I had long ago expected the new book from Daniel Pinkwater to be something of a kid’s novel overlaying a telling of The Iliad and \/ or The Odyssey. Unless I’m missing something, it wasn’t. When I saw the cover for the first time, it became clear that it would be a retelling of the ancient Turtle related Creation myths.
\nI am somewhat flummoxed by some reader reaction that I’ve seen in the blogosphere, to the effect that it ended abruptly. I don’t really see that. It ended the way it had to. It’s a more or less complete book which doesn’t trail off, unlike… say… The Education of Robert Nifkin. (I duck my head as someone hurls a book at me.)<\/p>\n
Okay. Footnote this passage, toward the end, and I do so because I have an excuse as it is a mash of political references and this is a political – oriented blog. “Humma humma… goo goo… manifest destiny (1)… waka waka (2)… power to the proletariat (3)… ish Kabibble (4)… New World Order (5)… remember the Maine (6)… hoo hoo… thousand points of light (7)… we don’t want to fight, but by jingo (8)… oop shoop… guns or butter (9)… lebensraum (10)… no child left behind (11)… city on a hill (12)… I feel your pain (13)… walla walla bing bang (14)… day that will live in infamy (15)… who put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder? (16)<\/em><\/p>\n He was clean out of his mind, glassy-eyed, and a little scarier than the thousands of prehistoric carnivores listening to his weird speech. I knew what he was doing. He was the warm up guy. He was getting the crowd ready for the appearance of Kkhkktonos.(17)<\/em><\/p>\n (1) Originally used by the Jackson Democrats desiring the territorial expansion from the Atlantic on the Pacific. We can thank James K Polk for “annexing” much of Mexico — annexing being an interesting term in this context, as is “liberate”. (3) Phrase that spurs on the Communist Revolution, I suppose. Leads to the Dictatorship of the Prolatariat, which doesn’t strike me as a terribly positive thing.<\/p>\n (5) Long been around, long been seized upon by conspiracy theorists and, I guess conspiracy analysts. Wikipedia tells me it started with Wilson, which makes sense in terms of the fear of the “One World Government”. HG Wells wrote a book in 1940 which posited the positive nature of such a thing — Overly idealistic, methinks, it sits on my bookshelf. It may have been re-triggered into popular conciousness when George H W Bush talked about it in his speeches to describe the new post-Cold War world political environment.<\/p>\n (6) … and thus a murky set of events hyped up by Hearst’s tabloid papers leads the US into the Spanish – American War.<\/p>\n (7) George H W Bush’s call for action for private charity organizations to fight poverty. Mocked by Neil Young in the lines “We’ve got a thousand points of light… for the homeless man”.<\/p>\n (8) Sounds a lot like Theodore Roosevelt, our burly and jingoistic president. (12) John Winthrop used it in 1630. Ronald Reagan used it, as did John F Kennedy, for their political purposes. (14) 1958 song “The Witch Doctor”.<\/p>\n (15) Remember Pearl Harbor.<\/p>\n (16) I admit to having to google this up. It seems the verb should be “threw” and not “put”. A Bing Crosby song.<\/p>\n (17) Ancient Norse God, Kronos, allowing the destruction \/ creation parable to be completed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had long ago expected the new book from Daniel Pinkwater to be something of a kid’s novel overlaying a telling of The Iliad and \/ or The Odyssey. Unless I’m missing something, it wasn’t. When I saw the cover for the first time, it became clear that it would be a retelling of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSholmos Bunyip, wearing a gold Roman breastplate and a gold helmet, was standing on the suggestum, chanting and mumbling. Most of what he was saying was gibberish and nonsense syllables, but now and then there was a phrase I could understand.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n(2) Fonzie the Bear. I suspect it has an earlier origin.<\/p>\n
\n(9) Lyndon Johnson’s lament during the Vietnam War. Solved as “Guns AND Butter”. Didn’t seem to work.
\n(10) The Nazi’s version of “Manifest Destiny”.
\n(11) George W Bush’s educational initiative. Full of standardized tests. Disliked by every school teacher I know of, including my mother.<\/p>\n
\n(13) Bill Clinton in 1992 as a way of suggesting that he is in touch with the plight of the common people. Mocked in various ways, as political pandering, and easily ponderable of what else he feels.<\/p>\n