I go to K-mart. They stand still when I walk by and they express awe. They say, “Awwwwwwww.”

I… I lost my train of thought.

That’s a very bad sign.

I know. My mind wanders around from time to time.

I could just give you answers to other interview questions from over the years.

That might be good, because I don’t have anything original to ask… other than…

Yes? Let’s proceed. You’re doing quite well.

Well, I don’t really have any questions now that I think about it.

Well, that’s good. That means you’re content.

I’m extremely pleased with the way things have gone so far, so if you’d like to hang up…

I think that your readers will be satisfied if you have no questions.

We don’t have too many readers. And I don’t think that my readers were too curious to begin with. I don’t think that any of them know who you are to be honest with you. I keep mentioning your name…

They just ignore it.

Well, sometimes I have to use it. For instance, in Chicago, in the Marshall Fields building, on the ninth floor, between discount linens and the human resources department, there is a small museum, a museum of self-taught art. You just stumble into it if you get out of the elevator on the ninth floor. And the only way that I could convey the feeling of finding this place to my readers was by saying that it was like being a character in a Daniel Pinkwater book. To be in completely normal surroundings one moment and then in completely wonderful and interesting surroundings the next.

How nice.

It’s my belief that there will one day have to be some type of work like “Pinkwaterian.”

“Pinkwateresque.”

You describe that feeling so well and that’s what appealed to me as a kid reading your books. I don’t think that anyone had ever done that for me before, or since for that matter. I’ve never wanted to be another author’s character.

Gosh. Well, you see, I was just talking to a fellow about this yesterday. I was talking to a film director. He’s a reader of mine and he’s thinking of making a film.

Anyone that I’d know of?

I’m not at liberty to disclose that. He’s Italian, or he may even be of Italian descent.

But it’s not Quentin Tarantino?

No.

Because I’d like to see “Alan Mendelson Boy from Mars” directed by Tarantino. It would be brilliant.

Well, he was saying, “The thing is, if we were to do this, or course we wouldn’t let you write it.” No, or course not. “The problem is, getting someone to write it who can mimic your sensibility, that seems like it would be hard to do.” Well, it really isn’t very complicated what I do, except that when people have tried to copy it, or rework it for the screen, or something like that, they always copy the wrong thing. They always try for the shtick. They try for the funny jokes. In fact, the funny jokes, while I like them, aren’t very important and anyone can do it. And, when they do it, it doesn’t work because their emphasis is wrong. And I almost figured out in that conversation what it is that I actually do. It’s sort of like the prosaic and the quotidian is always interjected in situations which would normally be dramatic, so that, after God know how many pages, when these kids finally got to wherever it is, Waka Waka, and they finally get into this realm of alternate beings, the people there are completely boring.

I wouldn’t call dancing chickens boring. (making reference to the many dancing chickens that keep appearing in his work)

You know, when you’ve seen a dancing chicken for a while, and I’ve seen a dancing chicken more than once… I’ve seen enough dancing chickens that I wouldn’t cross the street to see a dancing chicken.

The only dancing chicken that I’ve ever seen was in Chinatown in New York where there was this video game with had the insides taken out. They were replaced with a chicken on a metal wire mesh fence inside, behind glass. When someone dropped a coin into the machine, a jolt of electricity was sent through the fence. Then the chicken would “dance.”

There is somewhere, or was somewhere, a guy who trains those chickens.

The one that go in those machines?

The ones that play the piano and do those various things in those little, tiny theaters. I vaguely remember having seen a documentary or heard a piece on NPR or imagined it, that there’s some guy out on Queens who trains those chickens. That’s his work.

Had you heard about him before your wrote about the Chicken Man, the trainer of dancing chickens who floats through your books?

The Chicken Man was a real personage and I remember encountering him in my youth in Chicago; and in fact, years later a girl that I went through high school with called me up and apparently asked me for some kind of advice and I gave some, something which I will always do. Having done her a favor after all these years, she then saw fit to send me something that she’d had all these years, an 8x10 color photo that she had taken of the Chicken Man, whose name was something like Humphrey Popcorn. It’s a shame I didn’t know that at the time. I remember him, but you remember a person like that in a kind of murky, foggy way. You’re not sure what you saw or how much you saw or if you really saw it. It’s the kind of thing that makes you question the veracity of our own memory, and, if you’re a person give to questioning it, which I’m not because there’s no point, your own sanity… So, when the book was published, nothing happened, which is usually the way. Years went by and no one had appeared to have read it and I had all but forgotten about it. This was at a period in my career when this happened in an even more pronounced way than it does now.

This is ”Lizard Music” we’re talking about?

Yeah, “Lizard Music,” And then I began getting letters from people saying, “I grew up in Chicago and I sort of remember that there was a guy like that. I thought I’d imagined him and then I read about him and I thought, is he imagining him too, or did I really see him and did Pinkwater really see him, and is this really a person who existed?” And there was always this question of whether the Chicken Man was real. I was waiting for someone to write to me and say, “Oh, yeah, the Chicken Man, of course” and then much, much later, there was an article that someone sent to me and there was this photo, and in fact I am now satisfied that he existed.

Maybe there wasn’t just one, but many chicken men…

There might have been a Chicken Man school. It could have been, now that we’re thinking about it, some kind of a strange community of Buddhist monks. I think it’s possible that there was some type of guru who would contract with the guy in Queens who would ship out entertaining chickens one by one as each acolyte finished his training and was then ceremonially given his chicken, which is sort of like getting your wings (laughing), and is sent out to do God’s work.

It could be a correspondence class.

I don’t think so. I think they have to go to a place where they’re actually taught. I don’t think that it’s the kind of thing that could actually be codified. And then, when they’re ready, after having done a few little turns in the neighborhood under supervision, the day comes when he goes out. They’re kind of like Salvation Army Santas. They each have a little turf.

Are we going to see it in a book someday?

If I remember.

Speaking of new books, will there ever be a third installment in “The Snarkout Boys” series?

Who knows. There will be a sequel to “Lizard Music” though, because I signed a contract.

Wow! I would appreciate that. (I don’t know what I meant by that. Maybe I thought that he was offering me a free copy.)

I appreciate the contract.

Have you finally found a company that you feel comfortable dealing with? I know that you’ve had problems with editors and the like in the past.

I am very happy now. I have an excellent editor at Shibar, Strauss and Jahoo.

Shamoo? (Did I mention that I was drunk…)

Jahoo. Shamoo is the name of the editor by some strange coincidence. We have a whale of a time.

Do you ever get tanked? (…and getting drunker?)

Occasionally… And then I have another publisher who is doing another kind of a book which my wife, Jill, is doing the illustrations for.

I’ve seen her stuff. I’ve run an eye over her books, but I’ve never read one. (She also writes young adult novels.)

They’re very good. She’s a better writer than I am, but we keep it quiet. So, another company which shall remain nameless, because they haven’t been named yet – it’s a new company, but they have in fact contracted her books. And, the sequel to “Lizard Music” will be a Bantam, Doubleday, Dell, Wal-mart, whatever when it comes out.

And which one were they talking about making a movie of?

I’m not going to say.

You can’t say?

I’m not going to say. I could say.

Could I guess?

You can guess, I won’t respond. I’d like to hear your guess though.

I won’t even guess then.

Ahh, go ahead and guess.

“Fat Men from Space.”

Very interesting that you should guess that.

Because it’s wrong?

I’m not saying. I’m just saying that it’s very interesting that you should guess that.

Well, that’s the first one of your books that I found as a kid. And, when I first found that book, it was a lot like an event which you’d write about in one of your books. I just stumbled across it in the library and it was as though no one had ever seen it before. No one knew it was there. None of my friends had read it.

Yeah, I have certainly come to like that very much. It’s been my fate, and by now a fate which I completely accept, that no one’s crazy enough… I mean, they’re crazy enough to publish them, which says a lot, there’s a reason to be hopeful… but, they’ve never been crazy enough to promote them. They just lie out there. There are almost seventy of them. They just lie out there. And then people find them. And sometimes I get letters which say, “I can’t believe that your book was in my school library,” or, “I can’t believe that my teacher let me read this book.” Other times I get letters that say, “I am a professor of children’s literature. I teach this stuff. I’m the chairman of my department. I just came across a book of your which I found mildly interesting and not without merit and then found out that there were sixty others. How in the hell could you have been around all this time doing these things, none of which is any worse than the others, and I’ve never heard of you?” I love that.

Yeah, it’s an incredible feeling when you find something that no one else has found and your books are like that.

Everyone has that feeling. And then they ask their friends if they’ve ever heard of me and they never did. Or, or, think about this, they’re not admitting it.

That might be the case, but I don’t think so. I think that my friends would have admitted it if they had. My friends would admit to anything. I tell them to read your book, but it’s hard for me as an adult to tell other adults to go to the children’s section. I feel kind of sick or perverse as an adult going into the children’s section.

Why, it’s the right place to go?

Well, as a grown-up male, you get strange looks as you walk up and down the aisles.

I suspect you get strange looks anyway.

You might have a point there… The last book that I read of yours, I can’t believe ever got made. It frightens me as an adult and I would think that it would terrify a child. It’s “Devil in the Drain.”

You know, I don’t think that there’s one child whose been terrified by it.

I find it troubling.

Well, adults might… I find it hard to believe that that one got made too.

When I read it, the first thing that came to mind was the old story of the recording artist attempting to nullify his contract with a company he hates by releasing something completely unlistenable.

Oh sure, I’m familiar with doing that.

It’s practically a “My First Book about Schizophrenia” for chrissakes.

Well, did you ever read “Ducks,” that also gave people a little bit of a turn. It’s the one that has the line, “Parents always lie.” Did you ever read “Young Adult Novel”? That was a contract breaker.

Yeah, but those dealt with lying parents, buying and drinking beer under age, and children smoking cigars. I can understand those things, but to hear the Devil talk to a little boy from out of a kitchen drain, that I find unsettling.

That might have to do with your background.

(getting way too personal with Mr. Pinkwater) Well, I do have a bit of a history with what you might call mental illness.

Do you hallucinate? (I’m not sure if he said this or not, but that’s what it sounded like. He may have said, “Is it hereditary?” though.)

No, it’s a neurotransmitter thing called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Basically it means that I worry a whole lot and occasionally question my sanity.

Never do that.

With my particular illness, there’s no basis for the worry regarding my sanity, I’m not in any danger of losing touch with reality. So, in short, I don’t consider myself crazy. I just worry about it a lot, like I do everything else.

It sounds pretty sick to me.

(laughing) Extremely sick.

Well, “Devil in the Drain” unnerve you did it? I always thought that it was just a romp, just my way of introducing the young reader to Satan.

And to the idea of being held accountable by Satan for murdering one’s pet. (In the book, Satan comes up and accuses the boy of killing his fish and disposing of its body down the same said drain.)

I got a lot of correspondence from the religions right about that book. I got one very fine letter from a superintendent of schools from somewhere in the deep south and he wrote to me and said, “Our library has a copy, and since we bought it, I feel entitled to ask you some questions.” I’d already gotten letters castigating me for glorifying Satan. I’d only made him about three inches tall, max, maybe two and a half. I don’t see how that was glorifying him. Had he, as he would in the film version, emerged out of the drain and been eighteen feet tall, shooting fire, they you know… but I didn’t do that.

Is that what he’s going to do in the film version?

No, that’s not the movie. The movie is “Fat Men from Space.”

So, I guessed right?

I didn’t say that… I’m just toying with you.

It has so much potential though. I see Dan Akroyd as the leader of the fat men from space.

His name wasn’t mentioned at the meeting I took today.

You took a meeting today?

Yeah, I did lunch.

Really? How far from New York do you live?

A hundred miles. He came here.

Wow, that means you’re important. (Reading over this now, I sound like I’m being a smart ass, but I really was impressed.)

I am important.

Well, if Dan Akroyd drove all the way there…

The great thing was that I was recognized in the restaurant and he wasn’t… (back to the letter from the superintendent) The first question was, “How did you come to thing of this book?”, then, “Who was your intended reader for the book?”, and then finally, “What was the underlying message of the book?” So my answer to the first question was, “I was in a diner near my home at one in the morning eating a roast beef sandwich when I thought of this book.” The intended reader? “My intended reader is: a kid.” What effect did you intend it to have? “I intend he should laugh.” And the fourth question was, “What’s the underlying message?” And I wrote, “Bless your heart, it takes a certain kind of person to think that there’s an underlying message in a book like this.” And I signed it, “You’re a putz, Daniel Pinkwater.” And he wrote back to me asking what a putz was.

You know, I was sitting here last week after your called me a “big sissy…”

I said that because you wanted to prepare for the interview. I’m not prepared. I’ve been saying that since I was in the second grade.

Well, it led me to think… Here one of my favorite authors just called to tell me that I’m a “big sissy,” what’s next, is Salinger going to call me up and tell me that I’m a “panty waste,” or is Vonnegut going to call me a “momma’s boy”?

Well, we were all together the other day…

Well, my name was bound to come up.

I once had supper with Vonnegut.

How was it? I’ve always thought that the two of you would hit it off.

It was at the New Jersey Librarians Jamboree, which they held, for some reason, in Pennsylvania.

Which he never misses.

Well, his girlfriend was getting a prize, so he was there. It was at this resort which is a honeymoon resort that advertises on television in the New York, New Jersey area.

The place with the bath inside the giant champagne glass?

They have a heart-shaped tub and in the TV ad they had a honeymoon couple drinking champagne in the bubble bath, in the sunken heart-shaped tub.

The “beautiful Mt. Airy Lodge”! I used to live in New Jersey, and I remember these things.

In point of fact, the clientele of the Mr. Airy Lodge are all teenage newlyweds who have never been away from home before. The place is a made over God knows what it was, resort I suppose. The reason that we went was because it was irresistible. I said, “Do we get the optimal suite, do we get the sunken tub, you know, the whole thing?” “Sure,” they said, “if you come, we’ll put you in the mega bridal suite.” We really could not resist it, so we motored over to Pennsylvania and we get there and we go over to reception and there’s… (click)
(A long pause is followed by two drunken misdials to Mr. Pinkwater’s New York home.)
(Pretending to have talked through the entire time we had been disconnected) …laughed and laughed, and then we…

You know, it’s an entertaining story what just happened here on this end. First of all I have a confession to make, I’ve been drinking a few beers.

I suspected as much.

Well, after drinking four beers, I realized that I can’t reach the bathroom with this phone. However, I figured out that I could reach the back door. SO, I was trying to get out the back door to use the restroom, taking advantage of what I knew would be a long Mt. Airy Lodge story, when I accidentlly pulled the phone cord out of the wall. Then, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I’d hung up on you to run toward the indoor plumbing, where I found, much to my surprise, that Linette had just mopped. SO, I fell headlong toward the bowl, just missing the rim of the toilet with my face. I think that I twisted my knee.

Well, you were having more fun than I was. (back to the Mt. Airy Lodge story) So, I go in there and it’s steamy and there are paper cups half full of coffee and torn open envelopes of Sweet-n-Low and a sort of fat, hair-suited, Slavish guy behind the counter and I think… “mob.” And we were then shown to an interesting room in which the plate glass windows were not openable. They were sealed. The central air conditioning was not functioning. It was a freak hot day in the spring. There was cheap, pile carpet on the floor. There was a big bed with a canopy and a mirror in the top of the canopy. I’ve always wondered about that particular fetish. And the stench in that room suggested that for twenty years people had been fucking in that room. It was “funky,” in the old, traditional use of the term.

But it turned you on, right?

Not me.

Jill?

We didn’t have rubber gloves… which we always use. And there was a Zenith television set with a round screen, a black and white Zenith with a circular screen. Also, I have to tell you, the walls of the entire establishment were carpeted with the same cheap, tarry smelling carpet.

People had fucked on the walls too?

I believe so… I think that it was expedient because the plaster was coming up so they just carpeted it over. They just got a hold of a truckload.

What they couldn’t mirror, they carpeted.

In the bathroom, which was carpeted up the walls, there were carpeted steps leading up, the you descend down into, not a heart-shaped, but a cheap Sears pressed metal tub that was recessed in that a platform had been built that you ascend and then you descent into the standard sized bathtub such as you would find in your normal home or your average trailer. And there was candle wax on the carpet around the tub from when there had been romantic moments. And under the TV set, which was on little legs, was a pile of duck feathers, feathers from a wild duck. Now that puzzled me. First of all, someone had failed to vacuum them up which started a chain of thoughts about the room… I was like a shot asking for another room, one with windows that opened. They had to put us in the servants’ wing. Only the help could open their windows. In that room, which was also carpeted up the walls, I killed a bug bigger than anything I saw in Africa. It was the size of a chipmunk. I had to pound it with my shoe for a good five minutes to get it to stop twitching. Also, they played rock-n-roll over the loudspeakers twenty-four hours a day throughout the complex.

As a kid I used to watch those commercials and they turned me on. (At this point I actually start singing the theme from their TV ad campaign.)

The people who go there are oblivious to the fact that it’s a horrible slum. First of all, they’ve never lived in a place that had carpeting, so that’s exciting. And then they have sex, and that’s novel. And, for the rest, there’s rock-n-roll everywhere, playing on speakers around the clock. So it’s a kind of paradise. Or hell. (They moved out at their own expense to the Holiday Inn across the street)… So, it turns out that Kurt Vonnegut was going to be there, and so I said, “Oh, I’m going to sit with Kurt,” and I simply shifted around the place cards so that we were together at the speakers’ table. And the person in charge said, “No, no, you’re messing it up. It has to be boy, girl, boy, girl.” And I said, “I don’t care. I’m sitting with Kurt. Us novelists are going to sit together.” Well, here come Vonnegut and I introduce myself and he… remembers me.

From where?

From a fan letter. I sent him a good fan letter. Of course, he never answers his mail, but he said, “I remember your letter. I even pinned it up over my desk for a while.” So that made my evening. Then we dined and told each other stories. And, of course, I told him the best stories that I could come up with. For every story that I told him, he topped me. You know, he’s a better writer. Also, every time he ordered a drink, I ordered the same drink and he never ordered the same drink twice. I don’t drink. I mean I can drink, but I can’t drink. That’s the thing. One drink is all I need to be as drunk as I get. There’s nothing gradual about it. So, having a drink, I was in trouble at once, and then I think that I had five drinks. So, by now I didn’t feel any drunker, of course this is my assessment. Perhaps to an impartial observer I would have appeared drunker. He looks at the program and says, “Oh my God, you’re the speaker.” And I said, “That’s right, Kurt.” Then he said, “But you’re shitfaced. How are you going to give a speech? What’s it about?” And I said, “I don’t know, Kurt. I make up on the spur of the moment.” He said, “You do? I work a week on something like this.” Then I thought, “Oh shit, Vonnegut prepares for these.” Then he saw that I was finally scared, which was his intention of course, and he said, “Tell you what. I’ll tell you a joke I haven’t used yet. I’ll give it to you. It will get you out of this horrible trouble you’re about to get in.” He told me a joke that I didn’t think was that funny. It wasn’t bad… I didn’t use his joke… I got up. I gave a speech. It was excellent. But, you know, I was born to be a minimalist. As garrulous as I am in conversation, I’m extremely economical on the page. Writing all these children’s books, not to say later writing all of these pieces of fluff to do on NPR, just increases my ability to write short. It’s harder to write short and I take pride in the fact that I can get it all said in a small space. So, what happened was, this speech I gave ran three minutes on the clock. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It went where it was going. There wasn’t a word wasted. My wife, who was sitting some distance away, or she says this never would have happened, reminds me that my face was very red and that I was chortling a lot. Which I thought was good because it indicates that the speaker’s enjoying himself, and puts the audience in the right frame of mind. I ended with, “I seem to have concluded,” whereupon I went and sat down. There was no applause. There was muttering. Now, I would have thought that after three days in this hell hole… By the way, the food was execrable… I would have thought that anything that would have moved events along so that we could get out of there would have been welcomed. But, in fact, there was a period of years following this in which librarians didn’t ask me anywhere, which is just as well. Vonnegut said it was one of the best talks he ever heard. But he’d been drinking the whole time too.

Have you kept in touch since then?

No, we decently have never spoken or acknowledged… This is the first time that I’ve ever admitted that we ever…

(tape runs out)

There’s a wonderful photo of him and me. I wish I had it to send to you because it would be just fine for your publication.

And you don’t have it?

I could probably find it, but it would take a year. (The sound of him rummaging through drawers…)

I can wait.

(frightened) No, no, no. Well, maybe I could find it and fax it. Wait, here it is! Here’s me as a juicy and simple looking and open faced… like a fat moron. The other great this is that Vonnegut and I have the same suit on. The same suit that you could buy through the mail for like thirty-nine dollars. Here’s me, this sort of like big, fat goof. Also, you’ve got to remember that here, meeting me, is Vonnegut, author of “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.” And here he meets some guy named Pinkwater who is pretty much the model of Eliot Rosewater. I look like a three hundred pound baby and Vonnegut looks like somebody carved out of an apple. Death in the making. It’s some picture. I’ll fax it to you.