This is a book that I loved as a child in the seventies. The Pushcart War was a smart book that didn't talk down to children and provided a conceptual framework for understanding war and peace. I mean on an honest and intellectual level -- rather than in a superficial or sentimental way.
Its author, Jean Merrill, explained her thought process thusly:
[While living in New York, she said that] the traffic there was oppressive and she fantasized about flattening the tires out with pea shooters. She then had an epiphany, realizing that "what you feel about the trucks is what everybody feels about bullies." (Quoted from Wikipedia)
Now I must confess that I have come to HATE trucks. Not as individuals, but as a species. I know I shouldn't hate commercial trucks, because the play a vital role in our economy, and everybody depends on them for delivery of their online purchases. But I do. I don't think I'm alone in feeling this. They're big, blocking the lanes of traffic, going too fast for the speed limit or too slow, often behaving like they own the road and are much of the time oblivious to the other traffic.
And don't get me started on folks who buy pickups, but have no cause to haul anything -- which is probably most of them on the road. I feel like they buy their trucks so that they have license to be total jackasses on the road.
I work at a public library about thirty minutes from home and take -495 to work -- a major thoroughfare East-West through Massachusetts. And just chock full of truck traffic both ways. And I think about this book multiple times every day.
So for me, the book works on multiple levels. Channeling my anger and ambivalence related to commercial trucking, as a primer on military theory: asymmetric warfare and how to pursue peace in the midst of war, etc. And then also . . . it's just a really, really charming story to read in and of itself. Rating: A.
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