Michael Yatron
The hardened prostitute with the heart of gold wins the love of the scion of the important American family. Pure camp, yes. But the satire of camp, the apothesis of the traditionally obvious and hence the absurdly ridiculous, is a difficult means of expression at best. It is a dangerous form of creative writing, for the author walks a tightrope. If he falls to one side of the tightrope, he offends-to no purpose. If he falls to the other side, he produces a stale, dry, innocuous farce.
Michael Yatron balances perfectly upon this precarious tightrope from the beginning to the end of In Pink Balloons, lampooning the venerable institutions of money, religion, intellectualism, and sex, with all their trappings. His targets are not these attributes of ideology themselves, but rather the aura of established superficiality and hypocrisy that surround them in mid-century American society. His is a sharp-eyed, needle-witted look at the hung-up scene in a deadpan technique that reveals patterns of taste and culture that have escaped so many other observers.
A unique, seriocomic social commentator, Michael Yatron has a perception of people, locales, manners, and speech that is uncanny, a wit and view of life that is entirely original. He is a brilliantly entertaining writer with important things to say. The central notion threading through this outrageous novel is that the garish, the common, the vulgar are not alien to the American style, but reflect the ordinary American sense of form and function.
On this basis, In Pink Balloons is bound to stop you, hold you, and leave you bothered and laughing. And if you are a bit more perceptive than most readers, you'll find that you've grown a little as a result of reading this book.
Dr. Michael Yatron read many books and modeled his life on travel, adventure, danger, and romance for twenty-one years. He is easy to read and he has written both to entertain and to enlighten. To enlighten is the more important for the young. So he provides a first rate mind, a hard ring of truth, and writing from the gut that educated the reader about himself, other people, and the world he lives in.
I won't be carnie trash or a Polack. I'll be Stan, gentleman farmer. But it will be hard to give up the life I know. I've done all right, except for getting the blues.'
Vuk rose. 'Come, chela, you lack only the apocalypse which will make all doubts fall like scales from your eyes.
'Are you going to hypnotize me?'
'On your feet, chela.'
'Let's have another pipe. It's three-twenty in the morning!'
But Vuk prevailed, and the two men descended into the night and soon found themselves in the enormous Men's Room of Pennsylvania Station.
'Now, Stan, the success of this exercise depends upon complete, unquestioning trust in your mind. One doubt and it will fail. I want you to crawl behind me as I walk around the room-slowly, painfully, on that hard tile floor, to mortify the flesh and your pride. At the end of your journey, you will see the spirit of Edgar Allen Poe.'
Stan was somewhat reluctant. 'This is a new suit, guru. Fits nice, too. Are you sure I have to do it? I've never seen Edgar Allen Poe on one pipe, which is all I really had, considering we split the two pipes.'
'Do as I command. The suit is inconsequential. You can have it cleaned at the hotel while you're sleeping. Remember, one single doubt once you begin, and the result will be zero.'
Stan got on his fours, and then slowly, deliberately, like Satan in the serpent slithering toward the tree of knowledge, he moved behind Vuk's feet, which paced the entire room, including the middle aisles where the pay toilets were located. Finally, Vuk paused before a free toilet. He opened its door and turned toward Stan. 'Crawl right up to the bowl and stare into it, shutting everything else out of your mind, for a full fifteen minutes.
A precisionist in the mundane, Stan was doubly a precisionist in the occult. He performed to the best of his ability until the sixtieth second of the fifteenth minute had taken its place in the stream of human time. Then he rose and stepped out of the cubicle.
'Did you see the spirit of Edgar Allen Poe?'
'No. '
'What did you see?'
'Shit.'
'That's the apocalyptic vision of your future in the United States. And it is the future of everyone who is his own Self.'
When the two men were on the street again, Stan said, 'What else could I possibly have seen?'
'A clean bowl. Most people are finicky about flushing. The odds were really against what you saw.'
