Four Different Stories

  Other Dover Books by Daniel Pinkwater

  FOUR HOBOKEN STORIES

  The Magic Moscow

  Attila the Pun

  Jolly Roger

  Looking for Bobowicz

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1975, 1977, 1986, 1997, 2018 by Daniel Pinkwater

  All rights reserved.

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition is a new compilation of the text from these previously published works: The Muffin Fiend (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, New York, 1986), Wingman (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1975), The Magic Goose (Scholastic, Inc., New York, 1997), and Fat Man from Space (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1977).

  International Standard Book Number

  ISBN-13: 978-0-486-82260-0

  ISBN-10: 0-486- 82260-5

  Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

  822605012018

  www.doverpublications.com

  Contents

  Preface

  The Muffin Fiend

  Wingman

  The Magic Goose

  Fat Men from Space

  Preface

  People ask authors, “How did you learn to write?” They even ask me. I usually give the same lame answers every other writer gives . . . read a lot, write a lot, imitate writers you like, take courses in school, force your friends and family to read what you write, or failing that, join a writers’ group where they have to be nice to one another. These are made-up answers. What really happens is writers notice that one day they’re writing, and when anyone asks how it happened, they reason backward from the fact and imagine what sorts of things might have made it happen. Actually, they have no idea.

  I’m going to give you a straight answer. Sort of.

  The reason it’s hard to explain or understand is that we’re talking about writing stuff for other people to read for amusement or instruction. It’s not a note to whomever you live with, reminding him that he’s supposed to pick up corn flakes, or a text to your friend asking if she wants to hang out after school. Everybody who is not illiterate can do writing like that—also read, also use language. Why, in the middle of reading, writing, and using language in the ordinary way, does someone start writing poems or stories or articles about the Louisiana Purchase? Sorry, I can’t tell you.

  I remember thinking I would like to be able to write. I was in college. There was a big library and lots of professors around so, naturally, when I wanted to know something, I asked another kid. I asked James P. Kupetzenmacher, who was a year older and smarter than I was. “How do you learn to write?” I asked him.

  “To be a writer, you have to know about form,” James P. Kupetzenmacher told me.

  “What’s form?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think it’s pretty important.”

  “Do you think if I took some art courses I might learn what form is?”

  “I don’t know. You could give it a try.”

  At this college, anyone could sign up for any course they wanted. You didn’t have to have taken art to get into an art class. All the art I had taken was every Thursday for one semester in junior high school, a visiting art teacher would turn up. I enjoyed it, but we didn’t get terribly far . . . and then they switched us to a semester of music appreciation. But here at college, I could just sign up. They sold charcoal and newsprint pads and those fun stretchy erasers in the bookstore and, bang! I was an art student.

  Now, remember, I was going to study art in order to get an idea of how to be a writer. But as things turned out, studying art was so interesting. Also, knowing I had no wish to be an artist and no talent was so liberating . . . it was impossible to fail at something I never thought I had a chance of success with . . . that it turned into a whole lot of fun and I forgot why I was studying it. Really, for a number of years I never remembered that I ever had any interest in writing.

  But I thought about art all the time. There was a lot to learn, and I wanted to learn it. I even got so I could do actual works that were pretty near impossible to tell from real. I still had no talent, but it turns out you can get around that.

  My teachers were real artists. Half of them were concerned about fame and success . . . and maybe making enough money so they wouldn’t have to teach. One of the things these teachers believed was that you need to have a trademark, or a style all your own, or some kind of gimmick so people will know it’s you. In other words, marketing.

  If I say “soup cans” in this context, right away you know the painter I’m talking about. Even if you don’t know or care anything about painting, you know who it is. This guy was an influential artist and thought a lot of thoughts that turned out to make a difference. The designer of the cover of this book probably wasn’t thinking about the soup can artist, but his influence is there just the same. Of course, it wasn’t about soup cans. Nothing to do with soup cans. It could have been rubber boots or ostriches or anything at all. But it was the soup cans that caught on with the public.

  “Oh yeah, the soup can guy!”

  There are artists who aren’t identified with one thing or one sort of thing. Among painters, a good example is Picasso. He did everything: realism, abstraction, cubism (which he helped invent), ceramics, sculptures . . . everything! You can’t just say, “Oh yeah, the cubism guy!” because it makes as much sense to say the blue period guy, the pink period guy, the lithographs of bullfights guy, the frontwise-and-sideways-at-the-same-time portraits guy, et cetera, et cetera. . . .

  In addition to asking how one became an artist, people are really curious about how art gets done. They want to know the recipe, the formula. People in general just love to think there’s a formula for everything, and if you follow the formula you’ll get results. Some of my teachers, mostly the same ones who believed in marketing, thought it was useful to show the viewer how you arrived at your own personal soup can . . . even if you didn’t really know. Let’s say you are feeling particularly good and you knock out a painting . . . it’s a naked lady, two parrots, a waterfall, and a pineapple . . . and it’s just great. You know it’s great. Anybody can see it’s great.

  These particular teachers would tell you to make some crude pencil sketches, as though you were trying to work out aspects of the painting you’d already done—as though you hadn’t done it yet—then make some color sketches, maybe a couple of small canvases with the same images, but not quite all put together like the great painting. Why? Then people can look at it, and see how you arrived at the vision in the great painting. It’s fake. It’s inductive reasoning, like making up how you learned to write, but it makes sense if you want to be an artist and make a go of it . . . through marketing.

  So did the soup can artist plan it all or stumble on to a good thing? And once he got attention, did he try to continue getting it by doing more things that fitted in with the soup can motif or did he just go where his interest and pleasure took him, and people came along because they shared his enjoyment? We can’t know.

  What I know is the teachers I favored were not the ones who were all concerned about whether and how much marketing and symmetry an artist needed to think about. Remember, I knew I didn’t have any talent and was just taking a ride for fun, so no point in planning a career. The teachers I liked thought all you had to do was play and play your best. Sure, if you do a lot of work, certain themes and trademarks will come out, because you have certain interests and affections, but you don’t have to work at making those things happen. You don’t have to worry about making things fit with your image.

  So it was, when I found out later that James P. Kupetzenmacher was right: a very good way to learn one art is by studying another art (or it doesn’t have to be an art as such; it can be furniture refinish
ing or livestock handling or playing gin rummy). It seemed natural to me that I could combine a story featuring my favorite composer as a character, a nonfunny story about a Chinese kid, a stupid science fiction story, and a total fantasy. They don’t go together. They’re different. It’s how I like things. The world has room for Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso. They’re both good, but I’m going with Picasso every time.

  THE MUFFIN FIEND

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a real person. He was a musician, a composer of music, and a genius. One of the reasons people think he was a genius was he was able to compose seriously good music when he was just a little kid. He was wildly popular, like a modern rock star . . . this was in Europe, mostly in Vienna, Austria, in the 1700s. He is still pretty wildly popular today. This is mostly because he wrote even more seriously good music when he grew up. He is this author’s favorite composer, hands down, no question about it, nobody else even comes close.

  Mozart seems to have been a nice guy. He liked to tell stupid jokes and hang around with his friends. He also had pets: a horse, a dog, and a bird. When the bird died, he held a funeral for it . . . this was when he was a grown-up. I got very excited when I found out Mozart’s favorite dish was leberklossen (liver dumplings) because that was a favorite dish of mine when I lived down the street from Shaffer’s restaurant in Hoboken, New Jersey, where it was served every Thursday. It’s little patties of chopped liver in a chicken broth with bits of bacon and sauerkraut. Sounds disgusting, I know, but it’s really good. You can trust Mozart . . . and me. I’m a genius too.

  Mozart wrote some beautiful operas with the usual dopey sort of stories operas have. I always thought I could have written some librettos (which is the term for stories for operas), which Mozart might have liked. After all, we had pets, stupid jokes, and liver dumplings in common. However, the fact that he died in 1791 made it impossible for us to work together. So I did the next best thing and gave him a role in a story. If he were alive to read the story, I like to think he would have composed music to go with it and it would have turned into an opera.

  Maybe you are a musical genius and you are reading this. Maybe you would like to take a whack at composing that opera. Please be aware that if you perform it anywhere without my permission, I will sue you.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the great composer, was sitting in his office one morning, when a stranger appeared at his door.

  “Herr Mozart, I want you to help me solve a mystery,” the stranger said.

  “Excellent!” said Mozart. “After composing great works of music, solving mysteries is my favorite activity.”

  “As you know,” the stranger said, “Vienna is famous for pastries of all kinds.”

  “That is why I live in Vienna,” said Mozart.

  “You will be interested to know that there is a muffin fiend loose in the city,” said the stranger.

  “A muffin fiend?” asked Mozart.

  “Exactly,” said the stranger. “You do know what a muffin fiend is?”

  “I used to know, but I forgot,” Mozart said. “Tell me again.”

  “The muffin fiend is the most dangerous sort of criminal,” said the stranger. “Muffin fiends can barely resist pastry in any form—but most especially, they are mad for muffins!”

  “This is most interesting,” said Mozart. “Tell me, who are you, and how is it that you know so much about these matters?”

  “I am Inspector Charles LeChat of the French Police. I have followed the muffin fiend all the way from Paris.”

  “And why is this muffin fiend so dangerous?”

  “I will explain that—but first, may I suggest that we take some refreshment?”

  “Of course,” said Mozart. “I usually have something about this time of morning myself.”

  Mozart called to his wife. “Constanze! Please bring us some coffee and peach muffins.”

  “You may have coffee,” said Frau Mozart, “but there are no peach muffins.”

  “No peach? In that case, we will have cherry muffins,” said the composer.

  “There are no cherry muffins,” replied Frau Mozart. “Also no cheese muffins, no raisin muffins, no gooseberry muffins, no custard muffins, no chocolate seven-layer muffins—in fact there is not a single muffin of any description to be had in all of Vienna.”

  “Now I see why you are so anxious to stop this monster!” Mozart said.

  “Indeed,” said Inspector LeChat, “as we speak my beloved city of Paris is utterly muffinless.”

  “It is tragic,” said Mozart, “and now it appears that Vienna has suffered the same fate.”

  “Herr Mozart, you are the greatest genius in Europe. Please say that you will help me stop this terrible muffin fiend.”

  “I am now engaged in writing an opera, The Magic Prune. Even so, I will put aside this important work and help you stop this awful criminal,” said Mozart. “Have you tried all the usual things?”

  “Yes. We have no record of any professional criminal with a taste for muffins—at least on this scale. All the places where a vast number of muffins might be hidden have been searched. All the roads have been watched, and spies in foreign ports have not been able to discover any large shipments, so we believe the fiend is not smuggling the muffins.”

  “Then he’s eating them all?” asked Mozart.

  “So I believe,” said LeChat.

  “Remarkable. And why do you think it is only one man?”

  “I think it is one man because he has been seen by several witnesses,” said the French policeman.

  “He has been seen?”

  “Yes. He has been seen at a number of muffin bakeries in Paris. He appears to be a nobleman, and sometimes gives his name as Don Pastrami. He orders huge quantities of muffins, and then ties the baker hand and foot, and usually locks him in a closet.”

  “Fascinating,” said the great composer. “Let us employ logic here. A city the size of Vienna must produce many thousands of muffins each day. The greatest number of muffins ever consumed by a human within twenty-four hours is one thousand and three. I know this because it is my honor to have set that record.”

  “Even in Paris we have heard of your accomplishment.”

  “Since a great many more muffins than one thousand and three are disappearing, and since we have, for the moment, no choice but to assume that the so-called Don Pastrami is eating them all—it follows that Don Pastrami is not human,” Mozart explained.

  “He appeared to be human,” said Inspector LeChat.

  “So do a lot of people,” said Mozart. “Come! There’s no time to lose!”

  “Where are we going?” asked the policeman.

  “Why, to the great Municipal Muffin Bakery!” said the great composer.

  The Municipal Muffin Bakery provided ovens for the poorer citizens of Vienna. Here those who could not afford to buy muffins could bake their own for a small fee.

  When Mozart and Inspector LeChat arrived, a near-riot was in progress. An angry mob was arguing with the city official in charge of the ovens.

  “Was ist los?” asked Mozart in the local dialect.

  “Ah, Herr Mozart!” said the official. “The people are angry because they came this morning with their tins of muffin mix to be baked—and when the ovens were opened just now the muffins were gone!”

  “We are too late!” shouted Inspector LeChat.

  “Perhaps not,” said Mozart. “Has anything else unusual happened?” he asked the official.

  “Only this,” the official replied, “there was a nobleman here earlier—one Don Pastrami. I thought it strange that a person of wealth, as he appeared to be, should come to bake his own muffins.”

  “Where is this Don Pastrami now?” asked Mozart.

  “I cannot say,” said the official. “He disappeared during the confusion.”

  Mozart, meanwhile, had been looking into the window of one of the many bakeshops that lined the streets of Vienna. It was utterly empty. Not a single Viennese muffin was to be seen. It was
a depressing sight. All that remained were the price cards. Apple muffins 2 pfennigs. Blueberry muffins 3 pfennigs. Walnut muffins 4 pfennigs. Gorgonzola muffins 1 pfennig.

  “To the Wienerwald, without delay!” shouted the great genius.

  “To the Vienna Woods? Why?” asked the puzzled LeChat.

  “Because that is where I expect to find the elusive Don Pastrami.”

  “But why the woods, and not the cellars of the town, or the waterfront, or some other place?”

  “The muffin fiend will be in the woods because it is remote and isolated there. That is where we will find him—and some other surprising things as well. Inspector LeChat, summon a carriage!”

  In the carriage Mozart unfolded to Inspector LeChat his amazing theory that the muffin fiend, sometimes known as Don Pastrami, was in fact not of this world. LeChat found the idea hard to grasp.

  “Not of this world? You mean he’s dead? A ghost? A spirit?”

  “No,” said Mozart.

  “Ah, I see,” said the Frenchman. “By not of this world you mean not of the old world, comprised of Europe, Asia, and Africa. You mean to suggest that the muffin fiend is from the new world, meaning North or South America.”

  “No, no—that’s not it,” said Mozart. “By saying that the muffin fiend is not of this world, I do not mean that he is not of the world of the living, nor do I mean that he is from any unfamiliar part of this planet. I mean that he is an extraterrestrial.”

  “Extraterrestrial? Does that mean that he has extra toes?”

  “It means that he comes not from Earth.”

  “Not from Earth?”

  “Not.”

  “From not Earth?”

  “I assure you.”

  “Then from where?”

  “From another planet.”

  “There are other planets?”

  “Oh, be quiet, you poorly informed French policeman!” said Mozart impatiently. “We’ve arrived in the Wienerwald.”

  There was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen in the woods. The usual birds and animals were in evidence, and trees of course, and the odd peasant—but no muffin fiend.