Daniel Pinkwater and surrealism

[kestrell]

One of the wonderful things which Alexx and I get to enjoy in our shared childhood is Daniel Pinkwater books. I didn't really have children's books around when I was a kid, but that's okay, because they are possibly even more fun to experience as an adult, when I can really appreciate them. It's really difficult for me to pick a favorite, because they tend to be so vastly different from one another that each one has its own unique pleasures and surprises, but I looove both the Da Da Ducks and the cat-whiskered girl: the Da Da Ducks because they are absolutely fearless about not conforming to the insidious social pressures which don't really go away, even once we are assumed to have outgrown our teen years, and the cat-whiskered girl because she sees uniqueness and wonder and purpose in things which other people dismiss as scarey and/or broken. The original surrealists seem to have had an antagonism toward blind people, perhaps because so much of what they preached was about an intentional mis-seeing or skewed vision of the world and, for them, blind people kind of threatened their own claim as being the world's original mis-perceivers, but for Pinkwater, surrealism seems to be more fun when it's shared and, possibly, spread as widely as possible throughout the universe.

http://rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com/474330.html
Horace Gerstenblut n'existe pas, or, why Daniel Pinkwater is the greatest living Surrealist

Comments

[rinue]

The original surrealists seem to have had an antagonism toward blind people, perhaps because so much of what they preached was about an intentional mis-seeing or skewed vision of the world and, for them, blind people kind of threatened their own claim as being the world's original mis-perceivers

This is really interesting. I think you're right.