

The Hardy Boys - The final chapter (1998) - niyazpk
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/05/AR2005120501092_pf.html

======
uuilly
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.

------
michael_dorfman
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.

~~~
hga
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.).

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ryanwaggoner
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.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift_Jr>

------
Alex3917
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.

~~~
kingkilr
Damn, that must take incredible creativity, akin to being asked to code a
website from seeing a screenshot of the privacy policy.

~~~
hugh3
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.

------
pge
Two memories from the Hardy Boys:

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"

2) never quite figuring out what a "jalopy" was, as chet's car was never a
car, always a jalopy.

~~~
mgkimsal
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.

------
steve19
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.

~~~
jacquesm
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.

------
10ren
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.

~~~
Avshalom
"... 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.

~~~
ojbyrne
60 mostly short anglo-saxon words and the long sentence, broken into multiple
clauses, creates a sense of growing momentum that evokes the fire.

Good piece on this particular subject:
[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/bookclub/2009/08/long-...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/bookclub/2009/08/long-
sentences.html)

~~~
Avshalom
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.

5\. That sentence is straight up crap.

------
cstuder
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.

~~~
Avshalom
Saturday morning cartoons are the big one for me.

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.

~~~
c0riander
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.

~~~
Avshalom
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.

------
gruseom
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.

------
darinpantley
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.

~~~
brandnewlow
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.

~~~
dschobel
It could still be comforting and not lousy though.

------
hardik
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.

~~~
dschobel
Do such content factories really exist? That's horrible yet intriguing.

~~~
die_sekte
AFAIK this is how Demand Media (eHow) works. Hundreds of freelancers at low
rates manufacture articles that are needed.

~~~
patio11
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.)

------
hrabago
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.

------
Goladus
_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.

~~~
superk
Totally! I hated Aunt Gertrude... if it was up to her there would be no more
adventures! I disliked her very very very much.

------
andrewl
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.

~~~
blahedo
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". ;)

~~~
andrewl
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.

------
aniket_ray
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.

~~~
heresy
I've put off reading Tintin again, I liked it way too much as a kid.

I don't want to discover Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus suck :P

------
dschobel
What a fantastic article. No idea what it has to do with HN but it was one of
the best pieces I've read in a while. Thanks niyazpk!

~~~
akkartik
Here's what I did with it: I imagined founders chained to startups they hate.

~~~
shrikant
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?

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Poiesis
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. :)

------
hardy263
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.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
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.

------
adamokane
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

No harm there...

------
dheerosaur
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.

------
RyanMcGreal
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.

------
keeptrying
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.

------
julius_geezer
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.

