Is Lizard Music still relevant?

Since I hadn’t read Lizard Music by Daniel Pinkwater in a  couple decades, I decided give it a reread.

Lizard Music is one of Pinkwater’s first books, certainly one of the first for a Youjg Adult audience as opposed to a childrens audience. In some ways, it’s more grounded than a lot of his later works but goes just as off the rails when Pinkwater really gets going.

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Eleven-year-old Victor’s parents go on a planned vacation to help their marriage,  leaving him with  his teenage sister. When she goes on a camping trip in the first chapter, he’s left in his own for the rest of the book. From there, Victor discovers late night TV, the nearby city and a secret island of human-sized, intelligent lizards. 

(And, just as a I typed that, I realized that Pinkwater was spoofing the concept of the reptilian conspiracy theory. Not only are the lizards friendly, they have the long term goal of saving the human race from becoming pod people) 

Pinkwater’s work (at least the first twenty years or so of it) has a very low key fantastic element to it. The characters don’t discover a vast hidden conspiracy. They discover that the world they already live im and will continue to live in is just a little more fanatastix than they knew. Discovering a new neighborhood in a city is just as life changing as an enlightened lizard society.

Lizard Music certainly has that in spades. In fact, it might even be more earnest than later books. Victor is a very serious narrator.

There are elements that I wonder how well they’ve aged. The idea of television stations signing for the night is a foreign one to young whipper snappers but that’s the time Victor gets to see the lizards’ tv shows and start his adventures.

More than that, Victor’s extreme latchkey kid experience of being left alone for weeks would probably seem a lot more extreme to a modern audience. Or maybe not. But it does seem more fantastic than it did forty years ago.

I also find myself asking if someone could find the depiction of the Chicken Man, the old black man who serves as Victor’s guide (literally, he’s a licensed guide), as racist. A black spiritual guide is a cliche after all.

That said., I think you can argue against that. The Chicken Man is on his own journey. In fact, the actual ‘adventure’ part of the book (as opposed to Victor’s character arc) is really the Chicken Man’s adventure. Victor is just along  for the ride. Heck, at one point, the Chicken Man has to drag him kicking and screaming along.

Regardless of changing social mores or technology, Daniel Pinkwater did a good job capturing how adolescents think and feel. That’s something that hasn’t changed. Victor and the characters that followed him are quirky but readily identifiable.

Lizard Music is 20% cultural artifact and 80% still relevant today.

The bizarre but gentle world of Daniel Pinkwater

 Daniel Pinkwater was one of my favorite childhood authors, if not my flat out favorite. While I sometimes wonder if the world has forgotten him but he’s not just still kicking but writing so maybe I just hang out with the wrong crowd. 

I’ve found his books to be gently bizarre with insights into isolation and figuring out who you are. Which is pretty important when you’re writing books for kids and young adults. He also has the weirdest titles. His books are strange but the titles are even crazier. 

Case in point, I decided to reread The Snarkoit Boys and the Avocado of Death. While the book features a mad scientist who specializes in avocados, a master criminal obsessed with orangutans and the triumphant return of the chicken man from Lizard Music, the story is still more grounded than the title would suggest. Pinkwater’s fantastic elements have a dingy quality, like Star Wars’ used future look.

Mind you, reading the book as an adult is a different experience. For one thing, I now realize the title is a tribute to the b-movies the characters watch :D

There are some elements that wouldn’t do too well these days. An anti-Semite English teacher being played for laughs definitely stands out. (Although I understand that Pinkwater, himself Jewish, revisits the idea in a more serious book, making me wonder if it’s autobiographical) Not to mention the core concept of teenagers sneaking out of the house to go to an all night movie house. That isn’t as cool as it was in the early 80s.

The other thing that struck me is how urban the book is. While that isn’t uncommon now, it seems like we had decades of children’s books that were set in the country-side during the first chunk of the 20th century. I blame Mark Twain, personally. But a big theme of the book is the characters learning about the eccentric parts of their city, which is based on Chicago.

It is obvious is retrospect but just about every book Daniel Pinkwater wrote that I can think of is about self-discovery. He’s very gentle and exceedingly bizarre in how he goes about it so I’m not surprised I did t always get it when I was young.

Revisiting Daniel Pinkwater with his insight into being a social outcast and how to learn to belong, not to mention the quirkiness of people in general, I can’t help but wonder if he’s always been ahead of his time.

As I mentioned at the start, I’m not sure how much Daniel Pinkwater is still read. (Probably a lot more than I know) However, I think he was and still is very relevant.