AIRBORNE PHOTO & THE GHOST AT SKELETON ROCK
by Clint Burnham (Vancouver, Anvil Press, 1999) & "Franklin W.Dixon" (in this instance, James Duncan Lawrence; New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1958).
i'd not intended to include this 37th Hardy Boys book in this project but its axmodental proximity to & pairing with Burnham's collection of "stories" proved fortuitous in its contrast of equally vacant opposites.
the Hardy Boys require no description. anyone who has been a child has had to endure the blandness of either these, Nancy Drew or the Bobbsey Twins. the best thing that can be said of them is that they provided the ground for Ted Mann's over-the-top parody The Hardy Boys Visit Nazi Germany in 3¢ Pulp magazine in the '7os. i suppose they're kinda okay for someone just learning to read (especially the later, revised versions, which all but eliminated multisyllabicism) but i wouldn't've wanted my kids to have to suffer them. for real adventure in children's reading, i still say that Dr.Seuss had the right idea: all-out constraint-based writing coupled with remented invention & anchored to a narrative one would call "straightforward" if it weren't so just plain weird (Oulipo For Kids).
Burnham's collection is execrable from the other end of the spectrum that has "good, clean, wholesome fun" at its Hardy Boys end. i fail to see the accomplishment in a literate person palming it off as an "ability" to write as though illiterate about other illiterates whose lives consist of, basically, nothingness. the people who populate these stories are the very ones one tries to avoid in real life: why would i want to read about them?
there's a huge difference between the down&out – & what is done with them – in, say, Charles Bukowski or Jean Genet (or even Irvine Welsh's romanticization of the socially useless (though i'd gladly toss him in the fire along with his books)) & the bland reportage Burnham pretends to. the only underlying theme here is one of emptiness, which seems better served by a half-inch space at the end of the B section in the paperback shelf.
AIRBORNE PHOTO & THE GHOST AT SKELETON ROCK
by Clint Burnham (Vancouver, Anvil Press, 1999) & "Franklin W.Dixon" (in this instance, James Duncan Lawrence; New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1958).
i'd not intended to include this 37th Hardy Boys book in this project but its axmodental proximity to & pairing with Burnham's collection of "stories" proved fortuitous in its contrast of equally vacant opposites.
the Hardy Boys require no description. anyone who has been a child has had to endure the blandness of either these, Nancy Drew or the Bobbsey Twins. the best thing that can be said of them is that they provided the ground for Ted Mann's over-the-top parody The Hardy Boys Visit Nazi Germany in 3¢ Pulp magazine in the '7os. i suppose they're kinda okay for someone just learning to read (especially the later, revised versions, which all but eliminated multisyllabicism) but i wouldn't've wanted my kids to have to suffer them. for real adventure in children's reading, i still say that Dr.Seuss had the right idea: all-out constraint-based writing coupled with remented invention & anchored to a narrative one would call "straightforward" if it weren't so just plain weird (Oulipo For Kids).
Burnham's collection is execrable from the other end of the spectrum that has "good, clean, wholesome fun" at its Hardy Boys end. i fail to see the accomplishment in a literate person palming it off as an "ability" to write as though illiterate about other illiterates whose lives consist of, basically, nothingness. the people who populate these stories are the very ones one tries to avoid in real life: why would i want to read about them?
there's a huge difference between the down&out – & what is done with them – in, say, Charles Bukowski or Jean Genet (or even Irvine Welsh's romanticization of the socially useless (though i'd gladly toss him in the fire along with his books)) & the bland reportage Burnham pretends to. the only underlying theme here is one of emptiness, which seems better served by a half-inch space at the end of the B section in the paperback shelf.