The Pigman

Paul Zindel was born in 1936 on Staten Island, New York. When he was two, his father abandoned the family, leaving his mother to support herself and her young son. Zindel and his mother moved 15 times during his childhood in search of stable work for his mother, leaving Zindel struggling to form relationships, and as a result, he became deeply introverted and withdrawn from his peers. After graduating college, Zindel worked as a high school chemistry teacher for a decade before quitting to pursue his writing career.

He wrote his first play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, about a troubled teenage girl and her school science fair project. The play won a Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Desk Critic’s Circle Award. When an editor for Harper & Row, Charlotte Zolotow, saw the play, she encouraged Zindel to write a novel about teenagers. Drawing from the personalities of a teen boy and girl he once met, Zindel created The Pigman. Zindel sought to channel much of his childhood trauma into his writing; thus, all his work features kids and teens struggling with difficult home lives and searching to find their place in a dangerous and unforgiving world. Zindel says, “Eight hundred and fifty-three horrifying things had happened to me by the time I was a teenager. […] If you haven’t croaked before finishing [The Pigman], then you’d understand how I survived being a teenager” (A Message from the Author). Zindel’s raw, honest, vulnerable characters resonated with teenagers who previously had few choices in books portraying a realistic view of teenage life, so a new genre of novels was born (Scholastic).

When The Pigman was published in 1968, Zindel and other authors, such as S.E. Hinton, were writing novels specifically directed toward young people ages 14 to 21, but the options were few, and most of the novels failed to convey an authentic young adult voice. Literary critics considered The Pigman a landmark text for pushing the YA genre into a more realistic direction. Though earlier novels like The Catcher in the Rye featured teenagers as the protagonist, Zindel worked to authentically capture the experience of being a teenager with all its temptations and emotional highs and lows. Critics credit Zindel with channeling a convincing teenage voice that reveals their innermost fears and anxieties, but it is Zindel transmitting his personal experience of an unhappy childhood and adolescence that lends authenticity to his narrative voice. Zindel paved the way for authors like Judy Blume and Robert Cormier, who, in the decades after, filled bookshelves with stories for teenagers in which they could see themselves represented.

Though The Pigman became an instant classic and is still widely read in high school classrooms today, the novel did not come without controversy. Known for its notable use of teenage slang, curse words, underage drinking and smoking, and insinuations of sex, the novel came under fire from parents and school board officials, and the novel found its way onto several banned books lists. The book was first contested in Plano, Texas, by the Parental Rights Council, citing words such as “raunchiest,” “excruciating,” and “subliminally” as problematic and dangerous ("Humor, Bathos, and Fear: An Interview with Paul Zindel"). The novel also contains outdated language relating to body image, neurodiversity, and sexual orientation that is now considered biased and potentially damaging to readers.

While the novel found an enthusiastic fan base in the past, in some ways, Zindel’s work has not stood the test of time. Though Zindel can be appreciated for creating a new genre and his significant contribution to the literary canon, young adult readers can now find novels that feature more diverse and inclusive storylines that still maintain an authentic teenage voice without using hurtful words or damaging language.