The Pigman and He

Author, screenwriter, and playwright Paul Zindel has almost total recall of his childhood. It will come as no surprise to Zindel's many readers that those memories are dark—filled with recollections of a domineering single mother who moved her two children from one home to another on Staten Island, NY. Zindel, the recipient of this year's Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime contributions to young people's literature, recalls that as a boy he felt worthless and friendless. He responded to those feelings of low self-esteem and alienation by creating his own imaginary heroes and heroines.

Though later trained as a science teacher, Zindel felt compelled to write novels and plays that portray sensitive, yet conflicted, young adults. His still-popular first novel, The Pigman (Harper, 1968), tells the story of two estranged teens, John Conlan and Lorraine Jensen, and their relationships with Angelo Pignati (a.k.a. the Pigman), a gentle-hearted adult who befriends each of them unconditionally. The Pigman garnered the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for fiction and was selected as one of School Library Journal's most influential books of the 20th century (see "One Hundred Books That Shaped the Century ," January 2000). Zindel's other works include the novels My Darling, My Hamburger (Harper, 1969), Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeballs (Harper, 1976), The Undertaker's Gone Bananas (Harper, 1978), and a memoir, The Pigman and Me (HarperCollins, 1992). His autobiographical play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, ran for 819 performances on Broadway and earned him the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Zindel says of his writings, "I believe I must convince my readers that I am on their side." He accomplishes that with honesty, dignity, and humor.

You're known for creating offbeat titles, eccentric characters, and wacky off-the-wall scenes. How do you manage to mix humor with heart-wrenching themes and plots?

UCLA once called me and told me that they wanted to study my brain. It was for a graduate course in psychology. The professor said the class would read everything that I had ever written, and at the end of the course, they would share with me everything they found out about what makes me tick. It was very exciting, and I couldn't wait to go. The first two and a half hours were so utterly boring, but the last half-hour was very electric.

What did you learn?

One of the things they said was that I used hyperbole automatically in my style, and that I used a quality I hadn't thought about—pathos. I'm either exaggerating or I'm taking very lofty concepts and bringing them down to earth. That comes naturally. It comes from my desperation to fit in when I was growing up, because I never did. I was moved about and I really never had friends, though I longed for them. When you are constantly the new kid in town, you end up being attacked a whole lot. Because I wasn't a strong boy, I had to rely on words. So in a sense, like Dorothy Parker, I sharpened my wit, and I sharpened my tongue. That's a lot of what made me build into my voice aspects of wit, aspects of ridicule, aspects of attack, and aspects of drama and conflict. I put together one seemingly polite phrase and then fracture it with something totally unexpected; it gives this oxymoronic look to the character or scene, which creates an illusion of slang.

In The Pigman, you use symbols, such as "@#$%," in place of four-letter words. Was that your original intent or did the publisher encourage you to avoid using controversial language?

I had to do what was comfortable for me, and I just felt that cursing—now I feel it more than ever—isn't really necessary. There is a difference between written words and spoken words. I know curse words are thrown all around in kids' mouths, but such words don't help create a novel or a play. The type of language that has the highest literary merit does not happen to include massive amounts of curses, though I can personally curse like a trooper.

John and Lorraine are both narrators, alternating every other chapter in The Pigman. Did you consciously set out to write the story that way, or did the structure emerge as you began writing?

It was something that came to me naturally when I was thinking about what kind of book I was going to write. It came out of my own psychology, my own viscera. It came to me not by cold calculation but by letting feelings, emotions, some wisdom, and a touch of training maybe bubble up into the consciousness.

The structure certainly works well because it gives the reader two very different perspectives, and reveals John and Lorraine's developing relationship.

Balance is another important element here. I knew if I were to write just [from the perspective of] the boy, the book might be darker and might be lopsided and not a true reflection of reality. By putting in the girl, I gave another view—a psychological view to give balance so that the world was not as dark as John painted it. I think Lorraine left the possibilities open and perhaps examined things more.

One young critic says he likes The Pigman because its characters aren't typical. I would argue that the characters may appear unusual on the outside but inside, their lives are fairly common.

I think one of the reasons for my success is because of character identification. On the surface, a character may seem eccentric and irregular, but what my fan mail from teenagers tells me is that my characters are just like them. They ask me: Do you really know John? Do you really know Lorraine? I tell them that I know at least three people who are just like them. Even if the reader comes from a privileged and balanced family, unlike John and Lorraine, they still know people like that. They still recognize the instincts and emotions involved. Basically, I guess that's what everyone mainly reads for.

In your autobiography, The Pigman and Me , you speak of a strong relationship between you and Nonno Frankie Vivona, a caring adult who was your own personal Pigman, or best friend. Does every teenager need a Pigman?

Yes, Yes, Yes. Kids need a special man or woman in their lives who can teach them all the qualities of friendship, kindness, courage, and help them develop self-confidence. Nonno Frankie taught me all the very basic rules of growing up that were supposed to be given to me by my mother and father. My father ran off with a girlfriend when I was two years old, and my mother was manic-depressive. Needless to say, I didn't come from a traditional background. I notice that the kids in my neighborhood today are crazed, undisciplined, wild, and disenfranchised. When I interact with them, I try to be the friend to them that Nonno Frankie was to me.

I know that you grew up surrounded by fear, and that your mother conveyed the feeling that the world was out to get you. Which of your characters is most fearful of the world?

I think Beatrice in The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is the most fearful. Her character really conveys my mother and the house I lived in. Like my mother, Beatrice was a scorned woman whose husband had left her, and who was left to raise two kids who were like a stone around her neck. She felt that the world was lurking out there to ridicule her clothes, and to attack her with unkindness.

What was your mother's reaction to the play?

My mother was dying of cancer at the time this play was getting ready to go on television. It was before it became well known as a stage performance. I read my mother the play, and at the end of it she said, "How could you? How could you expose me to the world as a kleptomaniac and a manic-depressive nurse?" I felt so badly the way she had been hurt. But then she asked, "Who is going to play me on television?" When I told her Eileen Heckert, who had received an Academy Award [nomination] for the [1956 movie] The Bad Seed, she said, "Oh! Well, that's wonderful then." My mother only cared which actress was going to play her.

Your novels and plays always end in hope. Do you feel it's important to convey hope to your teenage readers, especially those who live in what seems like a rather hopeless world?

Writing has a very selfish level for me. It's basically problem solving for oneself. If I'm going to write a story that has any value or truth in it at all, I have to be connected to it in a very important way. My mind goes through a process where dreams are manifested, and characters are created that take on the qualities of my fears and problems. Instead of using numbers to solve a calculus problem, I create these numbers as different characters. I assign them each different values, and they go into conflict with each other until, like an equation, they are synthesized and then some glimpse of an answer emerges. There's never been an easy answer for me in anything in life, I guess. That's why whatever hope is arrived at in my life and in my novels and plays is done through great obstacles.