Six Characters in Search of the Family: The Novels of Paul Zindel

Abstract

Six Characters in Search of the FamilyThe Novels of Paul Zindel* James T. Henke (bio) Since the appearance of The Pigman in 1968, the novels of Paul Zindel have been the objects of a good deal of contradictory discussion and evaluation. These works, The Pigman, My Darling, My Hamburger, and I Never Loved Your Mind, have been hailed as delightfully humorous, refreshingly honest attempts to deal with a number of the classic themes of modern literature. On the other hand, they have been condemned, with equal fervor, as squalid pieces of trash, as slick "con jobs," and as simple-minded hack work.1 Obviously, the resolution of such controversy, if indeed any resolution is possible, is an undertaking far too ambitious for a single essay. Therefore, in this discussion my goals will be much more modest. First, I will sketch one thematic approach to Zindel's novels and then attempt a brief evaluation of the literary worth of each. In so doing, I anticipate that, rather than providing a resolution, this discussion will intensify the Zindel debate. In any case, for the moment we will put aside the problem of the literary quality of Zindel's novels and turn instead to the ideas contained in those novels. Better yet, we will focus upon one idea that, with varying degrees of clarity, informs all three of the author's books. The tracing of this major theme may possibly prove rewarding regardless of the merits of the works themselves. So, let us turn first to The Pigman. The hero of Zindel's first novel is John Conlan, sixteen years old, a bright, imaginative, rebellious high school sophomore. The heroine is Lorraine Jensen, sixteen years old, a bright, somewhat less imaginative, and somewhat less rebellious high school classmate. John and Lorraine are friends, and the novel is their collaboration on a first-person, reflective account of their experiences with Mr. Pignati, the Pigman. By page eleven of the book the reader has been introduced to the respective parents of the protagonists. John's father, whom he calls the "Bore," is a reformed alcoholic and a thorough-going materialist, [End Page 130] a preoccupied commodities broker who cheats on his income tax. John's mother is a compulsive housekeeper who will not allow the boy to use her spotless living room. Lorraine is a bit better off. She has only one parent, a divorced mother, a private nurse who specializes in terminal cancer cases so that she can sell the dying patient to the highest-bidding mortuary. The reader can easily understand, then, why both John and Lorraine are lonely and why, as Beverly Haley and Kenneth Donelson note in a recent article, they attempt to escape the loveless reality of their existences by guzzling beer and playing mischievous games.2 That is, until they meet the Pigman. Angelo Pignati, the third major character of the novel, is a sixtyish widower who is attempting to escape his own unfaceable reality: he cannot admit to himself that his wife is dead. Rather, he insists upon pretending that she is visiting a sister in California. Obviously, like the children, he lives a life without love; like the children, he yearns for something, for someone. When these three meet quite by accident, their lives are changed, but not in the way critics generally assume. For instance, Haley and Donelson write: "Then they [the children] find a substitute parent in Mr. Pignati, a childless widower, who becomes the parent neither has ever known, as they become the children he has never had."3 Although close, this is not quite on the mark. None of Zindel's heroes and heroines is seeking a surrogate parent. Quite to the contrary, all of Zindel's paired protagonists (and the reader encounters these boygirl teams in all three novels) have rejected the subordinate role of child and are seeking to assume for themselves the dominant identity of parent. In other words, what they attempt to do is in various ways to create their own families in order to successfully fulfill the role of parent, a role at which their own parents have failed so miserably. Thus, in The Pigman John and...