Word: bobbseys
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Critics will never admit it, and the reader's good sense denies it, but sometimes bad writing is best. Good writing would never have produced Eliza crossing the ice. Scarlet and Rhett. Ivanhoe. Amber, James Bond, Arrowsmith, Queeg's ball bearings, or any of the Bobbsey twins. The best and most enjoyable bad writing ever done by an American is Hemingway's in To Have and Have Not, but when some anthologist pastes together the definitive collection of Great Moments from Bad Novels, he should give a secondary dedication, at least, to Frederic Wakeman...
...nation. Founded in 1907 by the late Edward Stratemeyer. who himself wrote under half a dozen pseudonyms, the syndicate's stable of interchangeable writers endlessly creates new volumes in such series as Tom Swift Jr., The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, The Happy Hollisters, The Dana Girls, The Bobbsey Twins, Honeybunch and Norman. These cannot be found on most library shelves; yet children always manage to have them in hand, and they sell at a rate of 2,000,000 a year...
...stories there's no murder, no undue violence-a girl can be tied up. but that's all. There's no gunplay by our heroes. No matter how hard they're pressed, they win by their wits." Neither is there any swearing. The Bobbsey twins used to say an occasional "Gosh" or "Golly." but when a reader protested that these were distant euphemisms for God ("And. by gosh." says Svenson in surprise, "she was right!"), "Gosh" and "Golly" disappeared...
...readers never knew was that there never was a Victor Appleton, nor is there one now. The old Tom series was the product of the same writing factory that also churned out The Rover Boys, today produces, in addition to the new Tom, such solid moneymakers as The Bobbsey Twins and the Nancy Drew books. Originator of the assembly-line idea was an immigrant German organist's son named Edward Stratemeyer, who, before his death in 1930, fed a whole stable of writers with plots, supervised their finished products, and made it a point to deal with his authors...
After the Bobbsey Twins. In Hollywood, mentioning Kinsey was one of the few ways to break up a gin rummy game. Radio comedians, ever on the alert against censorship, tested the water with such gags as: "He's at the awkward age-you know, too old for the Bobbsey Twins and too young for the Kinsey report...