Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! by Marijane Meaker

First published: 1972

Subjects: Coming-of-age, drugs and addiction, emotions, family, and friendship

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of work: The late 1960’s or early 1970’s

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: Brooklyn, New York

Principal Characters:

• Tucker Woolf, a fifteen-year-old boy who hopes to grow up to become a librarian
• Cal Woolf, Tucker’s father, an out-of-work professional fund-raiser
• Mrs. Woolf, Tucker’s mother, who has a Ph.D. in English literature but is working as an editor for Stirring Romances
• Susan “Dinky” Hocker, an overweight teenager who is ignored by her parents
• Nader, a nine-month-old calico cat that Tucker allows Dinky to adopt
• Natalia Line, Dinky’s cousin, who has recently been released from a school for teenagers with psychological and emotional problems
• Helen Hocker, Dinky’s mother, who runs an organization for recovering drug addicts
• Horace Hocker, Dinky’s father, a lawyer
• P. John Knight, one of Tucker’s classmates at Richter School, an obese sixteen-year-old with extremely conservative views
• Perry Knight, P. John’s father, who writes politically radical books

Form and Content

While related by an omniscient narrator, Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! is filtered through the consciousness of fifteen-year-old Tucker Woolf, whose family has just moved to Brooklyn, which his father advises him to refer to as “Brooklyn Heights.” Tucker’s father has lost his job as a professional fund-raiser, and his mother is temporarily forced to work as an editor and writer for Stirring Romances. When Mr. Woolf develops an allergy to Tucker’s cat, Nader, Tucker must give it up for adoption. Nader is adopted by Susan “Dinky” Hocker, an overweight teenager who manages to transfer to the cat her own compulsion for overeating.

Concerned with Nader’s health, Tucker begins spending time with Dinky, who is interested in unusual and bizarre examples of human nature. Tucker soon becomes infatuated with Dinky’s cousin, Natalia Line, who has recently been released from Renaissance, a school for teenagers with psychological problems. In order to take Natalia to a dance, Tucker lines up Dinky with another obese teen, the ultraconservative P. John Knight. P. John’s ideas clash with those of Dinky’s liberal parents, especially her mother, who runs Drug Rehabilitation, Inc. (DRI), which helps recovering addicts. Spurred on by P. John’s attention, Dinky tries to remake herself, attending Weight Watchers with him and trying to become better read.

During one of Mrs. Hocker’s DRI meetings, P. John prompts a fight between Dinky and her mother by telling Dinky not to eat a piece of chocolate cake. As a result, Mrs. Hocker orders P. John never to see Dinky again. When Dinky sneaks over to P. John’s apartment, the Hockers call the police, which results in the arrest of an illegal immigrant named Dewey, one of the friends of P. John’s father, Perry Knight. Soon after, Tucker’s mother tells him that she is worried that he and Natalia are becoming too serious, a concern that Helen Hocker reiterates when Tucker visits the Hockers for Christmas dinner. When Mrs. Hocker misinterprets Tucker’s Christmas gift to Natalia—a bunch of balloons filled with unfinished sentences written on slips of paper—Natalia has an emotional breakdown and temporarily returns to Renaissance. Consequently, Tucker is forbidden to see her. While Mrs. Hocker soon realizes that she has been mistaken about Tucker and invites him to work with a group of “ghetto children,” she is oblivious to Dinky’s problems.

After spending the spring with his aunt in Maine, P. John returns to Brooklyn Heights with a new outlook on life and a slimmer physique. Dinky, who has not changed, refuses to talk to him. The following night, Helen Hocker receives the Heights Samaritan Award for her work in the community. After the awards banquet, everyone emerges to see “Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!” painted on sidewalks, car doors, and the sides of buildings. When questioned by Mr. Hocker, who realizes that Dinky had done the painting, Tucker explains that people who do not “shoot smack” have problems too. Finally recognizing that they have been contributing to her problems, the Hockers take Dinky to Europe for a vacation. At the end of the book, Tucker tells his mother that “Susan” has gotten out from inside “Dinky” and that, as for his relationship with Natalia, he is waiting until the fall to see what happens.

Critical Content

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, M. E. Kerr’s first novel for young adults, was widely praised on its first publication and was named a “Best of the Best” Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association, a Best Children’s Book by The School Library Journal, and a Library of Congress Children’s Book of 1972. It also received a Maxi Award from Media and Methods. Critic Alleen Pace Nilsen has suggested that the book is one of Kerr’s most popular and that it remains one of her best. Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! is still in print and is read in some schools; it was popular enough to be adapted to television as part of the ABC Afternoon Special series. While some of the characters and events are exaggerated and unbelievable, the relationships between the protagonists and their parents continue to appeal to young adults.

The somewhat unusual romantic relationships between Tucker and Natalia and between Dinky and P. John look forward to similar romantic entanglements in Kerr’s other works, especially The Son of Someone Famous (1974) and Him She Loves? (1984), in which teenagers’ love lives are complicated by their parents. As in Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, the parents in Kerr’s Gentlehands (1978) are oblivious to the problems that their children face and occasionally are prejudiced, despite an attempt to appear politically correct. Like Dinky and P. John, Kerr’s protagonists frequently break off budding romances as they begin to look at the world in more mature ways.

The character of Dinky Hocker is one of several young adults in novels of the 1970’s whose parents ignore them until they unconsciously make a plea for help through socially unacceptable behavior. Like Patty Bergen of Bette Greene’s Summer of My German Soldier (1973), Marcy Lewis of Paula Danziger’s The Cat Ate My Gymsuit (1974), and Jerry Renault of Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War (1974), Dinky ultimately dares to “disturb the universe” and question the behavior of the adults in her life.

The mixture of humor and pathos in Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! is characteristic of most of Kerr’s work, while Dinky’s problems with obesity parallel those of the protagonists of works such as Judy Blume’s Blubber (1974) and Robert Lipsyte’s One Fat Summer (1977). The specific details that Kerr employs, including her characters’ dress and dialogue, along with her treatment of hypocrisy and parent-child alienation, help Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! to rise above its weaknesses, suggesting that it will continue to be popular in the future.

Bibliography

Kerr, M. E. Blood on the Forehead: What I Know About Writing. New York: HarperCollins, 1998.

Kerr, M. E. Me, Me, Me, Me, Me: Not a Novel. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.

The M. E. Kerr and Mary James Web site. http://www.mekerr.com.

Meaker, Marijane. Highsmith: A Romance of the Fifties. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2003.

Meaker, Marijane. “Marijane Meaker.” In Something About the Author. Vol. 20, edited by Anne Commire. Detroit: Gale, 1980.

Nilsen, Alleen Pace. Presenting M. E. Kerr. Updated ed. New York: Twayne, 1997.

Sutton, Roger. “A Conversation with M. E. Kerr.” School Library Journal 39, no. 6 (June, 1993): 24-29.