Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Zindel, Paul (Vol. 26) - Sally Holmes Holtze

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SALLY HOLMES HOLTZE

Four months after the end of The Pigman …, John and Lorraine discover Gus, a sick, lonely old man, living inside Mr. Pignati's house and force themselves on him in friendship. They tell the story [in The Pigman's Legacy] in the same alternating first-person chapters; similarities from the plot (Gus dies at the novel's climax) to small incidents (Gus initiates a psychoanalyzing parlor game as Mr. Pignati did), to vocabulary and jokes … parrot The Pigman, but the strong characterization, credibility, and skilled story development is missing. Gus is stereotypically "feisty"; John and Lorraine seem pallid versions of their former selves, and their narratives are almost interchangeable. The boy who once set off bombs in the school bathrooms suddenly gets along with his parents, defends a janitorial worker from the harassment of fellow schoolmates, and sets out boy scout-like to save a stranger from loneliness. The plot loosely...

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1. Introduction
2. Diane Farrell
3. Zena Sutherland
4. The Times Literary Supplement
5. Marilyn R. Singer
6. John Rowe Townsend
7. Diane Gersoni-Edelman
8. The Times Literary Supplement
9. Mary Silva Cosgrave
10. Zena Sutherland
11. BEVERLY A. HALEY and KENNETH L. DONELSON
12. Isabel Quigly
13. Zena Sutherland
14. Isabel Quigly
15. Stanley Hoffman
16. Joyce Milton
17. Maxine Fisher
18. Jack Forman
19. Cyrisse Jaffee
20. Sally Holmes Holtze
21. Peter Fanning
22. David Rees
23. Paxton Davis
24. Judith N. Mitchell
25. Margery Fisher
26. A. Thatcher
27. Copyright

1. Paul Zindel