I have tears streaming down my face and I have been cackling like a maniac for 10 minutes.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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."<p>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.<p>I know it is not relevant to his main angle, but I wish he had followed up on this part: <i>In 1959, many of the old Hardy Boy books were redone, streamlined, modernized, sterilized.</i><p>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.<p>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.<p>So: if you really want to read Leslie McFarlane, be sure to check out the pre-1959 editions.
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.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift_Jr" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift_Jr</a>
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.
Two memories from the Hardy Boys:<p>1) first reading the word "rendezvous," which I never heard anyone say, so for years, my brother and I talked about secret "rend-a-visses"<p>2) never quite figuring out what a "jalopy" was, as chet's car was never a car, always a jalopy.
Reminds me of the relationship Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had with Sherlock Holmes.<p>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.<p>Today there are societies and museums around the world dedicated to the great detective.
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 <i>despite</i> the author. Orson is conceited enough to believe he's not a great writer, just a conduit of man's soul.<p>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? <i>if you come across a passage you think particularly fine, strike it out</i>. I actually enjoy the straightfowardness of his "bad" writing (including this image: "scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast.")<p>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.
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.<p>German readers should probably revisit the TKKG novels for a particular disappointing experience.
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.<p>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.<p>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?<p>"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.
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.
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.<p>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>Just how they could be having this ludicrous discussion over the roar of two motorcycles is never quite explained. </i><p>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.<p>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.
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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>I think the Hardy Boys books do two things well: 1.) sell 2.) get kids interested in reading<p>No harm there...
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.<p>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.