topics: |  fiction | juvenile | classic | usa

[In his freshman year, John let off 23 bombs - you take a firecracker "tin
can" and mould a piece of clay around it and hold a candle attached to the
fuse - abt 8 minutes.  Boy's john next to dean's office.
Then he did "fruit rolls" - all the kids would roll 34 "sick, undernourished,
antique" apple from the cafeteria on the aisles - like "a herd of buffalos
stampeding" "every one of the fruit rolls was successful" except for once
when the substitute was a retired postman who was so enthu about the old days
at the P.O. that J doesn't feel like giving the signal...]

But I gave up all that kid stuff now that I'm a sophomore.3

Lorraine:

John distorts.  When he isn't out-and-out lying. 7

"You're not a pretty girl, Lorraine," [mother] has been nice enough
to inform me on a few occasions, "but you don't have to walk about
stoop-shouldered and hunched." 9

I stood on that corner [waiting for the schoolbus] w all the kids, and nobody
talked to me.  I made believe I was interested in looking at the trees and
houses and clouds and stray dogs and whatever - anything not to let on how
lonesome I felt inside. 10

I'm sure they're noticing how awful my hair is or I'm too fat or my dress is
funny.  12

John:
Like Lorraine told you, I really am very handsome and do have fabulous eyes.
... Miss King, this English teacher goes for me the way she always laughs a
little when she talks to me and says I'm such a card.  A card she calls me,
which sounds ridiculous coming out of the mouth of an old-maid English
teacher who's practically fifty years old. I really hate it when a teacher
has to show that she isn't behind the times by using some expression which
sounds so up-to-date you know for sure she's behind the times. Besides, card
really isn't up-to-date anymore, which makes it even more annoying. In fact,
the thing Lorraine and I liked best about the Pigman was that he didn't go
around saying we were cards or jazzy or cool or hip. He said we were
delightful, and if there's one way to show how much your're not trying to
make believe your're not hehind the times, it's to go around saying people
are delightful. 14

[phone gags]
   "Is your refrigerator running?"
   "Yes."
   "Go catch it then."
And we called every drugstore.
   "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"
   "Yes."
   "Then let him out."

[New game call up random numbers from ph book and try keeping them on the
phone for the maximum time.  This is how they meet Pigman.  They pretend they
are from a charity.  After a long monologue including several jokes, he
promises them 10$. ]

"Mrs. Conlan goes to the store and tells the clerk he forgot to give her
Green Stamps the last time she was in, and she knows very well she's
lying. It's a kind of subconscious, schizophrenic fibbing,.

The way her old lady talks you'd think Lorraine needed internal plastic
surgery and seventeen body braces, but if you ask me, all she needs is a
little confidence. 15

One time last term Miss King asked him what happened to the book report he
was supposed to hand in on Johnny Tremain, and he told her that he had
spilled some coffee on it the night before, and when the coffee dried, there
was still sugar on the paper and so cockroaches ate the book report. You
might also be interested in knowing that the only part of Johnny Tremain that
John did end up reading was page forty-three--where the poor guy spills the
molten metal on his hand and cripples it for life. That was the part he
finally did his book report on--just page forty-three--and he got a ninety on
it! I only got eighty-five, and I read the whole thing. Of course, writing
book reports is not exactly the kind of writing I want to do. I don't want to
report. I want to make things up. In a way I guess that's lying too, except I
think you can tell the real truth with that kind of lying. 23

You just have to know how John does things, and you'll know one thing will
always happen. He'll end up complicating everything.

John won't be like Kenneth "who's married and carries an attache case to Wall
Street every day. He's eleven years older than me. 27

[Their ph is locked by the father after he finds J on the phone too much.
J disables the ph for everyone by putting "airplane glue in the keyhole of the lock"
But he can reach the operator by tapping the button 10x.
calls still go through the operator.  ]
   "You can dial that num yourself, sir."
   "No, I can't.  You see, operator, I have no arms.... They've got this ph
strapped to my head for emergency calls. " 29

... the part the slaughtered me was this great big smile on his face. He
looked so glad to see us I thought his eyes were going to twinkle out of his
head.  He would've made one @#$% of a Santa Claus if you had put a white
beard on him and stuck him on a street corner in December with a little
whiskey on his breath. 32

[posted in the zoo: Which of these are myths? ]
  1. All poisonous snakes have triangular- shaped heads.
  2. Some snakes have stingers in their tails.
  3. You can tell a rattlesnake's age by the number of rattles it has.
  4. Milk snakes will milk a farmer's cow.
  5. Large snakes can live for more than a year without food.
  6. Snakes cannot close their eyes.
  7. Coachwhip snakes will whip people.
  8. Some snakes can roll like a hoop to overtake their victim.
  9. A horsehair rope will keep snakes away from a campfire.
 10. Snakes can hypnotize their prey.  49 [see below for answers]

Personality test

There is a river with a bridge over it, and WIFE and her HUSBAND live in a
house on one side.  The WIFE has a LOVER who lives on the other side of the
river, and the only way to get from one side of the river to the other is to
walk across the bridge or ask the BOATMAN to take you.

 
One day the HUSBAND tells his WIFE that he has to be gone all night to handle
some business in a faraway town. The WIFE pleads with him to take her with
him because she knows she will be unfaithful to him. The HUSBAND aboslutely
refuses to take her because she will only be in the way of his important
business.

So the HUSBAND goes alone. When he is gone, the WIFE goes over the bridge and
stays with her LOVER. The night passes and dawn is almost up when the WIFE
leaves because she must get back to her own house before her HUSBAND gets
home. She starts to cross the bridge but sees an ASSASSIN waiting for her on
the other side, and she knows if she tries to cross, he will murder her. In
terror, she runs up the side of the river and asks the BOATMAN to take her
across the river, but he want 50 cents. She has no money so he refuses to
take her.

The wife runs back to the LOVER's house and explains to him what her
predicament is and asks him for 50 cents to pay the BOATMAN.  The LOVER
refuses, telling her it's her own fault for getting in the situation.  As
dawn comes up the WIFE is nearly out if her mind and decides to dash across
the bridge. When she comes face to face with the ASSASSIN, he takes out a
large knife and stapes her until she is dead.
(image from http://dailycandor.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/pigman.gif)

Now write down the names of the characters in the order in which you think
they were most responsible for the WIFE's death.

Lorraine: 1. Boatman 2. Husband 3. Wife 4. Lover 5. Assassin
John: 	  1. Boatman 2. Lover 3. Assassin 4. Wife 5. Husband

[Interpretation:
 Symbols: B=magic, H=love, W=fun, L=sex, A=money]

[from Zindel's FAQ at the back:
Q. Where did you get the story about the boatman?
   from the famous playwright   [w:Edward Albee], who told me about it the
   night he and I had a meal together.  He told me he learned it in
   Greece. 155]

I knew Norton had to make-believe he didn't hear that last remark because he
would have had to run after me and try to bash my head in with a rock
otherwise.  It's like paranoia in reverse when people are really calling you
insulting things and you deliberately pretend they aren't. 85

There was no one else to blame anymore. No Bores or Old Ladies or Nortons or
Assassins waiting at the Bridge. And there was no place to hide — no place
across any river for a boatman to take us. Our life would be what we made of
it — nothing more, nothing less. 148

other reviews: kirkus

The Pigman is Mr. Angelo Pignati, dupe, patron, playmate, responsibility of
high school sophomores John Conlan and Lorraine Jensen, who take turns
telling what happened. . "but you really can't say we murdered him." Hooked
like that, you really can't stop reading either, although this echoes the
current preoccupation with floundering kids and niggling parents and the
abyss between, underlined: "I don't want to be a phony... I want to be me."
Lorraine and John are sympatico, not sweethearts; home and school are hollow;
not so old Mr. Pignati pretending that his wife isn't dead, showing off the
collection of pigs he gave her, going to the zoo every day to visit the
baboon. And telling jokes and playing games like a kid, with TV and
refreshments and no sweat: a refuge. Then he is hospitalized with a heart
attack (after chasing John up the stairs on roller skates) and Lorraine and
John have the house to themselves. The first evening they sense each other
differently. Before Mr. Pignati is scheduled to come home they throw a bottle
party and the house is in chaos, the pigs shattered, when he walks in. Not
smiling; crying, a policeman says after. Contrite, Lorraine and John insist
he meet them at the zoo the next day but the baboon has died and the Pigman
has a fatal stroke. "There was no one else to blame anymore. . . . Our life
would be what we made it--nothing more, nothing less." Insistently
rebellious as this is (John smokes, drinks, plays practical jokes
deliberately), it's not churlish like some of its sort. And though the kids
miss coalescing as individuals, there are moments when you know just what
they're talking about.