New Daniel Pinkwater novel being serialized online in weekly chapters

Zack sez, "The author of such surreal delights as LIZARD MUSIC and THE HOBOKEN CHICKEN EMERGENCY has gone to the web to premiere his latest work before it heads to hard-copy. Daniel Pinkwater's BUSHMAN LIVES will update with a new chapter every Monday, with the first already online. So far, it involves a giant gorilla and a sacred order of hall monitors. Pure Pinkwater."

Just in case it's escaped your notice, I happen to think that Pinkwater is one of the greatest novelists alive, and I credit him with a large part of my sanity and outlook.

I must have been asleep for an hour or two. I woke up sensing there was someone in my room.

“Geets?”

“Ook Ook, Bushman lives,” Geets Hildebrand said.

“Ook,” I said. I switched the light on.

Geets was sitting cross-legged next to my bed. He had done this before. Sometimes I would wake in the morning and there he would be, sleeping on the rug. I could never get him to tell me how he got in–how he got into a building with a doorman, into a locked elevator area, into our locked apartment, and into my locked bedroom. Had he slipped past the doorman, and picked three locks? Had my father, who disliked and mistrusted all my friends, let him in and for some reason agreed not to say anything about it? It was a mystery.

“Drink to Bushman,” Geets said. He pulled four bottles of Guinness out of his jacket, and two bananas. This was our ritual. We would drink to Bushman the Gorilla at the Lincoln Park Zoo, and eat bananas, which actually went quite well with the thick, bitter Guinness.