Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

1972, 1981 Laurel-Leaf edition
M. E. Kerr
Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!
Probably bought new, for $1.95
Paperback with water damage and possibly mold
B

Very much a period piece, but still "relevant" as they would've said back then, this tells of four teens who don't fit in, except maybe with each other.  The main character Tucker likes cats and libraries, so he sees himself as not a typical 15-year-old guy.  (I assume it's coincidence that he's another New Yorker named Tucker, although his personality is very different from Selden's mouse.)  His father loses his job and develops a psychosomatic allergy to the cat, Nader (yes, after Ralph, although I think it's also a pun on "Nadir").  Tucker gives the cat away to Susan, a sarcastic, overweight girl whose nickname is ironically Dinky.  Her mentally ill cousin Natalia moves in, so Tucker meets her and falls for her.  Meanwhile, Tucker befriends overweight, right-wing intellectual P. John.  When Natalia says she'll go to a dance with Tucker if he can find a date for Dinky, a double-date ensues, but it doesn't turn out the way anyone expects. 

The title is in a way a spoiler, since it's what Dinky spray-paints all over the neighborhood the night her mother gets an award for her work in the community, particularly helping drug addicts.  But the book isn't about Dinky's addiction to food so much as it's about the need to communicate with those you love, whether boyfriends and girlfriends, or parents and children.  Dinky's mother is both a good person and the most unpleasant character in the book.  She's self-righteous, and she interferes in the relationships of her daughter and her niece because she assumes the worst.  Meanwhile, Tucker and Natalia have trouble talking until he comes up with the Balloon Game.

There's also the thread of children not understanding their parents, as when Tucker realizes that his mother wants a real career, not just writing for confession magazines.  (The excerpts from her stories are hilarious.)  Even Uncle "Jingle" Bell turns out to be more complicated than he seems.

The generation gap is important to the story but not unbridgeable.  I found it interesting that the dance has a '50s theme, and Tucker is uncomfortable with how sentimental the songs are.  He prefers the already "classic" Beatles songs, with their uncertainty, like "Something."

This became an ABC Afterschool Special in 1979, starring Wendie Jo Sperber, soon to be on Bosom Buddies.  If I saw it at the time, it would've been before I got this copy.  I wonder if it had that same sort of alienating feeling that this book has, a feeling that keeps me from rating it higher.  But, yes, I'll have to buy another copy someday.