Cheap Fiction

[j minnich]

>I devoured the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift, Jr. (part of the same family 
>conglomerate that produced Nancy Drew and lots of other stuff) until
>I was old enough to appreciate Sherlock Holmes and real SF.
>

I never read much of that Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew stuff, but much later when I
saw "Blue Velvet" I thought Lynch was doing some sort of parody on that
neighborhood mystery formula.  My early reading (that I can remember)
consisted of Dr. Doolittle books, _The Thirteen Clocks_ (Thurber?), _The
Little Fur Child_, _The Twenty-one Balloons_, and then maybe onward from
there to Jules Verne and Dumas, quickly followed by the nefarious Ayn Rand
(which sounds a bit like Lyle Bland, now that I think on't).  Now, of
course, I'm all better.     -j minnich
---------------------------------------------------------------
The poet is dead.
Nor will ever again hear the sea lions 
Grunt in the kelp at Point Lobos.
Nor look to the south when the grunion 
Run the Pacific, and the plunging
Shearwaters, insatiable, 
Stun themselves in the sea.  
   -Wm. Everson