In a moment of desperation at the library (a subject for another day), I grabbed Jean Merrill’s “The Pushcart War” off the shelf and thought it looked suitably old. As the wise and witty Carole Joy Seid observed, 80 percent of books were published after 1980, and many of them would have been better left as trees. Not all old books are good, but chances are a volume pulled off the shelf at random stands a better chance of excellence if the year of publication is in your grandmother’s lifetime.
What next drew my eye was the blurb from Tony Kushner on the back of the handsome 50th anniversary edition. He writes, “The Pushcart War had a profound impact on me; when I was a kid I devoured it several times, and I’ve carried it deep inside me ever since.” Is this someone’s favorite book? Those are often worth investigating.
Merrill’s satire follows a group of pushcart peddlers in New York City through an account of the war they waged with the Big Three, the major trucking companies operating in the Big Apple. The increasing size and number of trucks delivering goods throughout the city are causing traffic and crowding out the peddlers and their customers. That might sound contrived or uninteresting, but it’s engagingly written with a zany sense of urgency and importance that gets readers invested in the story.
Beginning with Frank the Flower and Morris the Florist, the memorable cast of characters grow to include General Anna and Maxie Hammerman, the Pushcart King, among many others. After escalating tensions and an accident, this outlandish guild of pushcart street sellers engages in covert warfare with the unlikable truck drivers of Mammoth Moving, Tiger Trucking, and LEMA. They begin with a campaign of pin-studded peas in pea shooters, causing flat tires across Manhattan.
Later in his blurb, Tony Kushner (mentioned above) describes this book as his first introduction to “chicanery,” a word which, admittedly, I had to look up. “Chicanery” is precisely the word for the goings on of the pushcart peddlers and their guerilla warfare and stratagems in the court of public opinion. The children of the city get in on the fun, attacking trucks with pea shooters and supporting the cause in other ways. Parents whose children unthinkingly imitate: Beware!
There are moments of serious tension in the narrative, most notably involving truck drivers driving into a crowd of pushcart operators. No one dies, but it’s quite disturbing for the sensitive.
What makes the book so unexpectedly delightful? The keen sense of right and good. The community with interpersonal connections made through people interacting while walking on their own two feet. It’s the David and Goliath matchup that makes the heart sing for most of us.
Many reviews make much of the satire of warfare, suggesting that the book reveals analogies of real war escalation. Perhaps I’m daft or perhaps there is source material supporting this, but it seems to me it’s also really about trucks and city life. According to the author’s obituary, the story grew out of her frustration with increasing truck traffic while living in Greenwich Village. For the average American neighborhood besieged by Amazon delivery vehicles and all the superfluous, cheaply made, excessively packaged junk they deliver hourly, the anti-truck, anti-big-business messaging strikes a chord.
One notable shortcoming of the narrative is the role of trucks in modern life and convenience. It’s not as though General Anna is growing her own apples or Frank the Flower has a verdant flower garden in which to grow his wares. In a brief aside, Maxie Hammerman, the Pushcart King, admits that he has the wood which he uses to repair pushcarts delivered by truck because it’s more efficient and cost-effective. There is a nod to a middle way in the end: there can be a set number of trucks at a threshold that maximizes efficiency without causing severe congestion in the city streets. Emphasizing this point is a good counterbalance to the overly simplistic “trucks are bad” message.
Reading this book will also provide opportunities to discuss what shorthand is and many other fun factoids. I don’t know that anyone in my household will be devouring this many times as Mr. Kushner did, but everyone was on the edge of his seat for the second half of this hilarious book.
