Anderson Rearick III’s Reviews > 5 Novels: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars / Slaves of Spiegel / The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death / The Last Guru / Young Adult Novel > Status Update

What's the moral of the story? There is no moral, it's a DaDa story.

This dark opening is actually a construction by the wild Dada Ducks. Kevin Shapiro is a construction who whose mantel falls on n a REAL Kevin Shapiro. And he declares that "Heroic Realism" as exemplified in comics is a problem for the DaDaist sensibilities.

The Dada Ducks is based on the Dada movement which consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing non-logic as an act of rebellion.

“Young Adult Novel” is starting off with a grim setting. It’s another young protagonist but this one has an invalid/veritable for a father,a confined lunatic for a mother and a prostitute for a sister. Is Pinkwater trying to make a point? I suppose but I’ve no idea what it is.

The solution to the overuse of various spiritual chants and bell ringing is to affirm to all people are in fact all equally enlightened falls a bit flat for me. I'm not sure what to think of the solution. Harold (and Pinkwater) are laughing at the absurd search as if such concerns are a waste of time. The fact that Harold plans to become a Phys-Ed teacher ends the story with a thud.

In "The Last Guru" Pinkwater mixes up the contemporary confusion of faith with his own brand of the fantastic. Thus Harold has real supernatural experiences while a whole host of gurus and spiritualist as well as mainstream faiths flounder. American spiritual gullibility seems the primary target.

Funny to think about Pickle Burgers when we just had the head of Apple suggest that we need to start eating synthetic meat. Harold's father going on about how wrong his brother Roy was allowing a 12 year old kid bet on a horse in spite of the fortune they now have is pretty funny.

In "The Last Guru" we meet Herald Blatz' an 11-year-old whose friend is his uncle Roy who sells mail order shoes, in this strange world Harold makes his first million betting on the ponies and gets to be the guest of the multi millionaire inventor of the zenburger in a castle decorated like a fast food joint. Pinkwater's reality.