ATDDTA the Chums narrator

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

       robinlandseadel:
       The Chums of Chance narrator is a self-conscious, very 
       famous author of a series of celebrated children's novels. 

       Mike Bailey:
       but, however, mutatis mutandis, amicus curiae, let us consider 
       that he is also a very *odd* author...both the current 
       adventure and the other ones referred to may be typical of 
       "the world with just a few changes" but are (I'd say) 
       refreshingly different from any known to originate in this 
       our mundane world; 

J. K. Rowling was the first to come to mind, but she represents the current 
version of serialized fiction for youth, a realm of increasing variety and 
overall weirdness. Let's face it: she's turning on a whole new generation on to 
Grimoires and Sigils and so on. Is that weird enough for you? The Seals of 
Solomon for Mall Rats? Such new sub-generes as Manga, Anime and 
Steampunk also come to mind. Not having read H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and 
so on in ages, I don't always pick up when TRP is echoing and/or satirizing 19th 
century youth adventure stories, and whatever echos of J.K. Rowling I'm picking 
up might be just as my projections into the Chums world as anything else. 
Nonetheless:

        ". . . .readers are referred to The Chums of Chance 
        in the Bowels of the Earth---for some reason one 
        of the less appealing of this series, letters having 
        come as far away as Tunbridge Wells, England, 
        expressing displeasure, often quite intense, with 
        my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo." AtD 117)

. . . .the "Tunbridge Wells, England" remark fixing the author's audience well
into the UK but also echoing the Uniquely British aspects of whatever the hell 
is going on here. "Harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo" seems to point to 
Vineland and makes us reconsider the various meanings of "The Underground". 
As do all the literally "Underground" goings-on in the mines in Colorado that 
make up the section we're now reading, with strange sandwiches made-up 
for whatever the hell lives 24/7 down in the mines.

        MB:
        and his asides are unique to AtD though they 
       (caricature? parallel? build on? refract?) auctorial asides we 
       know & love...further, both the freedom of speech and the
       verbal dexterity afforded the Chums eclipses those qualities
       as found in the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift and John Carter 
       of Mars, taken together...

. . . .oh, it's amalgamators work all right, rub silver and gold together, 
see if you come up with something else. . . .

And by the time you reach "my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo",
you know who's doin' the talking.