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She wins bread, he loafs
Raised to be helpless, partial to pipe dreams, this dad sings the praises of the working wife.
By Rob Ryder
[10/06/99]

Make the dough, do the laundry: Life as a breadwinner mom
Dad's at home, Mom's raking in the bucks -- everything's cool, right? Not exactly.
By Dianne Lake
[10/05/99]

Hurting young men put pen to rage
A writing teacher who works with juveniles sees familiar pain in the diary of Eric Harris.
By Jill Wolfson
[10/04/99]

From "Hey Faggot" to "Hey Daddy"
Savage Dan Savage softens up in fatherhood: Now he's a bitch with a burp rag.
By Daryl Lindsey
[10/01/99]

Get out of my bedroom!
The editor of Mothering magazine denounces a new warning against the family bed as the drivel of government terrorists.
By Peggy O'Mara
[09/30/99]

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The Hardy Boys were an immediate hit -- two years after they first appeared, 116,000 Hardy Boys mysteries had been sold. (Their popularity inspired the creation of Nancy Drew, which promptly began outselling the Hardys two to one.) But while the money issue didn't faze McFarlane, something else did -- his discovery that the early books were being systematically revised and shortened, beginning with "The Tower Treasure" in 1959. Other chopped-down editions of McFarlane-penned titles appeared throughout the '60s in those compact blue hardcover editions familiar to anyone who was just starting to read when the Beatles landed.

Earlier readers who recalled McFarlane's unexpurgated texts bemoaned their loss. Canadian journalist Bob Stall, the man who first informed McFarlane of the wanton editing, warned him, "The old books were written for a literate generation. But not these new ones. And they'll engender an even less literate generation."

McFarlane's originals are still available, however, thanks to Applewood Books. (Although the new Grossett and Dunlap rereleases are being promoted as the return of the "original" Hardy Boys books, they are actually the '60s-era eviscerated versions.) At $14.95, Applewood's editions are pricier than the $5.99 Grossett and Dunlaps, but the difference is obvious in both look and content. The Applewood books feature beautiful dust jackets bearing the original cover illustrations. Most important, each of the six Applewood volumes is five chapters longer and substantially different in tone and pace that the Grossett and Dunlaps.

In the originals, McFarlane had taken it upon himself to educate the wee heathens in his audience by dropping in references to Shakespeare and Dickens, and using multisyllabic words like "ostensible," "presaged," and "inelegantly." Anticipating the craze for sensuous food writing, McFarlane made a point of detailing his characters' meals -- they would habitually celebrate the solving of a case by throwing themselves a sumptuous feast. The revised edition got rid of it -- snooty reference and foodie fun all consigned to early Hardy history.

Chet Morton's practical jokes were a regular feature of the original books but much rarer occurrences in the faster-paced successors, which tended to skip straight to the action. Colorful aspects of McFarlane's villains were often processed out. A fierce gang led by one Baldy Turk in the 1928 version of "The Missing Chums" is mysteriously denatured -- Baldy disappears and the gang, circa 1962, becomes a generic bunch of bank robbers. A payoff for Turkey's helpful role in the Cuban missile crisis? Or an attempt to placate the chrome-domed Khrushchev?

The character of Aunt Gertrude was a major casualty of the editor's pen. In "The Missing Chums" she is introduced as "One of the pepperiest and most dictatorial old women who ever visited a quiet household. She was a raw-boned female of 65, tall and commanding, with a determined jaw, an acid tongue, and an eye that could quell a traffic cop. She was as authoritative as a prison guard, bossed everything and everybody within reach, and had a lofty contempt for men in general and boys in particular." The rewritten "Missing Chums" -- No. 4 in the rereleased series -- lacks not only that description of her character, but also most examples of it. Aunt Gertrude is reduced to making occasional remarks, almost invariably described as "tart."

Some deletions were clearly necessary due to the inevitable changes in language over the course of 30 years. Dropped from "The Missing Chums" is "'I'll say,' replied Iola slangily," as is "'So!' she ejaculated, as the boys appeared." Chet Morton's car is referred to in "The Tower Treasure" as a "gay-looking speed-wagon." In the revision, the car loses this description but gains a name, "The Queen." (In this case there appears to be a wit at work, making the change something less than a total loss for literature.)

But whatever else might have dropped out of the original books, it wasn't the sex scenes. Clever lads though they were, the Hardy Boys were certainly not unlocking the mysteries of life. "Wholesome American boys never got a hard-on," McFarlane noted sarcastically in his autobiography. After trying his hand at another Stratemeyer series, "The Dana Girls" (for which he temporarily took the identity of Nancy Drew "author" Carolyn Keene), McFarlane found himself contemplating plot lines that would have taken the syndicate in new directions. "I was tempted," he wrote, "to turn them loose in one of Bayport's abandoned buildings with the Hardy Boys just to see what would happen. It might have done the four of them no end of good."

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