Zindel, Paul, 1936-2003.playwright
Paul Zindel, Author and Prize-Winning Playwright, Dies at 66
By JAMES BARRON
New York Times, March 28, 2003Paul Zindel, who drew on memories of his troubled childhood on Staten Island for a prize-winning play with a tongue-twisting title, "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds," died yesterday at the Jacob Perlow Hospice at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. He was 66.
The cause was cancer, said his daughter, Lizabeth Zindel.
Mr. Zindel had been a high school chemistry teacher for six years, demonstrating basic chemical reactions and explaining concepts like atomic numbers and covalent bonds, when "The Effect of Gamma Rays" opened in Houston. As with other plays that were staged before he quit teaching in 1969, he had written it in his spare time and seemed to relish his outsider status — he never went to the theater, he said, until he was already a published playwright.
"The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" was "one of the most discouraging titles yet devised," Clive Barnes said in his review in The New York Times. The play focused on an abusive, beleaguered mother and her two daughters, one with unexpected scientific talent, the other with instincts that mirror the mother's. Mr. Zindel contrasted the marigolds one daughter grows for a science project — marigolds that had been exposed to radiation, and grow abnormally — to the family, which mirrored his own.
"Our home was a house of fear," Mr. Zindel once said. "Mother never trusted anybody, and ours wasn't the kind of house someone could get into by knocking on the front door. A knock at the door would send mother, sister and me running to a window to peek out." He said his mother conditioned him to believe that the world was out to get him, and he retreated into a secret world of puppet shows in cardboard boxes.
Mr. Zindel was born on May 15, 1936, in the Tottenville section of Staten Island. His father was a police officer who abandoned the family. Mr. Zindel's mother, a nurse who also worked as a shipyard laborer, hat-check attendant and dog-breeder, took in dying patients as boarders. Mr. Zindel did not read much as a child and said he he wrote for people who did not like to read.
He wrote plays and sketches in high school, including one about a pianist who recovers from a serious illness and is acclaimed for playing "The Warsaw Concerto" at Carnegie Hall. "For this literary achievement, I was awarded a Parker pen," Mr. Zindel recalled in 1970. He also took a creative writing course with the playwright Edward Albee while he was an undergraduate. But his bachelor's and master's degrees were in chemistry, both from Wagner College, which later awarded him an honorary doctorate.
"The Effect of Gamma Rays," first produced in Houston, opened Off Broadway in 1970. The following year, it moved to Broadway, where it ran for 819 performances. It won Mr. Zindel an Obie Award in 1970 for Best American Play and a Pulitzer Prize in 1971, and he wrote the screenplay for the film version, which was directed by Paul Newman and starred Joanne Woodward. It has been revived by the Jean Cocteau Rep at the Bouwerie Lane Theater in Manhattan; the next performance is April 4.
Mr. Zindel wrote several other plays in the 1970's and 1980's, though none was the success that "The Effect of Gamma Rays" was. He also wrote novel after novel for teenagers. His first, "The Pigman" (1968), focused on two alienated teenagers who take advantage of an old man — another situation that was autobiographical, he said. He followed "The Pigman" with a string of works that included "My Darling, My Hamburger" (1969), "I Never Loved Your Mind" (1970), "Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball" (1976), "Confessions of a Teenage Baboon" (1977) and "The Undertaker's Gone Bananas" (1978).
Mr. Zindel married Bonnie Hildebrand, a novelist, in 1973. They were divorced in 1998. Besides his daughter, he is survived by a son, David, of Los Angeles, and a sister, Betty Hagen, of Edison, N.J.
For his novels, Mr. Zindel said, he reworked experiences from his high-school teaching days, but in "The Effects of Gamma Rays," the character Beatrice "really conveys my mother and the house I lived in."
"Like my mother, Beatrice was a scorned woman whose husband had left her, and who was left to raise two kids who were like a stone around her neck. She felt that the world was lurking out there to ridicule her clothes and to attack her with unkindness."
She seemed to think he had done the same thing when he read the play to her. "At the end of it she said, `How could you? How could you expose me to the world as a kleptomaniac and a manic-depressive nurse?' " he recalled in an interview last year with School Library Journal. "I felt so badly the way she had been hurt. But then she asked, `Who is going to play me on television?' When I told her Eileen Heckart" — who won a Golden Globe award and was nominated for an Academy Award for the 1956 thriller "The Bad Seed" — "she said, `Oh! Well, that's wonderful, then.' My mother only cared which actress was going to play her."
'Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds' Author Dies
March 27, 2003, 7:29 PM EST
Newsday.comPlaywright Paul Zindel, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" died Thursday at the age of 66.
Zindel died of cancer at the Jacob Perlow Hospice in Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, according to his daughter, Lizabeth Zindel.
Zindel was also the best-selling author of young-adult fiction, but it was "Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds," which starred Sada Thompson, that first brought him fame. The play about a young girl who lives with her abusive mother and epileptic sister opened off-Broadway in April 1970 and ran for nearly two years.
Originally written for television, "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1971 and the following year was made into a movie starring Joanne Woodward and directed by Paul Newman.
Zindel's Broadway plays included "And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little" (1971), "The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild" (1972) and "Ladies of the Alamo" (1977). He also wrote the screenplays for several movies including "Up the Sandbox" (1972), which starred Barbra Streisand, and "Mame" (1974), which had Lucille Ball in the title role.
Zindel also wrote more than two dozen books for children and young adults, starting in 1968 with "The Pigman." Among his other better known titles were "My Darling, My Hamburger" and "The Pigman's Legacy."
In addition to his daughter, Zindel is survived by a son, David Zindel.
Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press
A Bibliography from FantasticFiction
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January 21, 2002Paul Zindel named Edwards winner
Paul Zindel, author of "The Pigman" (1968), "The Pigman's Legacy" (1984), "The Pigman & Me" (1993), "My Darling, My Hamburger"(1969), and "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds: A Drama in Two Acts" (1971), is the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award honoring his lifetime contribution in writing for young adults.
Zindel's versatility as a storyteller is demonstrated in his numerous books, plays and autobiography - many of which remain in print today. The books recognized are published by Harper Collins and Bantam Dell Publishing.
"Paul Zindel knows and understands the reality young adults deal with day-to-day," said Committee Chair Mary Long, a teacher-librarian at Wilson Middle School in Plano, Texas. "He has the ability to depict young adults in an honest and realistic way. The characters he developed nearly 40 years ago still speak to today's teens."
The award, sponsored by School Library Journal and administered by the Young Adult Library Service Association (YALSA), was announced January 21 at the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in New Orleans. Zindel will receive $2,000 at the YALSA Awards Luncheon during the ALA Annual Conference to be held in Atlanta in June 2002.
In "The Pigman," widely recognized as one of the first authentic young adult novels; its sequel "The Pigman's Legacy;" and "My Darling, My Hamburger," Zindel's teen characters search for a sense of self, a way to connect with others and an understanding of the adult world into which they are moving.
The autobiographical "The Pigman and Me," reveals the experiences that provided the foundation for his fictional character Pigman. In "My Darling, My Hamburger" a cutting-edge novel for its time, characters grapple with issues of relationships, sexuality, friendship and taking responsibility for their actions. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning play "The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds," Zindel masterfully creates a poignant character that is bound to succeed despite overwhelming odds. This play continues to be performed by teens today.
Zindel currently lives in New Jersey. He earned a bachelor's of science and a master's of science degree from Wagner College, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by his alma mater. Zindel demonstrates to teens that they have worth and can contribute to the world. Serious issues are lightened by an offbeat sense of humor.
Members of the Edwards Award Committee are Mary Long, chair; Maria Gentle, Arlington County Public Library, Arlington, Va.; Andrew Hunter, Dallas Public Library; Joanne Rosario, New York Public Library; and Susan Rosenzweig, consultant, Lincoln, R.I. YALSA is a division of the ALA. More information on the Edwards Award can be found online at: http://www.ala.org/yalsa/edwards/index.html.
http://www.harperchildrens.com/catalog/author_xml.asp?authorID=12949
Paul Zindel who won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Effects of Gamma Rays On Man-In-the-Moon Marigolds,once again draws upon his scientific background for Reef Of Death. His most recent books for Harper Collins include The Doom Stone and Loch, both Recommended books for the Reluctant YA Reader (ALA), and the tragicomic memoir The Pigman & Me, which School Library Journal said in a starred review "allows readers a glimpse of Zindel's youth, gives them insight into some of his fictional characters, and provides many examples of universal experiences that will make them laugh and cry." The Pigman & Me was both a 1993 ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a 1993 ALA Notable Children's Book.
Mr. Zindel lives in Montague, New Jersey.
