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Young Adults
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Contains the books YOUNG ADULT NOVEL and DEAD END DADA. Says author Daniel Pinkwater of this novel of sociological import: "I honestly don't remember writing this. Are you sure there hasn't been some mistake?"
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Paperback, 224 pages
Published
January 1st 1985
by T. Doherty Associates
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A short compilation of Pinkwater’s work, including Young Adult Novel, the stories ‘Dead End Dada’ and ‘The Dada Boys in Collitch’, as well as Kevin Shapiro stories sent in by fans and several pictorial stories featuring graphics made on a very early home computer, possibly pre-Commodore 64. In Young Adult Novel, a group of teenage Dadaists known as the Wild Dada Ducks attempt to waken their high school classmates from the slumber of conformity, with largely failed results. When they discover amo
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If you like Don't Care High by Gordon Korman, you will probably love this. I like parts of it still, but overall it's not one of my Pinkwater favorites. It does have a true sort of anarchic, rebellious spirit to it, I appreciate that.
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Funny. Of course a group of high school student will adopt the goal of bringing Dada to the peers. Of course they aren't really schooled in the subject. Other than the weirdly female-free world they inhabit, I enjoyed it enormously. Anyone who went around publicly reading Rand or Kafka or Hesse should be able to relate (yup, all three at different times). The teen and early twenties may be the only years when your average person really thinks about philosophy at all, let alone tries to spread on
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Young Adults may have been the first Danial Pinkwater book I read. It's a hodgepodge of stuff, including a short novel, called Young Adult Novel, and a couple of followups to that, and a lot of great computer art by Pinkwater—all very funny. When I first read it, in the Eighties, I remember being pretty amazed by the “Young Adults” sagas—which are stories about a group of misfit boys in high school who have a club called the Wild Dada Ducks. I think I was amazed at how closely he echoed my (and
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I’m sad to say that the follow ups to Young Adult Novel just don’t hold up as well as the first. The goofy lightheartedness of the first two becomes more grounded which ruins the goofiness. Luckily there’s a collection of fan made Kevin Shapiro stories that are hilarious and worthy additions.
It turns out that Pinkwater's oft-anthologized novella "Young Adult Novel" is actually the first third of a never-finished novel, "Young Adults." Each third follows the five high school outcasts and would-be intellectuals as they attempt to reinvent themselves based around a barely-understood philosophical principle: first Dada, then Zen, then (in the unfinished third section) Mozart worship. Along the way, they encounter (and often create) obstacles and eccentric antagonists, as their quasi-nih
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Comprising the original Young Adult Novel, a sequel, and one chapter of a third book.
Not my favorite flavor of Pinkwater. The Kevin Shapiro stuff seemed ghoulish and mean spirited. I get that it's a satire of pointlessly depressing YA books, but it had a meaner vibe to it than Pinkwater typically does. Still, I liked the chaotic and deliberately counterintuitive decision process of the Wild Dada Ducks.
My favorite bit was actually the last chapter about them going to college. It seemed like they ...more
Not my favorite flavor of Pinkwater. The Kevin Shapiro stuff seemed ghoulish and mean spirited. I get that it's a satire of pointlessly depressing YA books, but it had a meaner vibe to it than Pinkwater typically does. Still, I liked the chaotic and deliberately counterintuitive decision process of the Wild Dada Ducks.
My favorite bit was actually the last chapter about them going to college. It seemed like they ...more
This book is so amazing.
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Dumb. the story of the Young Adult Novel kids in college. The joke is over and this book is dumb, as well as kind of dirty as the boys discover sex. It's nothing horrible, but Pinkwater's young audience from other books could easily grab this thinking it's like his other work, or like his awesome book with the same title almost: Young Adult Novel.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64... ...more
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64... ...more
Pinkwater's homage to dada, the YA novel, and fan fiction, before most people knew what any of these things were, is even weirder than the rest of Pinkwater's stuff. I love the idea of a gange of teenaged Andre Cordrescus, though I doubt he was ever this uncool. If there is any semblance of a moral--unlike the majority of phoney YA novels, Pinkwater does not try to impose an moral--it's that no philosophy, no guru, no method, is going to help with learning to be yourself.
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The premise was amusing enough in the first story, including their ongoing fiction about Kevin Shapiro and their Dadaist behavior, but I was already tired of it halfway through. Might have struck my funny bone more if I'd read more about Duchamp etc.
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This has a sequel to Young Adult Novel and a third uncompleted sequel that will probably never be finished. I enjoyed the adventures of the Wild Dada (Dharma) Ducks a whole lot and I think if anyone finds this particular edition, you gotta snap it up right then and there.
The primitive computer illustrations in this edition are lovely.
Yeah.. no.
3.5. Strange...but in a good way....I think.......
Strange, strange, strange. But kinda funny.
This collection of mini-books about the Wild Dada Ducks (devotees of Dada, and Zen, and Mozart) is really out there. But I enjoyed it.
This collection of mini-books about the Wild Dada Ducks (devotees of Dada, and Zen, and Mozart) is really out there. But I enjoyed it.
Genius!
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| Real young ADULT novels | 1 | 1 | Apr 07, 2020 05:43AM |
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Daniel Manus Pinkwater is an author of mostly children's books and is an occasional commentator on National Public Radio. He attended Bard College. Well-known books include Lizard Music, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Fat Men from Space, Borgel, and the picture book The Big Orange Splot. Pinkwater has also illustrated many of his books in the past, although for more recent works that
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“I ask the reader- is there any reason to believe that these idiots will fail to blow up the world?
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The answer is: Only by accident will the present power elite, in this country and others, fail to blow up the world.”
