I did not read much children's literature when I was a child.
This was not for lack of interest. I was one of those obnoxiously advanced children who basically figured out how to read by the age of three or four, had to be physically restrained from reading before I was emotionally or socially prepared to read even something as conventional as fairy tales, and was reading well above my grade level by age eight or nine. I loved books, all but devoured them, and was stealing my mother and aunt's mystery novels by age twelve or so. By the time I was a freshman in high school I was so far ahead of peers that I probably could have taken (and passed) college-level English and History courses with ease. Suggestions that maybe I wasn't quite ready for Hemingway or Fitzgerald or Hardy, even by my mother, were dismissed out of hand.
Unfortunately for my knowledge of literature, Mum was absolutely right: I wasn't ready for Hemingway, Fitzgerald, or Hardy. I didn't have the experiential background to understand why Jake Barnes couldn't marry Lady Brett Ashley, or the traditions that handicapped Eustacia Vye. I didn't quite comprehend just why Harriet Vane's past was so shady in the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, or the exact relationship between Lily Rowan and Archie Goodwin in the Nero Wolfe books. Remember, I didn't even kiss someone until I was 18, let alone have a serious date until I was a senior in college. I might have read books about human relationships, but I certainly didn't understand a lot of them.
Worse? Barring a brief craze for Newberry winners and Betty Cavanna's juveniles when I was in the sixth grade, I skipped right over the vast majority of children's or youth classics when I outgrew old favorites like The Black Stallion and went straight to adult books like The Demolished Man when I discovered science fiction at the tender age of fourteen.
That's not to say I didn't read Charlotte's Web or The Cricket in Times Square or Marguerite Henry's beautifully illustrated books about famous horses when I was in elementary school. I did, and loved them dearly. However, there are only so many books and so much time. Alice in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables, Swallows and Amazons, Tom Sawyer and Little Women and Caddie Woodlawn - all of these and so many more were bypassed in favor of The Lord of the Rings and The Foundation Trilogy and my uncle's complete run of American Heritage when I hit my teens. I did read some books that are usually given to children (Huckleberry Finn, which is hilarious, tragic, and most definitely not a children's books), but I was far more likely to pick up a book on Tudor history written for adults than anything from the Scholastic catalogue.
I've gone back and read some of these overlooked classics as an adult (see: Anne of Green Gables and its numerous sequels). Others, though, were books that one reads as a child or not at all (see: The Bobbsey Twins and its even more numerous sequels). I certainly wouldn't have stopped any of my own children from reading ones that I'd skipped, but at this point it's too late for me to do more than, say, pick up a Nancy Drew book, figure out the villain by the end of Chapter Two, and shrug.
This may be why I didn't encounter the subject of tonight's diary until I was an adult, and why I wasn't all that impressed. Then again, they weren't all that fashionable back in the 1960's, even though my father almost certainly devoured them when he was but a young, technology-crazed lad in the 1930's.
Tonight I bring you a series legendary not just for its lack of literary quality, but for its contributions to American popular fiction as a whole. One of the biggest hits of the early 20th century, these books are credited not only with entertaining the young but getting an entire generation excited about the wonders of modern science and priming them for the Atomic Age, at least until the necessity for Superfund sites:
Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle and its thirty-nine sequels, by “Victor Appleton” (Edward Stratemeyer, Howard Garis, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, respectively) – Edward Stratemeyer is one of the great unsung heroes of American children's literature. Originally one of the nameless scribes who churned out dime novels, he eventually founded his own literary empire, the Stratemeyer Syndicate. This mighty institution, which functioned as a packager/publisher for nearly a century, gave the world a truly stunning number of wholesome, exciting, endlessly entertaining books for children and teenagers between its founding in 1899 and its acquisition by Simon & Schuster in the 1980's.
The typical Stratemeyer book was part of a series chronicling the doings of a single character or group of characters. Detectives such as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys...school stories like the Rover Boys and the Dana Girls...adventures for tiny tots like the Bobbsey Twins...mystery-solving families like the Happy Hollisters...adventure tales about Bomba the Jungle Boy...Stratemeyer had a series for every taste, all written with the maximum amount of excitement while remaining free of graphic violence, all but the mildest romance, or the merest hint of social realism.
His method was simple: he (or one of his paid staffers) created the characters, theme, and general outline for each series and book. Writers would bang out each volume for a set fee, then turn it in to the Syndicate for a final polish and edit. Books were published under a variety of bland, “American-sounding” house names like“Victor Appleton,” “Carolyn Keene,” and “Franklin Dixon,” and if the plots were somewhat repetitive and the characters as distinctive as dry cleaner's cardboards, well, the audience turned over every five years so no need to worry much about trivialities like continuity.
Needless to say, children seized upon Stratemeyer books with the fervor of a parched Bedouin happening upon an unknown oasis. This was something that was uniquely theirs, respectable enough to satisfy their parents and enjoyable enough to keep them turning the pages. Librarians and schoolteachers were not happy – surely there were better written, more educational books? - but kids too old for picture books and too young for adult novels devoured Stratemeyer series for several generations whether their elders approved or not.
One of the first Stratemeyer productions was the Tom Swift series. Beginning in 1910 and continuing until 1941, Tom Swift, boy inventor of the quaint little town of Shopton, New York, was enormously popular (and profitable) among American children and teens, particularly boys who tinkered with crystal set radios, expensive cameras, and their father's old Buicks. Blatantly modeled on inventor-heroes like Henry Ford, Alberto Santos-Dumont, and the Wright Brothers, Tom Swift quickly became a true phenomenon, one of those rare characters who became a byword even among those who'd never actually read any of his adventures.
It's not hard to see why. Tom, “swift by name and swift by nature,” was one of those natural scientific/engineering geniuses that seems to come along every few years. Financed initially by his father, Barton Swift, who owned a successful construction company, Tom had a knack for inventing things that were just far enough ahead of actual technology to seem exciting without being actual science fiction. Artificial diamonds, electric locomotives, fax machines, portable movie cameras, even house trailers...all of these appeared in Tom Swift novels either just before or just as their real-life counterparts hit the market. And if Tom didn't actually invent dirigibles, his version of an airship wasn't used for Nazi propaganda and didn't blow up upon docking, unlike the German original.
Even the brightest boy inventor needs friends, assistants, and One Plucky Girl Who is Worthy of His love. These Tom had in abundance:
- Ned Newton, his BFF/sidekick, starts out as a local bank teller but eventually becomes the financial manager of Swift Enterprises, successor to Swift Construction Company.
- Mrs. Baggert, a generic bosomy housekeeper who functions as Tom's surrogate mother after his mother conveniently dies long before the series begins.
- The aforesaid Barton Swift, initially a vigorous, intelligent builder who gradually deteriorates until he's all but dribbling into his gruel. Whether this was due to premature senility, jealousy at his son's success, or sheer laziness on the part of the writers is not known.
- Mary Astor, the aforesaid Plucky Girl, a generic love interest who eventually agrees to marry Tom and live in his House on Wheels, fortunately without the problems faced by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball in The Long, Long Trailer.
- Andy Folger and Sam Snedecker, annoying capitalist bullies who try and fail to put Tom in his place for the first fifteen or so books. Whether they eventually end badly, reform, or lose all their money in the stock market and end up selling apples on the street corner isn't clear, but it certainly would be satisfying.
- Koku, Tom's bodyguard. A generically exotic South American giant and strongman, Koku is actually a scion of tribal royalty from somewhere in Darkest Stereotypia and learned to read, write, and speak English from missionaries who came only with the very best of intentions. Handsome, strong, and capable, he veers wildly from speaking in elevated tones straight out of the King James Bible to grunting “If me break, me fix” depending on which overworked hack had been hired to write the latest installment.
- Mr. Wakefield Damon, a rich whack job who somehow becomes Tom's friend and boon companion despite an age gap that must be about thirty years. Married to a generically tolerant wife, he joins Tom on many of his adventures, usually blessing random mechnical items, items of clothing, and body parts. “Bless my brakeshoes!” is a typical exclamation, and no, I have no idea why.
- Eradicate “Rad” Sampson, Tom's handyman. Rad, a generical racial stereotype who makes Stepin Fetchit look like A. Phillip Randolph, owns a mule named “Boomerang,” calls Tom “Massa” even though Shopton is allegedly in New York, and constantly refers to himself as “dis heah c**n” or “n*ggah.” Needless to say, his presence in the books makes them extremely problematic and unsuitable for modern children.
Throw in Tom visiting the City of Gold, the Caves of Ice, and Circling the Globe, building War Tanks and Giant Magnets, founding Ocean Airports and drilling for Great Oil Gushers, and riding about in Sky Racers, Big Dirigibles, Flying Boats, and Aerial Warships, and it's no wonder that Tom lasted longer than almost any other Stratemeyer Syndicate creation except Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.
This was not thanks to the quality of the prose. Although some of the Stratemeyer authors were genuinely talented (notably several of the women behind the Nancy Drew books), most were the sort of hard drinking journalists who could go straight from banging out an account of Seabiscuit's latest track exploits to grinding out a chapter about Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue getting lost in the wilds of New Jersey and missing supper. All these worthy scribes cared about was getting paid, and if that meant reams of prose that alternated between painfully generic to excruciatingly purple, well, Stratemeyer’s editors could always whip the raw material into shape if necessary.
Now, anyone who writes fiction these days is told, repeatedly, that the prose styles of the past should remain in the past. Times have changed, purple prose is no longer acceptable, and writing like, say, L.M. Montgomery or Sir Walter Scott is a terrible idea. Modern readers are used to whole pages of dialogue where the speakers are barely identified, spare descriptions of even the most important characters, and habits, quirks, and ways of movement appearing during the action rather than explained in expository sections. “Show, don't tell,” is the watchword, and woe betide the beginner who forgets this.
This sage advice particularly applies to adverbs. Unless your name is “Lois McMaster Bujold” or “J.K. Rowling,” having your characters say something ______ly is not a good idea. A good writer can still get away with something along the lines of “'Too bad about Jack's car accident, that Bugatti Veyron Mouse was one sweet machine,' he said dismissively, turning to pour himself a whisky and soda,” but it's not nearly as common as it was only a few decades ago, let alone when Edward Stratemeyer got rich publishing children's fiction.
Many early 20th century books had their characters speaking __________ly, but Tom Swift became famous for doing so to an unsual extent. This is largely the fault of Stratemeyer himself, who wrote the first few books about the boy inventor, and set the standard for the chief Swiftian scribe, Howard Garis. Garis never met an adverb he didn't like, and if he never quite reached the dizzying heights of whomever sent The New Yorker a story where “said” was followed by eleven adverbs, the average Tom Swift book used so many it was as if Edward Stratemeyer had threatened to toss him from the Brooklyn Bridge straight into a school of very hungry sharks if he hadn't included a certain number in each book.
Don't believe me? Here's a typical passage, just as it appeared in Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive, complete with massive chunks of pseudo-engineering, Tom being referred to as “the younger inventor,” and, of course, adverbs:
"Let us hear all about it," Mr. Swift said to Bartholomew. "Whether we can help you or not, we're interested."
"All right," replied the visitor again. "Whether I was followed East, and here to Shopton, or not doesn't much matter. I will put my proposition up to you, and then I'll ask, if you don't want to go into it, that you keep the business absolutely secret. I have got to put something over on Montagne Lewis and his crowd, or throw up the sponge. That's that!"
"Go ahead, Mr. Bartholomew," observed Tom's father, encouragingly.
"To begin with, four hundred miles of our road is already electrified. We have big power stations and supply heat and light and power to several of the small cities tapped by the H. & P. A. It is a paying proposition as it stands. But it is only paying because we carry the freight traffic—all the freight traffic—of that region.
"If the H. & W. breaks in on our monopoly of that, we shall soon be so cut down that our invested capital will not earn two per cent.—No, by glory! not one-and-a-half per cent.—and our stock will be dished. But I have worked out a scheme, Gentlemen, by which we can counter-balance any dig Lewis can give us in the ribs.
"If we can extend our electrified line into and through the Pas Alos Range our freight traffic can be handled so cheaply and so effectively that nothing the Hendrickton & Western can do for years to come will hurt us. Get that?"
"I get your statement, Mr. Bartholomew," said Mr. Swift. "But it is merely a statement as yet."
"Sure. Now I will give you the particulars. We are using the Jandel locomotives on our electrified stretch of road. You know that patent?"
"I know something about it, Mr. Bartholomew," said the younger inventor. "I have felt some interest in the electric locomotive, though I have done nothing practical in the matter. But I know the Jandel patent."
"It is about the best there is—and the most recent; but it does not fill the bill. Not for the H. & P. A., anyway," said Mr. Bartholomew, shortly.
"What does it lack?" asked Mr. Swift.
"Speed. It's got the power for heavy hauls. It could handle the freight through the Pas Alos Range. But it would slow up our traffic so that the shippers would at once turn to the Hendrickton & Western. You understand that their rails do not begin to engage the grades that our engineers thought necessary when the old H. & P. A. was built."
"I get that," said Tom briskly. "You have come here, then, to interest us in the development of a faster but quite as powerful type of electric locomotive as the Jandel."
Even by the standards of the early 20th century, this is a bit much. Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the Rover Boys and Honey Bunch and the X Bar X Boys — awkward they might have been, but they’re positively restrained compared to Tom Swift and his merry band of assistants, racial stereotypes, and One Plucky Girl. Nor did the writing in the average Bunny Brown or Nancy Drew, flawed as they were, lend its name to a minor but still very much extant figure of speech.
I refer, of course, to that beloved laughingstock known as the “Tom Swifty.”
Tom Swifties, which seem to have started in the early 1960's, are parodies of the typical Tom Swifty adverbial excess, preferably with the adverb matching the dialogue almost too well. The classic example is something along the lines of, “'It's sleeting outside,' he said icily,” but others are almost too clever for their own good:
“I'd like to stop by the mausoleum,” Tom said cryptically.
“Get to the back of the ship!” Tom said sternly.
“Pass me the shellfish,” Tom said crabbily.
“I've just come from the attic,” Tom said loftily.
“My EKG was perfect!” Tom cried heartily.
“My car needs a lube job,” Tom said oilily.
And that's just the standard formula. Variations are even better (or worse, depending on your tolerance for lousy jokes):
“La, sir! Take your hand off my bosom!” she tittered.
“I decided to come back to the group,” Tom rejoined.
“Leave that porcupine alone! You don't know where it's been,” he exclaimed pointedly.
“I've just come from the Kentucky Derby,” he said hoarsely.
And so on and so on and so on, ad infinitum et ad nauseam, she droned endlessly....
Unfortunately for modern readers, most of the original Tom Swift books are out of print and seem doomed to stay there. Not only are they so larded with racism, sexism, and classism that it would simply be easier to rewrite them, modern kids grow up with technology that makes Tom's electric rifle, wizard camera, giant searchlight, and similar wonders look positively medieval. This may be why the Stratemeyer Syndicate has attempted to update Tom more than once, with varying degrees of success:
- Tom Swift, Jr., whose adventures ran from 1954 to 1971, was allegedly the son of the original Tom Swift. His inventions included a “cosmotron express,” a “flying lab,” and an “atomic earth blaster,” all developed at his uber-rich father's
portion of Galt Gulch four square mile scientific compound. These books, which were much duller albeit more scientifically accurate than the original, eschewed adverbs in favor of alien adventures but sold less than half as many copies as the legendary original.
- Tom Swift, Jr. 2.0, who graced American letters between 1981-1984, is somehow still a teenager even though he would normally would be well into his 40's. He also is even more brilliant than before, reverse-engineering a faster than light starship drive and building a computer he calls
Jarvis “Aristotle” as he tootles about with his Native American pal “Benjamin Franklin Walking Eagle” (??????) and his Plucky Girl Frenemy Anita Thorwald, who has a miniature computer in her leg.
- Tom Swift, Jr. 3.0, who was in print between 1991 and 1993, is an even less than plausible reboot, since he's explicitly the son of the early 20th century Tom Swift and Mary Nestor, who seem to have remained young, vigorous, and fertile enough to produce a teenager when the rest of their generation was collecting Social Security. This youngster verges on being a mad scientist instead of a youthful genius – he creates a black hole all by himself, the clever lad! - which may be why he only lasted two years.
- Tom Swift, Jr. 4.0, who fights Luddite terrorists called “The Road Back” between 2006 and 2007, is an even less plausible reboot, since by then the original Tom Swift would have been either a centenarian or a sperm sample. There's a teenage nemesis named “Andy Folger,” too, the son of Tom Swift Sr's former business partner, not a coffee heir from Nantucket, but he’s still a capitalist bully, proving that some things never change.
- There's even something called “Tom Swift Inventors' Academy,” which debuted last year with adventures about drones and sonic technology. These sound promisingly weird (she said punnily), but unless there's a volume called “Tom Swift and His Amazing Virology Lab” they may or may not have any staying power.
Despite racism, predictable plots, and too many adverbs by half, Tom Swift has somehow become a classic. Applewood Books republished three early adventures in the early 1990's in editions that aped the originals, including similar dust jackets. Even better for nostalgia buffs and devotees of wholesome albeit stereotyped literature for lily white all-American youth of the masculine persuasion, Easton Press reprinted the first six books in fine leather-bound editions, complete with their signature acid-free paper, gilt edging, and satin ribbon bookmarks. Edward Stratemeyer, wherever he is, must surely be pleased that his most famous creation is considered worthy of the deluxe treatment while first editions quietly molder away.
The best recent Tom Swift story, however, isn't by Victor Appleton or any of the fifty million people who've used that particular name. It's “Tom Swift and His Humongous Mechanical Dude,” a hilarious, dead-on spoof by Hugo-winning author Allan Steele about Tom Swift III, brilliantly gifted stoner who is a tremendous disappointment to his father (Tom Swift, Jr., overworked industrialist who's trying to keep his company going in the face of modern competition) and his grandfather (Tom Swift, Sr., irascible old coot in a tricked-out wheelchair of his own design). This particular Tom, who's far more concerned with toking up than tinkering, finds and revives his grandfather's old robot, Ator, which proceeds to go on a rampage at the nearest mall.
The story, told in the traditional purple yet clunky prose, ends with Tom III, who somehow manages to stop Ator before he trashes the Shopton shopping mall food court, on his way to Europe one step ahead of the local cops. There, Steele assures us, he'll invent a super-powered electric bong, but that is a tale for another day....
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Have you ever read a Tom Swift novel? Written a Tom Swifty? Would you admit it if you did? Have you invented a black hole? Time to put on your mask and pay a virtual visit to the Heck Piazza Video Conferencing Center.....
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