Books as Wine:
The Mysterious Case of Nancy Drew & the Hardy Boys, Carole Kismaric & Marvin Heiferman
First impressions: I have not read the authors' other book, "Growing up with Dick and Jane." This is a coffee-table book which purported to discuss the politics of early childrens' publishing, as well as the historical conception of teen and pre-teen life in America through the idea of famous American mystery series franchises for teens. I thought it would be interesting to read that book, especially since as a young child I inhaled--with equal parts boredom, annoyance, and speed--my mother's collection of 1940's era Nancy Drew books, simply because they were in the house and were printed words on a page, and realized even at the time they were racist, not very original, or well-written. I wanted to see how the authors tackled those topics.
The book started off with a relatively discussion of the building of an early publishing franchise/empire for the newly created idea of "teenagers," which was interesting enough, and relatively straightforward coffee-table-historical-biography fare, if not particularly well-written.
Middle: Halfway through, I still thought it would be interesting to read that book, but realized this book was about as far away from that book as as you could get while still purporting to be the same thing--the way that a chocolate donut hole from Dunkin' Donuts and a 5-layer French mousse dessert with handmade caramel chocolates are both "chocolate desserts," but that's about all that can be said in terms of their similarities.
You can tell which parts of this book are written by the female author, and which parts are written by the male author (hint: the male author writes about the Hardy Boys series); paragraph transitions are just that clunky. This type of book is one that gives me hope that someday my works will be published in softcover, but gives me hope for all the wrong reasons--namely, if they're publishing this dreck, they'll probably enjoy a neatly-formatted ms of any of my high school essays even more. A sample paragraph transition: "On the other hand, unlike Frank and Joe Hardy, who join the line in the literary pantheon of male adventurers, Nancy Drew bears a special responsibility: she stakes out new territory by showing girls how to take action..."
There are also pages in this book which are an attempt to tie the book's main subject--the history of these two American novel series, and their evolving interpretations of the [straight, white] American teenager--to the rise of a special idea of "American teenage culture" and that idea's evolution over the past 150 years. They don't. For instance: there is one page is basically about John Wayne being the 1950's masculine ideal, which is not only a debatable point in and of itself, but is tied to the Hardy Boys' series by the authors basically saying, 'John Wayne has quality x, y, and z. The Hardy Boys do, too.' There's another side-note, about civil rights and race in the 1960's, which doesn't mention either series of books at all: it starts off by basically saying, 'some teens in the 60's were concerned about their clothes and hair as teenagers, but other teenagers had to deal with racism! Here's a stock photo of school integration!' You start to check for tipped-in pages, strange glues or bindings, indicating these pages weren't actually original to the book and were ripped out of a particularly bad American history text and pasted in. Alas.
If the authors wrote this book in their sleep, the photos and illustrations must have been gleaned from a particularly somnambulistic episode.
As far as I can tell, there are three types of illustration in the book:
1.) Scans of out-of-copyright Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew cover art, endpapers, etc.
2.) A bunch of stock photos of people between the ages of 10 and 30 doing things, which are related to the book's main subject matter with captions so transparently padded as to be laughable.
For instance, on a page where the main text discusses the rise of the adult detective/mystery novel and claims, without evidence, that the popular adult format was a publishing goldmine when the heroes became teenagers ("pure inspiration for kids whose lives are defined by changes and confusion, whose growing bodies often feel like haunted houses" [?!?]), there is a sidebar titled, without preamble, "Other Brother Acts," which discusses: The Jackson 5, the Kennedys, the Righteous Brothers, and the Groucho Brothers. No joke. It is left to the reader to make the tenuous, and hilarious, connection between such sidebars and the main "ideas," such as they are, of the book.
I kept desperately wanting to see the book segue into a "
Pat the Bunny" parody:
- "The Hardy Brothers are brothers. Here are some other brothers. Many people have brothers. Do
you have a brother?"
- "Both Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were made into TV shows. TV shows are generally popular with teenagers. Here are some other TV shows which were popular with teenagers. Can
you name any other TV shows which are popular with teenagers?"
- "Nancy Drew's father was a man who was an apolitical cipher of a father figure. Here are some real men who were deeply involved in politics in America, who could arguably be called father figures if you were of a certain political bent. Do
you have a political bias and a license from Corbis that only allows you access to certain historical stock photos?"
3.) Scanned-in, copyright-free advertising drawings and line art from the 20's through the 50's, often with no caption at all.
For instance, in the page facing the opening of chapter 2 (creatively titled "Action, Action Action," but in three different typefaces so it looks...action-y), we see a collage made of four images: a cropped partial scan of a Nancy Drew book cover, a photo or film still from the 50's of a "friendly white male neighborhood cop type" laughingly separating two white elementary-school age boys who were throwing ineffective punches at each other, a B&W line drawing of a giant fist which has captured tiny people a la Gulliver's travels, and what appears to be a scan of an interior end-page from a Hardy Boys book. The text accompanying this collage is all about the improbability of the perfect, scenic, idyllic, yet somehow constantly crime-ridden towns which the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew live in.
Finish: At times, it's hard to tell if the authors are aware of their absurd padding of what could otherwise be an informative and relatively factual two-page historical society pamphlet about franchised publishing efforts in the nineteen-teens and are amused by it, or if they are totally unaware of their gender, historical, political, and cultural bias.
Here are some items that point toward the authors' own awareness of the absurdity of this book:
"In fact, the two of them [Nancy Drew and her father Carson] seem more like husband and wife than parent and child--Carson doesn't flinch when his attractive daughter playfully runs her hands through his wavy hair. When the two Drews flirt shamelessly, which they often do, they're unaware of the dark psychological undercurrents that kept twentieth-century shrinks' couches warm."
"[The Hardy Boys] simply affirm their loyalties, believe in their own involunerability and unwavering moral strength, and act out their version of masculinity in a timeless, endless loop of thrilling excitements. The Hardy Boys never stop and, like most men who are married to their jobs, can't imagine retiring."
"Nancy has no mother to apprentice herself to, no homework that needs to be done. She has no worries about money nor chores around the house..."
Here are some items that point toward the authors' plain and painful biases:
"...But shopping at Burk's Department Store or eating dainty luncheons with her nice but conventional friends just isn't enough for ambitious Nancy Drew. The only time she feels truly alive is when she's on a job....when Nancy's not working she feels 'empty,' she can't sit still and seems restless at play. Lucky for her that just as she's obsessively thinking that she'd 'go to the ends of the earth to find another mystery,' someone in need rings her doorbell, or something unsettling...grabs her attention and snaps her back to life." (Yes, that's a continuation of the above sentence).
"The Hardys' boy friends are important throughout the series, but because the preteen kids reading the Hardy Boys are not particularly interested in romance, the presence of girls in the mysteries is insignificant. They have to make an appearance, of course, for otherwise the Hardy Boys and their pals' sexuality would be a little suspect."
"Young teen girls like the thrill of romance, not the ickiness of sex, and that may explain why Nancy Drew's a little bit blase on the subject of romance[...]Nancy doesn't need Ned. She's got her own car and money and is too busy to be needy. To be honest, Nancy knows that Ned's got nowhere else to go; he lives to serve her and isn't interesting enough to merit a book series of his own."
A sidebar, discussing the rise of the popularity of mystery fiction based on true crimes of the 20's, is illustrated with another seemingly unrelated stock photo, this one of a hangman's noose. And then I got to this sentence: "Bullet-riddled bodies, sexpot killers, and machine-gun blowouts became the symbols of hard-boiled detective fiction, now known as 'crime novels' and lambasted by some critics, who called them 'really prolonged literary lynchings.' (Really. Really really. I shit you not).
And then there are really the sentences that make you wonder if this book isn't a sadistic plot on the part of the authors to drive you crazy trying to decide between self-aware, ironic arch commentary winking at itself, the most breathtakingly unaware stereotyping you've ever seen, something that makes you laugh in horror:
"Teen detective Nancy Drew is nothing like most young girls--boy-crazy, always on the phone, morbid, mooning over unicorns, or subject to fits of uncontrollable giggles. [...] A clotheshorse with an ever-expanding wardrobe, Nancy acts out every girl's desire for material goods..."
"Nancy's been raised to take men for what they are in her world--sometimes helpful, sometimes troublesome, but more often than not, criminals. She's usually more capable than they are; no wonder they tie her up, gag her, lock her in closets, and knock her unconscious."
"[Nancy Drew's] persona--equal parts girl, boy, teenager, and adult--allows her to blossom in a man's world without giving up the perks of being a girl and frees her and her readers from a prison of gender expectations."
This book is a sexist, racist, boring bit of tripe, with an interesting three-pages-at-most aside on the history of publishing syndicates which catered to childrens' literature as a new market, and another half-paragraph at the end about the fact that the books were eventually revised to take out some of the most egregious stereotypes about non-white WASPS (not how they were revised, not why--that would have been interesting--just that they were). The subject of the book was sexist, racist bits of tripe for children, but it was made more horrible to read by the fact that the authors knew this, and could only sporadically bring themselves to comment acerbically on the dark undertones of the otherwise stupid, repetitive, impossible, perfect, biased, sheltered lives of the characters these books held up as role models.
I guess that if the authors had consistently trashed the books, perhaps they wouldn't have gotten paid for writing it, but I wonder if they would have been happier people. I also wonder if they really wanted to trash the books consistently, which is a rather unsettling thing to wonder about.
In the end, this book was worth reading only because I knew if I finished it, I would be able to ethically write this review, trashing both the book and its fawning devotion to both series, which was a joy to do.
Pairs well with: a light trepanning.
Wine this book most reminds me of: the dusty 6-pack of 1987 "Seasons' Best" holiday beer sitting in the basement of my parents' home since that date, which they will not throw out, but cannot drink--at least not without major stomach pumping.
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