Tag: original text

Roar

Ah, Nancy Drew.

Nancy Drew wasn’t the first kids’ sleuth series I discovered (Trixie Belden’s The Red Trailer Mystery and The Three Investigators’ The Mystery of the Moaning Cave came first), but when I was in the fifth grade, sometime between 1969 and 1970, we had a table of books in the back of the room that had belonged to the (now grown) children of our teacher. I was already reading mysteries checked out from the library or ordered from the Scholastic Book Fair, so when I saw The Secret of Red Gate Farm there on the table, along with the banner NANCY DREW MYSTERY STORIES, I couldn’t pass it up.

And on the back was a listing of all the titles in the series to that point in Nancy Drew history when this copy was printed. This was very exciting for me–a series? Of mysteries? I’d never heard of such a thing, and my life was about to be changed forever.

I recently found excellent replacement copies for my collection at the library sale–my copies of Crossword Cipher and Red Gate Farm are seriously dilapidated and wrecked–and I don’t remember if I have a revised text copy of Twisted Candles, so I picked it up, too. I do sometimes wonder if my collecting this books isn’t part of the neuroses I think it it is and part of a tendency to hoard things, especially books.

It probably will not come as a surprise to anyone that it always really bothered me that I didn’t read or acquire the books in order. There were other volumes in the series back on the table, including The Mystery at Lilac Inn, The Hidden Staircase, and The Haunted Showboat. (There was also a Dana Girls, The Secret of the Old Well. I eventually acquired the first and third books, The Secret of the Old Clock and The Bungalow Mystery, from the Woolworth’s on 26th and Pulaski in Chicago.) Nancy Drew was my first real foray into collecting a kids’ series, and of course, my parents were delighted that I moved on to the Hardy Boys without argument as ordered; they never liked me reading books with female heroines, which of course made Nancy Drew even more appealing to me because it was forbidden. (So, of course, I kept reading and acquiring them whenever I could when I wasn’t being supervised. So, yes, I was even in the closet as a Nancy Drew reader,)

But even as the revised texts appealed to me more because the font was better and the books were illustrated, I did notice, even as a kid, that Nancy was a lot more passive than she was in the original texts. Things happened to Nancy in the newer books, and her personality was bland to the point of being beige. It also irritated me that of course this rich lawyer’s daughter didn’t have a job, didn’t go to school, didn’t seem to have any responsibilities whatsoever other than traveling around doing as she pleased and stumbling over mysteries (sometimes the mystery came to Nancy). Her friends all adored her, would do anything she asked, and she was good at everything she tried. As someone who was not good at everything he tried, this annoyed me. Why not give her some flaws? Why make her this super-character who was perfect in every way? As I got older and revisited the original texts more, I could see why aficionados preferred the older versions, despite being dated and rife with racial and racist stereotypes; because Nancy wasn’t perfect in her original incarnation. She was a bit arrogant, definitely classist, and very headstrong to the point of being willful. She was also absolutely fearless, and had very deep convictions about right and wrong, and how wrongs must always be righted. She was fascinating but realistic. She’s aware of her privilege–even as she uses it as needed–but tries to use it to help others less fortunate, which is kind of admirable. The original text Nancy was the kind of character a girl between the ages and nine and thirteen would find aspirational, would want to be like, a role model of sorts presented at a young and formative age that they, too, could be smart and independent and liked as themselves, rather than as someone’s daughter or girlfriend or wife.

Even as a kid, I was drawn to strong, independent female characters. That has never changed.

Most of my collection of Nancy Drew mysteries–and all the other kids’ series I collect–are currently in boxes in my storage attic. There just isn’t room to have them out on display (which makes me crazy, but it’s either that or the copies of my own books, and my vanity trumps not displaying the books every time), because I do have copies of every Nancy Drew except for maybe one or two, and there are some revised editions I don’t have. Shortly after I got to the age where I could actually buy them with my own money, the editions changed; they went from the old flat matte covers to what aficionados and collectors call “the flashlight editions”, because there’s a flashlight as the logo on the spine (rather than the little black box with Nancy in profile) and they went to a glossy cover; also on the cover where NANCY DREW MYSTERY STORIES was changed to a banner across the top in yellow (the Hardy Boys’ banner was blue), and I didn’t like the new glossy covers or the flashlight editions or the banner…plus, I wasn’t going to start over and collect them all in this new format; this was when I started looking for them at yard sales, second hand stores, and flea markets (before the Internet and ebay).

I’ve also noticed how rabid the fans for both Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys can be. I belong to several Facebook groups for fans and collectors, and those people can get worked up really easily–and of course, it always has something to do with bigotry and change. They hated the new Nancy Drew series because (gasp, the horror!) Ned was Black and even greater horror, she has sex. There was a lot of pearl-clutching over this, as there was about the new Hardy Boys series, in which Joe was made much younger, their mother was killed off, and there were a lot of supernatural elements to both (I never finished the Nancy Drew show, but not out of distaste; I always appreciate new interpretations and find the changes made interesting. I never finished because I forgot about it, in all honesty)–again, pearl clutching–but every so often it amuses me to think about writing a book built around this fandom. But it would of course have to be a fictional series, but it could be really, really funny.

And I think the Hardy Boys may now be in the public domain? I don’t know how that works, but I’d love to be able to write my own. I’ve always wanted to, and if I could actually use the original characters…how fun would that be? I’ve also always hoped to get a gig ghostwriting for either series…I suppose it’s not impossible, but I’m not sure they are still releasing new titles in either series. There have also been spin-off series, too–but I’ve never read outside the original canon. Once they stopped being published in hardcover, I don’t care about collecting the paperbacks or reading them, either.

But Nancy was important in the formation of my interests in reading and what I write, and maybe she wasn’t my favorite series of them all, but I have an appreciation for her and the books still to this day.

My goal is to write an entry on every series I collect–I think I’ve already done The Three Investigators–but so what if I have? My blog, my entries!

Next up, I will probably read the original text of the Hardy Boys’ The Mark on the Door, which I picked up in a tweed edition sans dust-jacket at the library sale.

Until then, hang in there.

Seekers Who Are Lovers

Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment again, and I am looking forward to a lovely and productive day here. We had a rather marvelous thunderstorm last night–although there was potential street flooding, so hopefully the car is okay–which was nice. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a thorough cleansing rain like that, which is part of why the heat index has been so miserable lately. The temperature has been hot, and the humidity about what it usually is–not humid enough to rain, but so close it’s miserable. I had planned to barbecue last night, despite the heat, but when I was getting ready to start putting everything together was when I realized it was not only raining but pouring. There was also magnificent, long lasting rolling thunder claps that lasted for seconds; the kind where it sounds like the sky is splitting apart. So, I made pizza instead for dinner, and hopefully will be able to cook out this afternoon. The power also went out overnight–I slept well again last night, to wake up to blinking clocks everywhere. It was out for maybe about twenty minutes, based on the emails from Entergy letting me know an outage had occurred (how does one check one’s email without power? A mystery for the ages) and the follow up announcing the restoration of power was sent about twenty minutes later.

I ran my errands yesterday, including making groceries and dropping off boxes of books at the library sale. I cleaned and organized and filed most of the rest of the day, finally getting the office area whipped into some semblance of order that’s not only workable but close enough to being finished that it won’t take long to do so that I can finish it over my coffee this morning and while taking breaks from writing this–although these things generally tend to be fairly stream of consciousness. Today I am going to make a to-do list for the week, update the bills list and make sure everything is current, and I’d like to make some progress on the rugs in the kitchen. The living room looks much more bearable now that those boxes of books are gone, and I think I need to thin out the beads next as well as do some additional book pruning. I cleaned out some drawers yesterday, getting that project under way, and I also need to go through my last few journals to mark the places where I made notes on the things I am thinking about writing now. I’m also trying to decide what the point of whatever it is I want to write next will be. I’d like to write something for the Malice anthology, but the deadline looms and I don’t think I really have anything I can whip into shape in merely one day, which means I am going to need to write a draft and figure this story out as I go–the idea is very amorphous, and I’ve not been feeling terribly creative yesterday, which could prove to be a most frustrating writing experience. There’s another one I’d like to revise and work on–I am feeling connected to it, and to its voice, but again I am trying to figure out what I am trying to say in the story. I need to reread all of these things, of course. I need to reread lots of things so that I can get a grasp of them again so I can find my way into writing them. I actually started two books this past week, can you believe that? Like I don’t already have enough things in progress already that I need to start two more? I wrote the first sentence of each book, and stopped there. I know what I want to say in both of them, and where I want those opening chapters of each to go, but I’m not sure precisely how to say it.

I also got deeper into Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman, taking it slowly and savoring the experience as the rare treat and pleasure reading anything written by Abbott always winds up being. Each book is different in content, yet variations on a theme; I think future literary scholars will look book on her canon and study it as the incisive social commentary it is, about what it is to be a woman as well as how it is to be one, the strictures and compromises, the struggles between expectations and reality, all wrapped up in a lovely bow of beautifully constructed sentences that are complex in their very simplicity, and razor-sharp observations and insights into the strange tangle of emotions and contradictions that make us all so tenderly and sadly human.

We watched a tragic gay romance movie last night, Firebird, which was based on a true story from the days of the Soviet Union and its homophobia (still a thing in Russia to this very day, never forget). It was very well done, but it was also sad as such stories always are, with the kind of bittersweet ending where the truly conflicted one ends up dead and the one who isn’t moving on with his life stronger for the experience. So, no, not the feel-good gay movie of any year, by any means, so after that a few episodes of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens was just the ticket back from that downer.

Also, when I was dropping off books at the library sale, since I had cash on me (which is a rare thing) I checked the children’s section for series books I collect (I do this periodically, but only when I have cash on me) and I scored today with four books at two dollars apiece, and I had exactly eight dollars on me. I got three yellow-spined revised text (important) Nancy Drews (The Secret of Read Gate Farm, The Sign of the Twisted Candles, The Clue in the Crossword Cipher) which was the style when I started reading them so those are the ones I want. I already had copies, but the ones I already had on hand have been damaged over the years, and these were in excellent condition. I also got a tweed original text Hardy Boys The Mark on the Door, which I’ve never had a copy of (I only ever had the blue spine revised text) and have never actually read. There was no dust jacket, but it’s in really good condition. It’ll be fun to read it; per the fan groups, this was one of the books written during the time the original writer had left and the new ghost writers weren’t as good; and the plots tended to be a bit on the insane side sometimes. I am rather intrigued to read it–since they were all revised to get rid of offensive ethnic and racist stereotypes and language, it could be eye-opening.

I’ve also been reading Matt Baume’s marvelous Hi Honey I’m Homo, and am now up to the chapter on Dinosaurs, which I never watched. It’s really a fun book about how queer representation began and evolved over the years, as well as documenting the pushback against that representation (newsflash shocker: evangelicals have been coming for us every step of the way), and it’s written in an easy and accessible style that flows well. I’ve enjoyed his Youtube content, and I’m delighted to see that the book is in the same vein and just as well done. Highly recommended, and definitely more to come on that when I’ve finished reading the entire thing.

And now to my easy chair, to spend more time with Megan Abbott. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will check in on you again tomorrow.