Paul Zindel

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Paul Zindel, Jr. (May 15, 1936 – March 27, 2003) was an American playwright, young adult novelist, and educator.

Early life

Zindel was born in Tottenville, Staten Island, New York, to Paul Zindel, Sr., a policeman, and Betty Zindel, a nurse; his sister, Betty (Zindel) Hagen, was a year and a half older than him. Paul Zindel, Sr. ran away with his mistress when Zindel was two, leaving the trio to move around Staten Island, living in various houses and apartments.

Zindel wrote his first play in high school. Throughout his teen years, he wrote plays, though he trained as a chemist at Wagner College and spent six months working at Allied Chemical as a chemical writer after graduating. Zindel took a creative-writing course with the playwright Edward Albee while he was an undergraduate. Albee became his mentor and was an advocate for Zindel. He later quit and worked as a high-school Chemistry and Physics teacher at Tottenville High School on Staten Island for ten years. Zindel seemed to gravitate toward behavior that allowed him to observe the reactions of others in strange situations: Olen Soifer, visiting with his father Dave, who was the long-time lab technician at the high school, remembers seeing Zindel wearing black shoes with the front of one cut off, such that his white-socked toes could not be missed sticking out of the shoe.

Personal life and death

Zindel was married to Bonnie Hildebrand from 1973, divorcing her in 1998. They had two children; novelist Lizabeth Zindel, and son David, a publisher. Paul Zindel died in New York City from lung cancer in 2003, at the Jacob Perlow Hospice in Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. He is buried in Moravian Cemetery, Staten Island.

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Career

He wrote The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, his first and most lucrative play. In 1970, and on Broadway in 1971, the play was off-Broadway, and the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama was awarded for the performance. Nonetheless, this play was also chastised for being too elliptical or too difficult to comprehend. Despite this, it was also made into a 1972 film by twentieth Century Fox, directed by Paul Newman and starring his wife Joanne Woodward. Charlotte Zolotow, a Harper & Row vice president, contacted him shortly after learning about writing for her publishing house.

Zindel wrote a total of 53 books, but not one of them was targeted at teenagers or teens. Several were set in his hometown, Staten Island, when it was announced. They tended to be semi-autobiographical, focusing on teen misfits with abused or neglectful parents. Zindel himself grew up in a single-parent household; his mother worked in a variety of roles: hat-check girl, shipyard worker, puppy breeder, and eventually, a licensed practical nurse. They moved often, and his mother was often involved in "get-rich-quick" schemes that failed. They were abandoned early in his life by his father early in his life. In Confessions of a Teenage Baboon, this upbringing was the most realistically depicted.

Despite the often dark subject matter of his books, which explore loneliness, loss, and abuse's consequences, they are also full of humour. Several of his books have zany names, such as My Darling, My Hamburger, Pardon Me, My Eyeball, and My Eyeball. or a Teenage Baboon's Confessions.

"My Darling, My Hamburger" addresses teen sexuality, violence in the household, teen pregnancy, and abortion.

The Pigman, first published in 1968, writes about passion and finding people in strange places. It is widely taught in American classrooms and made it onto the list of the most frequently banned books in America in the 1990s; for example, Plano, Texas parents expressed reservations about offensive words and sexual themes. "I ignore critics the majority of the time," Zindel said. The perfect story, according to me, is a dream.

Zindel was given the annual Margaret A. Edwards Award by the American Library Association in 2002, recognizing his continuing "important and lasting contribution to young adult literature." The jury selected five works from 1968 to 1993: Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds; My Darling, My Hamburger; and the Pigman trilogy. The Pigman "one of the first authentic young adult books" is cited in the article, and the panel chair stated that "Paul Zindel knows and acknowledges the challenges young adults face day to day." He has the ability to portray young adults in a sincere and realistic manner. He created the characters almost 40 years ago and now talk to today's teenagers.

Zindel wrote a number of speculative fiction books for children or young adults, mainly in the horror genre, starting with Loch in 1994.

Zindel has worked in Hollywood, including the screenplays for Up the Sandbox and Mame.

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