Kevin, the way you put this, I'd love to disagree with you. Unfortunately I don't.
Patrick King
--- On Thu, 6/4/09, Kevin Burton Smith <kvnsmith@thrillingdetective.com> wrote:
From: Kevin Burton Smith <kvnsmith@thrillingdetective.com>
Subject: RARA-AVIS: Talkin' Tough About Nancy Drew
To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, June 4, 2009, 1:09 PM
James wrote:
> By the way, did anyone else read the article in the NY Times about
> all of the female Justices being Nancy Drew fans? How scary is that?
Why? Are you running a counterfeit organization in River Heights?
That a young girl may have been inspired by a intelligent, brave,
moral and compassionate role model doesn't scare me at all. After all,
they can't all be brain-dead scullery maids and whores.
What would you have preferred they read as children? PENTHOUSE?
He continues, in another post:
> I ain't got nuthin' against Nancy Drew, 'cept I'm a bit afeered of
> my Supreme Ct. all being addicted to her. My bestest girlfriend had
> the complete Nancy Drew, and I even went and bought a couple myself...
Nowhere does it say in the article that they're currently "addicted"
to them; merely that they were inspired by them as young girls.
So you have nothing to be "afeered" at.
And how did your "bestest girlfriend" turn out?
Or are your concerns more literary?
Because Nancy Drew (and her brothers-in- arms The Hardy Boys) were the
kid-friendly equivalent of the early hard-boiled crime pulps, and were
in fact contemporaries. The Hardy Boys and Drew both made their debut
about the same time Hammett and Gardner and Daly were running amuck in
the pages of BLACK MASK.
And with their colourful characters, breathless plots, purplish prose
and fast-paced action (and occasional political incorrectness) , Nancy
and the Boys were viewed with more than a little suspicion by the so-
called arbiters of decency and taste. Just as the pulps were.
As the gateway drug that probably lead a lot of us of a certain more
literate age here, I think the various offspring of the Stratemeyer
(sorry if that's too hard to pronounce) Syndicate deserve a little
more respect.
Kevin Burton Smith
Thrilling Detective Web Site
Spring 2009 Issue Now Online
"Love Rears It's Ugly Head"
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