Paul Zindel was born in 1936 in Staten Island, New York, where he and his sister were raised by his mother. He began writing plays in high school and eventually pursued a chemistry degree at nearby Warner College. In college he took a creative writing course by playwright Edward Albee, who became a primary influence on the young writer. Zindel taught chemistry and physics at a Staten Island high school for ten years (1959-69), meanwhile pursuing his creative writing. The Pigman, Zindel's first novel, was based on a friendship he shared with a rebellious male high school student who lived near his home in Staten Island.
Youth protest against the Vietnam War. During the late 1960s the explosion of a youth culture- marked by rock music, new clothing and hair styles, a less inhibited attitude toward sex and drug use, and opposition to the Vietnam War-distanced many postwar baby boomers then coming of age from their parents' generation. An "us against them" mentality prevailed, and on both sides. The anger that many teenaged and young adults held toward their parents' generation found voice at the growing number of protest demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
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