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The alliterative Chet
Aug. 30th, 2010 08:24 amI wrote this about the Hardy Boys on Jonathan's Tumblr, responding to Jonathan's uncertainty as to whether to call the series "novels" (The First Novel You Remember Reading):
The Hardy Boys books are most definitely novels. Fortunately most of the copies still around when I was reading them were the Leslie McFarlane originals rather than the '60s revisions/simplifications. But they weren't my first novels. Didn't find them until age 8, either borrowed from a friend or from a public library. The school library would have no Hardy Boys, the librarians having decided that... don't know what they decided, that the books were low-quality, I suppose. Novels I'd have read earlier included fictionalized accounts of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. Perhaps they'd feature a boy or a teenager who accompanied Boone or Crockett on their adventures. I was age 7. I remember one series that I tired of quickly that featured various Famous People When They Were A Boy, and that would be most of the book, the Hero When He Was Still A Boy, but the last chapter would be the Famous Person As An Adult. The only one I recall anything from was the Will Rogers: for all of the book he's a very earnest boy who wants to become a cowboy, surmounting difficulties but still needing a vast amount of skill involving ropes etc. that he hasn't yet mastered, so there is much unsureness in him - then in the last chapter he is a comedian, is quite in command as he says funny things and the audience laughs. I had never heard of Will Rogers until reading this novel.
I probably read my first Black Stallion prior to my first Hardy Boys. Looking at the list of titles at Wikip, I surmise that this was The Black Stallion's Courage. I read most of it on my own, but at one point my father read a chapter to me. It turned out to be the stupidest chapter in the book, the chapter where the Black's filly, a champion in her own right, refuses to pass another horse and win races because she is in love with that horse and wants to stay near him. I remember my father clicking his tongue in disgust at those passages. But I also remember that when I got to The Black Stallion's Filly, written earlier but read by me subsequently, I thought it was terrific. The filly was very bad-tempered, and this was presented as a fine quality, though of course the temper had to be brought under control. Henry and Alec employed a hot potato in the taming process, setting it on one of their shoulders (iirc), which the filly bites at, sinking her mouth into the hot potato instead. Ouch.
The first Hardy Boys book I read was The Great Airport Mystery, but I considered the best to be What Happened At Midnight and While The Clock Ticked. I recognize now that this preference is most certainly owing to these two books' having the most evocatively mysterious titles, the absence of frequent title words "Mystery" and "Secret" and "Clue" helping to evoke mysteriousness.
What I remember most from the Hardy Boys, besides that the chapters always ended in cliffhangers, was what most other people also remember: the word "chums." Chief chum was the alliterative Chet.
The Hardy Boys books are most definitely novels. Fortunately most of the copies still around when I was reading them were the Leslie McFarlane originals rather than the '60s revisions/simplifications. But they weren't my first novels. Didn't find them until age 8, either borrowed from a friend or from a public library. The school library would have no Hardy Boys, the librarians having decided that... don't know what they decided, that the books were low-quality, I suppose. Novels I'd have read earlier included fictionalized accounts of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. Perhaps they'd feature a boy or a teenager who accompanied Boone or Crockett on their adventures. I was age 7. I remember one series that I tired of quickly that featured various Famous People When They Were A Boy, and that would be most of the book, the Hero When He Was Still A Boy, but the last chapter would be the Famous Person As An Adult. The only one I recall anything from was the Will Rogers: for all of the book he's a very earnest boy who wants to become a cowboy, surmounting difficulties but still needing a vast amount of skill involving ropes etc. that he hasn't yet mastered, so there is much unsureness in him - then in the last chapter he is a comedian, is quite in command as he says funny things and the audience laughs. I had never heard of Will Rogers until reading this novel.
I probably read my first Black Stallion prior to my first Hardy Boys. Looking at the list of titles at Wikip, I surmise that this was The Black Stallion's Courage. I read most of it on my own, but at one point my father read a chapter to me. It turned out to be the stupidest chapter in the book, the chapter where the Black's filly, a champion in her own right, refuses to pass another horse and win races because she is in love with that horse and wants to stay near him. I remember my father clicking his tongue in disgust at those passages. But I also remember that when I got to The Black Stallion's Filly, written earlier but read by me subsequently, I thought it was terrific. The filly was very bad-tempered, and this was presented as a fine quality, though of course the temper had to be brought under control. Henry and Alec employed a hot potato in the taming process, setting it on one of their shoulders (iirc), which the filly bites at, sinking her mouth into the hot potato instead. Ouch.
The first Hardy Boys book I read was The Great Airport Mystery, but I considered the best to be What Happened At Midnight and While The Clock Ticked. I recognize now that this preference is most certainly owing to these two books' having the most evocatively mysterious titles, the absence of frequent title words "Mystery" and "Secret" and "Clue" helping to evoke mysteriousness.
What I remember most from the Hardy Boys, besides that the chapters always ended in cliffhangers, was what most other people also remember: the word "chums." Chief chum was the alliterative Chet.
