I have tears streaming down my face and I have been cackling like a maniac for 10 minutes.
I LOVED the Hardy Boys. They felt serious for that age. The hardbacks had a classic feel. The pages were thick, the illustrations mysterious and the covers were heavy and ornate. When I finished one I felt like I accomplished something. I would put it on the shelf in between 10 others and decide on the next one - usually by coolness of cover. I vividly remember the scene in "Missing Chums" when they drove the boat into the smugglers cave. My heart was pounding. I remember I got so nervous that I hid under a table and shifted positions constantly while reading it. It may have been the first time I got completely immersed in a book.
Knowing that he called the books, "The Juveniles," and that he viscerally hated every every word of every page, is like finding out that Santa Claus doesn't exist - at age 32.
And just to twist the knife, on my birthday the author wrote in his diary:
June 9, 1933: "Tried to get at the juvenile again today but the ghastly job appalls me."
Ok I just woke my girlfriend up by laughing so hard. I don't know what to think. Goodnight HN. Thank you for the best thing I've read all year.
First: Gene Weingarten is always a pleasure to read.
I know it is not relevant to his main angle, but I wish he had followed up on this part: In 1959, many of the old Hardy Boy books were redone, streamlined, modernized, sterilized.
I, like many HNers, I imagine, first read the Hardy Boys in the post-1959 editions. A couple decades ago, when I learned about the rewrites, I decided to collect the originals, and compare them. It was a fascinating experience.
Weingarten's phrasing above gets to the key elements. Racial stereotypes were removed-- the old versions were quite offensive to modern sensibilities at times-- along with about 1/3rd of the text. Plots were simplified, and a much more formulaic approach to action (from one mini-cliffhanger to another) took over. Descriptive passages were omitted, more often than not.
So: if you really want to read Leslie McFarlane, be sure to check out the pre-1959 editions.
That is fascinating. It solves a puzzle for me: the books I read, which would certainly have been the 1959 revisions, were definitely of a 1950s and not 1930s sensibility. The feel is that of the beginning of the rock and roll era, when teenagers would drive around in cars of their own and devote themselves to fun, but the social and family structures were still stable. Nothing transgressive had happened yet, but it was about to. The late 1950s were nostalgic for themselves before they were even over.
My bet is that the 1959 revisions were a great contribution to the Hardy Boys' longevity. It sounds like the books were stripped down to their essence. Talk about uncelebrated. If McFarlane was at the bottom of the literary barrel, how about the anonymous hack who had to go in and clean up his work! Whoever it was, I'm on their side. Snobbish though every critic may be, you can't argue with those books' success. I don't mean success at selling copies; I mean success at captivating children, generation after generation.
Harry Potter had a similar ability to suck children into an imaginary realm and get them reading. But its popularity was more intense and perhaps short-lived. The Hardy Boys' effect has been more diffuse but extraordinarily durable. Maybe in 15 years someone will cut the Harry Potter books down to size and turn them into perennials too.
Indeed. When I started to read such fiction, I had 2 or a few more volumes of the novels and one of them was a pre-1959 edition. By comparison the newer ones were very thin gruel, and not having any way to procure the older ones and knowing science was my calling I concentrated on getting what Tom Swift Jr. books I could manage.
One funny thing happened with my 5th grade teacher sometime later: we realized we were both fans of Tom Swift and started reeling off titles, none of which the other recognized. He had of course read the original series about the (future) father, I was reading the 2nd focused on his son (Jr.).
I just dug out my old Hardy Boys hardcover books from way at the back of the book shelf (behind the Saberhagen Swords books) and sure enough, mine were all from 1959.
Here's the inscription from inside th cover of book #1 "The Tower Treasure"
(c) Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. 1959
all rights reserved
ISBN: 0-448-08901-7 (Trade edition)
ISBN: 0-448-18901-1 (Library edition)
In this new story, based on the original of
the same title, Mr. Dixon has incorporated
the most up-to-date methods used by police
and private detectives.
Unlike the book referenced in the article, mine begins
Chapter I
The Speed Demon
Frank and Joe Hard clutched the grips of their motorcycles
and stared in horror at the oncoming car. It was careening
from side to side on the narrow road.
"He'll hit us! We'd better climb this hillside -- and
fast" Frank exclaimed, as the boys brought their
motorcycles to a screeching halt and leaped off.
A little later comes what I believe is the scene referenced at the start of the article:
Frank chuckled and sad, "After the help we gave Dad on his
latest case, he ought to set up the firm of Hardy and
Sons."
"Why not?" Joe replied with a broad grin. "Isn't he one
of the most famous private detectives in the country? And
aren't we bright too?" Then, becoming serious, he added,
"I wish we could solve a mystery on our, though."
Now I'll have to try and dig up a couple of the originals just for fun. I loved these books when I was 10~13... practically inhaling them one after another.
The original Hardy Boys books were what got me started reading really, when I was probably 6 or 7. My dad had a whole box of them from when he was a kid, and once I discovered them, I had my nose in them all the time. From there, I discovered the Tom Swift Jr. books, another Stratemeyer creation. I still think those books were responsible for 90% of my attraction to tech that ultimately led me here.
I just met a guy who has ghostwritten a few of the newer Hardy Boys books. He says that he's given a picture of what the cover will look like and it's his job to write the entire story based on that.
How is it harder than trying to write a novel without the constraint of fitting in what's on the cover?
Constraints often make creativity easier. Tell me to write a Hardy Boys novel and I won't know where to begin. Show me a cover with a lighthouse and some treasure on the beach and stories begin to suggest themselves.
It does take some for sure, but it's actually in a fine, long tradition of commercial writing -- it wasn't unusual for pulp mags in the first half of the 20th century to get a big name illustrator and then have a writer develop a story from it. See venerable Wikipedia for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine#Illustrators
This seems like an exaggeration. What does the person who creates the cover illustration get to work off of? Surely there's at least a short treatment or something.
Maybe, I didn't talk to him for that long. But it makes sense that they'd focus group the cover and title first since that's what makes most kids choose the book.
Also notice how Chet was never 'fat', but 'plump','chubby','stout', etc? I learned more synonyms for fat from Hardy Boys books than should have been allowed.
I have to say that, despite the terrible, terrible writing, reading the Hardy Boys did a) pique my interest in vocabulary and b) introduce me to the idea of learning words through context.
For that reason (and nothing else) I do not regret having read them.
I learned about the solar plexus (they were always knocking out goons by hitting them in that mythical spot)... never could seem to find it in real-life fights though...
Popular writing reminds me of image compression: part eternal truth, part Human Visual System. People enjoy fiction because it connects with them somehow; pop fiction targets the Human Narrative System. Joseph Campbell has the idea of the universal monomyth; Orson Scott Card claims that a writer's best writing happens despite the author. Orson is conceited enough to believe he's not a great writer, just a conduit of man's soul.
A clever writer can easily get carried away with himself - solipsistic, narcissistic - such as those quoted in the submission (the elimination pun; the parallel of temper and years.) Maybe being restrained was good for him? if you come across a passage you think particularly fine, strike it out. I actually enjoy the straightfowardness of his "bad" writing (including this image: "scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast.")
Popularity is a tricky measure of technical merit, because it has more to do with what people need than with what you have created. Perhaps the credit for mining that need here really does lie with the publisher, who specified the story.
"... scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast." is straightforward.
The 60 words in the sentence preceding that clause, are not:
"A leering tornado of flame from the southwest roared down through a half mile of underbrush upon the town of Haileybury basking sleepily in the September sunlight on the shore of Lake Temiskaming early Wednesday afternoon, ate its way across the railway tracks and then, fanned by a 60-mile-an-hour gale, ripped its way to the water's edge ..."
In general the phrase "the 60 words in the sentence" and the word "straightforward" are incompatible.
Out of interest, should descriptions in fiction be straightforward?
I can understand why non-fiction should be straight forward but surely one of the joys of fiction is that you fill in the gaps and ambiguities yourself.
Incidentally, I'm not defending the sentence in question which is messy, and "it's terrific blast" may be straightforward but it's also a slightly odd choice of adjective.
Personally, no, I love the shit out of sprawling twisting recursing sentences that end at the beginning and some where new simultaneously. Give me all the ambiguity, vagary and literary wankery that you can muster. Not to say my bookshelf is not equally full of horrible sci-fi that would get me laughed out of an english department for owning, let alone enjoying.
I responded the way I did because it was easy and snarky. The OP claimed to prefer the "straightforward" prose that the article lambasted, and then illustrated it with maybe the worst possible quote (for the purpose) out of the entire article. Combined with:
solipsistic, narcissistic - such as those quoted in the submission (the elimination pun; the parallel of temper and years.)
Led me to feel that 10ren has no idea what solipsistic, narcissitic or straightforward mean and in general no clue. So... I snarked.
> solipsistic, narcissistic - such as those quoted in the submission (the elimination pun; the parallel of temper and years.)
You omitted the beginning of that line, which was "A clever writer can easily get carried away with himself - " Is not clever wordplay disconnected from the external world? Is not indulging in one's cleverness narcissistic (BTW you misspelled it)?
The quote I followed it with (if you come across a passage you think particularly fine, strike it out.) is from Samuel Johnson; the same basic idea is often expressed more concisely with "kill your darlings." http://everything2.com/title/Kill+your+darlings
Just to be clear: I didn't illustrate straightforwardness with that entire passage, but with one specific part: including this image: "scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast." Which I still really like, because it draws a metaphor between how humans respond to a fire and the physics of how small particles are pushed by the heated air of a fire. Maybe you disagree, but to me, a clean metaphor is a very straightforward communication.
On HN, if you suspect someone has "in general no clue", it's informative to check their comment history, rather than act on an assumption. It could be that their comment is a one-off, or that you have misinterpreted it.
Normally, I don't bother responding to snark. It's irritating, but being drawn in is just a second injury. And it's rare on HN anyway. But I'm puzzled when people are snarky, as it seems unrelated to the topic. So it's helpful that you have explained your thinking, and so I've taken the trouble to explain my original comment.
If snark comes easily to you, you might be more comfortable on reddit (though snark there is usually purely in fun.)
Is not clever wordplay disconnected from the external world? Is not indulging in one's cleverness narcissistic
No.
Or at least no more so than is inherent in all writing.
As for the good doctor Johnson, I would hesitate to use the inventor of the universal refutation as an authority when arguing against indulging in one's cleverness.
Faulkner is a similarly hypocritical source in a plea for clarity.
"Kill your darlings" isn't terrible advice, but taken alone it's as fatuous "write with verbs." Taken alone the basic idea is don't write anything you personally like, which is exactly the sort of life choice that quickly leads to a bottle.
Just to be clear: I didn't illustrate straightforwardness with that entire passage, but with one specific part:
One specific part preceded by a mountain of shit. I actually enjoy the straightfowardness of his "bad" writing doesn't actually work unless his "bad" writing is in fact straightforward, which is a shaky claim when the supporting evidence is a small fraction of a single very bad sentence.
Which as far as I'm concerned just makes your statement worse. Those are some singularly (plurally?) innocuous bits of word play, one of which it should be pointed out comes from his autobiography an excuse to be a little extra self indulgent if there ever was one.
Don't knock your sci-fi books. I have an ex-g/f with a PhD in English Literature (more precisely Dickens) who read Star Trek novels to unwind. Different books for different times.
nah, don't get me wrong I was raised on a steady diet of sci-fi and love it to death, when I say I own a lot of terrible sci-fi I mean it in the best possible sense.
1. That piece does nothing to imply that the style is straightforward, nor does it actually talk about using long sentences with many clauses to create momentum, unless you considered "consciousness and longing" to be momentum-ous.
2. No it really doesn't create a sense of momentum, growing or not, especially when you talk about a town "basking sleepily in the September sunlight on the shore." A vaguely alliterative load of Ss does not make for an exciting sentence.
3. "mostly short anglo-saxon words and the long sentence, broken into multiple clauses" is rather in specific compared to my statement of in general anyway.
4. Tornadoes don't leer, and one would assume it was already traveling at 60 miles an hour so the momentum shouldn't be growing anyway.
And I believe that it was good that the boys are never described much (contrary to Weingarten's disappointment at the discovery of that). It's not a bug but a feature -- it allows the readers to identify with the boys more not less!
I've read a bunch of Perry Mason books as I was very young and I remember that none of the main characters was described much. I believed even then that it's good so. I was able to imagine them as I'd like them to look like.
He might get carried away with his writing, but I liked this little gem quoted in the article: "If you have never seen a blonde society editor kicked in the ass by a flaming wastebasket, you have missed one of the rare experiences of journalism."
Reminds me of the relationship Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had with Sherlock Holmes.
Doyle despised writing Sherlock stories and did not consider them serious fiction. At one point he killed Sherlock, only to revive him years later because of popular demand.
Today there are societies and museums around the world dedicated to the great detective.
I'm sure there are lots of people that have built complex and worthy stuff that make their money with silly and transient stuff that feel the same way about their code.
It's heartbreaking Doyle couldn't step outside of himself to see what a wonder he had created. I didn't read them until I was an adult and was astonished at the contrast with the Rathbone Holmes movies I'd seen as a kid. The Holmes stories deserve their immortality because not only are they well-written, they approach genius.
And now we can have a big list of nostalgia which disappointed us. Like when I recently watched a Knight Rider episode for the first time after a dozen years and suddenly realize, how bad the actors and plots are.
German readers should probably revisit the TKKG novels for a particular disappointing experience.
My mom took the approach of just reading out loud whatever she read, so I grew up with Lord of the Rings and other good solid books. I personally read Madliene L'engle's books in 3rd and 4th grade then skipped directly up the ladder to Dune (making me the only 9 year old I've ever met that managed to make it through Dune Messiah (and man did I ever manage to miss the subtext and analogy and etc)) .
But cartoons, man I loved em all. Tried to watch GI Joe and Transformers a couple years back and could barely last an episode.
"Tried to watch GI Joe and Transformers a couple years back and could barely last an episode."
On the other hand, the Chuck Jones and Tex Avery cartoons have held up quite well, probably because the creators were doing them for themselves as well as younger kids.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Animaniacs has withstood the test of time for me. Actually I found it a little better than before, as some of the humor went over my head when I was a kid.
I was also read Dune aloud as a kid! Though I think I must've been older by then -- 12+. Definitely missed most of the subtext, though... Just like watching Forrest Gump.
No, I actually read Dune myself. I thought it was a book about political intrigue, crazy sci-fi and guerilla warfare, great stuff to a 9 year old. I was told later that it was in fact about US foreign policy with regards to the middle east.
Re: cartoons, I had a good time watching Reboot with some fellow interns a few years back. Lots of CS in-jokes, and the production issues / tropes are merely fodder for a drinking game.
I've never tried to rewatch childhood cartoons (somehow I imagine Scooby Doo may not quite hold up), however one thing that does stand the test of time: Police Squad... In color!
Scooby Doo holds up surprisingly well. I watch the early 1970s episodes with my kids now, and they're as good as I remember them. The only thing that seems dated (art aside) is the music. The first few seasons all has a musical interlude that is very early 70s.
I read The Three Investigators, and never read The Hardy Boys, so I was scanning this thread to see whether anyone had brought them up.
The main thing I remember from those books was the feeling that I had a deprived childhood because I didn't grow up in a junkyard. (Nor have a chauffer on call, but the lack of a junkyard was the main thing I really felt.)
My secret hope is that in 10 or 20 years, people will go back and re-read KJA's _Dune_ novels, and realize that us Frank Herbert partisans were right - they are a pile of bollocks.
I was talking to my friends about this the other day: NES games (with a few exceptions) are terrible now. SNES games are still fun, though. I guess the 16 bit mark was a timeless threshold.
I think any NES game that was good "back in the day" holds up even now. Gameplay and graphics had a nice simplicity that holds up today, unlike most pre-NES games. It was a period when games were just starting to become what they are now, with plots, actual level design, and "thinking" enemies, but without all the complexity. Sure, most NES games won't hold your attention for hours at a time, but they're still enjoyable in brief sittings.
What I find impossible to play today are early 3D games. So much time and effort was spent trying to make the games look cool and flashy at the cost of gameplay, and it was when most devs really didn't even know how to make a 3D game. Most first-year PS1 and N64 games are examples of this.
Yeah, I still play Final Fantasy on occasion, though Dragon Warrior has weathered a bit worse (the grind is a bit harsh, though the sequels are better).
I think this is because good gameplay doesn't age as quickly or as harshly as good graphics. Graphics have improved greatly, while gameplay hasn't come quite so far.
Yeah, the only NES games I can play now are the Mario and Zelda ones (I never played Metroid 1 as a kid, and can't get into it now). SNES games I can get into much more easily.
What's extraordinary is that those books remain the favorites of small boys everywhere. The Hardy Boys franchise has turned out hundreds if not thousands of more contemporary knockoffs
over the years. These are all quickly forgotten, yet those original McFarlane potboilers, disdained by everybody with fancy taste (including the OP), still excite passion among early readers.
Is anything comparable? Children's literature that survives that long is usually regarded as classic; but these have survived whilst being regarded as trash. They keep going on the literary pleasure of children alone - an audience that can't be fooled. Each new generation just seems to discover them.
The passion of those first adventure novels
only lasts a year or two before one begins to find them a little embarrassing. So even older children share McFarlane's opinion on the "juveniles". My son mocks their stilted dialogue now. But he devoured the entire series with fervor.
If people like bad media, does that make it good? Or do we just have poor taste?
"Good" seems to be a combination of "quality" and "entertaining". Funny how we talk about these bad books, movies, and other media as if their literal quality were their only value.
Created things can aim to inspire and challege (art) or they can seek to comfort and warm (pop art). That Hardy Boys was great pop art. The books didn't challenge or inspire, however they did make you feel comforted, safe, and protected. The mystery got solved, all the threads got tied up in the end. Nice. Neat. Comforting.
Makes you wonder about possibility of such literary hearts who would be chucking out "SEO-compliant" articles at "2$/100 words" rate on freelance websites while their heart aches with misery attributed to nothing but their own creations.
Also of note: textbroker.com : content creation as a service, with an API. Used them for several hundred pages of content for a client. (If an enterprising HNer wants to do same with better API and more upmarket writers, I would use it.)
This is why we have more developers working for others instead of working for themselves. They're in big corporations, working on the latest version of whatever snoozefest their information infrastructure needs to just produce a better TPS report that now highlights this stat instead of that stat.
It's not software you go bragging about in the next user group meeting, or even to your spouse or your kids or best friend. It does, however, pay the bills.
I have never read a Hardy Boys novel, although I've always meant to, just out of curiosity. What I did read was the entire Danny Dunne series, about a young teenager whose widowed mother was the live-in housekeeper for a science professor. Danny always got involved in a complicated situation involving the professor's latest invention. I'm sort of afraid to go back and read them now.
Ooh, thanks for mentioning him; for this entire thread I've been thinking about those books, but I couldn't come up with any more of his name than "Dan or Daniel". And I was not looking forward to trying to Google for "juvenile fiction scientist Dan". ;)
Glad to help. The first one I read was "Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine." In that story the professor builds a new type of computer that's much more powerful than anything else in existence, and much smaller (about the size of a Vax maybe). It was published in 1964, so that was small back then. Danny and his friends start using it to help them with their homework. Then they become dependent on it. Very prescient.
And I misspelled the series in my first post. Danny's last name is Dunn, not Dunne.
Just how they could be having this ludicrous discussion over the roar of two motorcycles is never quite explained.
The imagination of a 12-year-old boy is generally not so hampered by skepticism. Ridiculous, implausible stories are the most fun to read, anyway. Ironically, the parts that the adult Weingarten find to be the best are the parts I didn't like as a kid. I always found Aunt Gertrude to be boring.
The comparison with Little House on the Prairie interested me, as I read both when I was young. I probably could have identified LHotP has superior fiction, but in terms of enjoyment I most certainly did not care. Reading the Hardy Boys did not ruin my ability to appreciate Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Why startups alone? How about the Haskell/Scala/RoR/Django hacker who has to get an MCSE and be a SharePoint 'developer' because it puts bread on the table?
In the past year, I have gone back to reading the Enid Blytons (Secret Sevens and Famous Fives) that I fondly remembered. I was amazed at how bad I found them this time around.
Especially, because I've read 2 Harry Potters recently and they are fairly readable. I also pick up Tintins and Asterixes from time to time and I still find them very enjoyable and appealing.
My 8 year old son LOVES the hardy boys, though he's mostly reading stuff a bit older now. I wonder sometimes about the...cheesiness and some of the less-than-PC content in this series and others, but I figure if I turned out OK he could too.
He likes the cheesy dialog, but I suppose he's young enough that I won't worry about his tastes too much. I'm just glad he likes to read. It's a huge load off--like now all I have to do is point him in the general direction if something he likes.
I think I'll hold off on mentioning the article, though. :)
Interesting, the Hardy Boys were practically my childhood. I even chose my username because of that series. Knowing that the author hated writing the books sort of saddens me. But what makes an author hate the work he's writing? When I code a website for someone, it doesn't really make me hate making the website.
I'm not sure the comparison works though. He doesn't object to the act of writing a book, I suspect he didn't even really have too big an issue with writing a detective novel. He objected to being asked to do those things badly when he knew he could do better.
We're talking plots he felt made no sense, poor characters, clunky dialogue, and when he tried to improve these things he was told in no uncertain terms to stop messing about and go back to what the publisher was paying him for.
The equivalent for a programmer would be to be told to code a website with actively bad coding standards, no use of style sheets or code reuse, no normalisation or referential integrity in the database and no error handling. And every time you try to make something better, you get told to shut up and do it the way you've been asked.
I don't know about you but that would make me hate the project.
FWIW, I loved the Hardy Boys and I've turned into an avid reader... at least for a 20 year old. The books are what they are, and if you're looking for any sort of depth, you're unlikely to find it.
I think the Hardy Boys books do two things well: 1.) sell 2.) get kids interested in reading
A really brilliant, moving post. It is extremely difficult to work on something you despise. We don't get to know how many such artists had and will have to work on uninteresting stuff and work with stupid, demanding people. Having a family may increase the fear of failure and other apprehensions in people who work for their daily survival.
I have never read Hardy Boys in childhood, as I am not a native speaker of English. But, I had definitely enjoyed some juvenile books (boy-detective fiction etc.) written for kids. Talented people often fall victims to such profit seeking organizations at the expense of their art and craft. Lets wish we will not be pushed to such extreme pains.
I devoured Hardy Boys books between the ages of 8 and 12. I must have at least 50 blue hardback Hardy Boys books in my basement. I still remember the thrill of saving up my weekly allowance until I had enough to walk to the local book store and pick up the next volume.
Speaking of hackneyed writing, I laughed and cried while reading this essay. It definitely became a part of me.
Wow. I used to love those books. I've always been wary of picking one up to read because I was sure that it couldn't now match the high pedestal On which they are perched in my memories.
For those who like this sort of essay, may I recommend S.J. Perelman? His "Cloudland Revisited" pieces, on the movies and books of his youth, are splendid.
I LOVED the Hardy Boys. They felt serious for that age. The hardbacks had a classic feel. The pages were thick, the illustrations mysterious and the covers were heavy and ornate. When I finished one I felt like I accomplished something. I would put it on the shelf in between 10 others and decide on the next one - usually by coolness of cover. I vividly remember the scene in "Missing Chums" when they drove the boat into the smugglers cave. My heart was pounding. I remember I got so nervous that I hid under a table and shifted positions constantly while reading it. It may have been the first time I got completely immersed in a book.
Knowing that he called the books, "The Juveniles," and that he viscerally hated every every word of every page, is like finding out that Santa Claus doesn't exist - at age 32.
And just to twist the knife, on my birthday the author wrote in his diary: June 9, 1933: "Tried to get at the juvenile again today but the ghastly job appalls me."
Ok I just woke my girlfriend up by laughing so hard. I don't know what to think. Goodnight HN. Thank you for the best thing I've read all year.