Newsgroup: it.discussioni.giallo
Titolo: un articolo sulla vicenda editoriale di "Nancy Drew"

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/09/19/rehak/index_np.html
-- 
http://parolevaligia.splinder.com
www.paolobeneforti.it
http://spazioinwind.libero.it/paolo_beneforti/perec/perec.htm
http://spazioinwind.libero.it/paolo_beneforti/mari/index.htm

 
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/09/19/rehak/index_np.html
Who made Nancy Drew?
Melanie Rehak investigates the origins of the world-famous girl sleuth
and discovers two remarkable, revolutionary women.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Emily Biuso
Sept. 19, 2005  |   Since 1930, millions of girls (and boys) have spent
countless hours buried in the Nancy Drew mysteries, accompanying their
heroine to haunted mansions, spooky farms and foreboding caves in hopes
of solving the latest mystery. Yet, throughout the several decades that
Nancy has reigned as supersleuth extraordinaire (one who is also
unfailingly polite, stylish and modest), devoted readers have been
mostly clueless about the mystery lurking behind the stories: Who was
Carolyn Keene, the author of the long-running series? In her new book,
"Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her," Melanie Rehak
skillfully answers that question. In the process, she explains how the
independence, intrepidness and drive of Nancy's creators seeped into
their heroine, passing on to the girl detective some of her best
qualities.
Although the Nancy Drew books were penned by women (more on that in a
minute), Nancy herself was conceived by Edward Stratemeyer, the
children's publishing titan of the early 20th century. (He was also the
man behind the Hardy Boys and the Bobbsey Twins.) In 1929, he envisioned
Nancy as "an up-to-date American girl at her best, bright, clever,
resourceful and full of energy." Yet he was too busy to write her
stories on his own. By that point, Stratemeyer had authored many
successful children's series, and his books sold so well that he
couldn't keep up with demand. Eventually, he took to farming out the
work to young writers he hired on the cheap, providing them story
outlines and a modest paycheck in exchange for their writing the actual
books. He called his company the Stratemeyer Syndicate. 
In 1926, Stratemeyer hired Mildred Wirt Benson, a hard-charging
newspaperwoman from Iowa and recent college graduate to anonymously pen
children's books; she was responsible for the first Nancy Drew novel,
"The Secret of the Old Clock," and several mysteries that came
afterward. Other writers followed Benson's suit and continued the
popular line of Nancy Drew mysteries. But when Harriet Stratemeyer
Adams, Stratemeyer's oldest daughter, took over his company after her
father's death in 1930, she created many of the plots and story lines of
the Nancy stories, and in later years took over as the main author of
the series.
 
"Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her"
By Melanie Rehak
 Harcourt
 364 pages
 Non-fiction
The story of these two basically anonymous -- or, rather, pseudonymous
-- women forging careers and juggling families in the first half of the
20th century lies at the heart of "Girl Sleuth." As Rehak writes, Benson
and Adams "were pioneers during periods of both great progress and great
regression for women in this country, examples of persistence and
strength and a reminder that even at moments in history -- the turn of
the century, the late 1920s, the 1950s -- that we tend to think of as
sorry times for women's rights, there were women out there bucking the
trends ... they both envisioned her [Nancy] as a girl who could do what
she wanted in a world that was largely the province of men, just as each
of them had done."
As Benson -- the first woman to earn a master's degree in journalism
from the University of Iowa -- testified during a highly publicized 1980
court trial to determine copyright status and ownership of Nancy Drew,
"I was probably a rough and tumble newspaper person who had to earn a
living, and I was out in the world. That was my type of Nancy. Nancy was
making her way in life." (Benson worked as a newspaper reporter for more
than 50 years and, after being widowed a second time, took to piloting
planes to Central America for solo archaeological explorations.) Adams
was every bit as progressive. A woman running a company was practically
unheard of then, and she managed to stand up for herself in the
male-dominated world of publishing while raising a family -- long before
there were many resources for working mothers.
Adams spent more than 40 years feverishly keeping up appearances that
Keene was a real person, and Benson spent almost as long modestly
avoiding the limelight. Today, of course, hardly anyone remembers the
court drama and media speculation over the true author behind the girl
detective series. The Stratemeyer Syndicate is gone; Mildred Wirt Benson
and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams are dead. Nancy, however, lives on. (The
1959 version of "The Secret of the Old Clock" sold around 150,000 copies
in 2002, making it one of the top 50 bestselling children's books.)
Rehak shows that despite the original Syndicate concept to keep all
versions of Nancy the same and lacking in any distinction from
uncredited author to uncredited author, pieces of Benson and Adams wore
off on the girl sleuth. In the end, those personal touches may be what
made her so enduring. Though she is constantly updated for relevancy
(the latest reincarnation has the detective driving a hybrid car), it's
hardly her clothes or her hip slang that keeps subsequent generations
reading. It's the perseverance, fearlessness and pluck of Adams and
Benson that made Nancy appealing in the 1930s, as well as now.
Salon caught up with Rehak in her book-lined Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment
to talk about the women behind Nancy Drew, the girl detective as
feminist icon and the global reach of the famous sleuth.
How did this project get started? 
I heard an obituary of Mildred Benson on the radio when she died in
2002. In retrospect it makes sense that I wrote this book, but at the
time, it wasn't the kind of thing that I was thinking about at all. So I
heard this obituary of her and I was interested in her for a lot of
reasons. The Nancy Drew thing is obviously the big draw, but she grew up
in Iowa, which is where my mom is from, and she sounded really
fascinating.
I went out to the University of Iowa to look at her papers, and I spent
a day in this archive. There's not that much stuff -- there's about
three boxes of stuff, including her scrapbooks. And in with all her
stuff were interspersed all these news stories about Harriet Adams from
the '60s, when she went public. And it was literally one of these things
-- I don't know if you've ever worked in an archive, but there's the
morning, and then they close for lunch, and then there's the afternoon.
By the time I got to lunch break, the whole thing had assembled itself
in my head. There were these two women, and they were rivals, and they
were also very similar, for all of their differences, because of what
they faced. And then that together they created this character that was
so pioneering and that later inspired so many women to go off and do
what they wanted -- it literally all just came together.
Who made Nancy Drew? | 1, 2, 3 
 It sounds like you found yourself more compelled by Mildred and Harriet
and their stories than by Nancy Drew, the character. 
Well, I think it was really all three. I think Nancy Drew is a great
character, and her place in American culture is obviously really
important. But she's a fictional, stock character. She's not that
complicated. You couldn't really write a "biography" of Nancy Drew. To
me, the appeal was that I could examine this character in a social
context and then have behind her these real stories of real women who
actually put into her all the experience and troubles and triumphs that
they had had. As with every book or every movie or whatever, there's
always a story behind the story. And had she been done by other people,
she might not have been the pioneering character that she was.
 So you read Nancy Drew books a lot when you were younger? 
I did, yeah. I mean, they were not my favorite. But I had many
favorites. I was just sort of a crazy reader. I loved mysteries. I read
"Encyclopedia Brown" and I read Agatha Christie, and so, you know, I
definitely read them all. And I read them all a thousand times. My
sister had read them and my mother had read them -- and I think that
that's a very common Nancy Drew feature. A lot of people get them from
their mothers who remember reading them as a kid; they get handed on in
that way.
 How many Nancy Drew books did you read during the course of writing the
book? 
Well, I read all 56 of the original ones.
 It sounds like you knew all the nuances and differences between when
they were reworked ... 
Right. So I read all 56 originals, and I've read a bunch of the rewrites
of the original ones. I didn't read every rewrite, I don't think. And
then I read some of the ones that came out in the '80s -- you know, the
"Nancy Drew Files" and the ones where she goes to college. And then I've
read some of the really new ones, the Simon and Schuster ones that just
launched last year. So I don't know. A lot is the answer.
It's fun, though. One of the great things about writing this book is
that on the really bad days that everybody has writing a book, it was
like: "I'm just going to read some Nancy Drew today." And it counts.
It's not like I'm secretly reading a romance novel and eating a
chocolate. I can actually count this as two hours of work I did today.
 What else was part of your research? You were obviously at the
University of Iowa. And you had access to the Stratemeyer papers? 
Right. The Stratemeyer Syndicate archive is at the New York Public
Library, and it's huge. I would say the bulk of my research came from
there. All the correspondence -- really between everybody -- came from
there. Most of the early history of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, like when
Edward Stratemeyer started up, came from there. There have been a few
books written about that -- academic books -- but those papers were only
opened to the public in the late '90s. So actually, I think I'm the
first person to really sit down and go through them box by box.
There are a lot of questions that had persisted amongst people who had
studied series books for years that -- I don't mean to brag, but now,
finally, I have answered [some]. Nobody was ever sure what year he
started the Syndicate. But if you read through all these papers, it's
very clear. I quote a couple of letters in the book about when he gets
the idea and then when he writes to the first person that he wants to
ghost-write [his books]. There's a lot of stuff like that that just was
really exciting. And then there were some great things I didn't expect
to find: the whole file of letters between Harriet and her sister, Edna.
Why do you think Nancy has remained relevant all these years? Does it
have to do with the characteristics that Harriet and Mildred infused in
her? 
I think that they really put into her all of their drive and
stubbornness. They were both unbelievably stubborn in different ways.
Even though she is very superficially outlined in some ways, those
qualities in her are very real. And those qualities are timeless. It's
an earlier version of "girl power." One of the things I wondered about
as I was writing this was what would have happened if Edward Stratemeyer
hadn't died, and he had been the one editing the books, and Mildred was
writing them. Would he have made her different? And would she have just
been another one of his characters that had a good run and then died
out?
I really think [the relevance has to do with] the fact that it's these
two women who were both living that same challenge. Harriet was trying
to run this company and she was surrounded by men. And Mildred was
trying to become a journalist, which was also a completely male world.
They both basically just busted their way in. They said, "I'm here, and
I'm not going anywhere, and you're going to do it my way." Especially
reading all the books over again, I think you get that from Nancy Drew,
which is maybe not something people remember that specifically.
If you haven't read them in a while, I think you do tend to think of
them as less complicated. But that was something that surprised me when
I read them over: She is complicated. Even though the books always
follow the same trajectory and even though she always gets away in the
end, she's not without her moments of self-doubt and her moments of
sentiment. They're never about Ned [Nancy's longtime boyfriend]; they're
about other things. It was interesting to me to actually find in the
book the reasons why the series lasted so long. It's not just hype. Even
though the original ones have problems with racism and dated language,
they're still just really good. They're really fun to read. And they're
gripping. You want to know what's going to happen. That never died for
me even though I was reading them constantly. It was, like, I gotta
know, I gotta know.
There seems to be a little bit of an argument among the fans and critics
of whether she's this strong feminist icon or this goody-two-shoes with
a trust fund who is really annoying. Do you have an opinion about that?
I do. Yes, that's the sort of antifeminist argument that cropped up.
"Well, how can we take her seriously as a feminist role model? She
relies entirely on her father's money." But you've got to look at it in
context. This is a fictional character being written for children -- not
even being written for teenagers but for children. And it misses the
point. The point is you're supposed to love Nancy for all of these
qualities we've been talking about. For being intrepid, for being brave.
They're not meant to be a template on how to live a specific life.
They're meant to present ideals.
 
 While you were writing this book, did you find that there were people
coming out of the woodwork wanting to share their stories about Nancy
Drew and how she affected them? 
Yeah. I have to say, I was prepared for it, but I wasn't prepared for
the level it reached. And it still happens now. I go to a dinner party
and I get introduced, and everyone has something to say about it. And
really unlikely people told me they had read all the Nancy Drew books --
like a lot of men, which you never think. I mean, certainly more women.
Everyone has these really good memories, and they want to tell me how
much they loved her. It's such a nice way to go through the world.
 So did you encounter any fans who had particularly interesting stories
or connections to Nancy Drew? 
I didn't meet any personally. But there are a lot of stories -- a lot of
which I put in the book toward the end -- about these women who read her
in their underground bunkers during the resistance. And the really
interesting thing is that it keeps happening. It just is reverberating
ahead into the future.
I don't think this made it into the book, but when [Wall Street Journal
reporter] Daniel Pearl was kidnapped, his wife wrote a book. And in a
story I was reading about it in the Times, she and the woman that they
were staying with in Pakistan talk about how he was kidnapped. They
didn't think the Pakistani police were doing such a good job, so they
undertook their own investigation. And the friend describes how they
kept this log of everything they were doing and how she did it based on
what she had learned from Nancy Drew books.
And it was like, "How could this be?" You know, at the moment I read it,
there could not have been anything more up to the moment. So that's the
really extraordinary thing to me: how many people in so many different
parts of the world have read the books and the amazing consistency of
what people get from Nancy. What they attribute to her about themselves
is always things like these women in Pakistan. "I learned how to be
intrepid and take good notes and follow my own path." It's this really
incredible set of characteristics. I think the character's so cartoon-y,
but that's what I mean about her being invested with Harriet and
Mildred, who I think really were both like that. And that somehow
manages to shine through.
So, can you recommend one Nancy Drew book? What would be your favorite,
if you had to choose one? 
 My favorite? Or what would I recommend to other people?
Both. 
Well, I'm really a fan of the old ones, which depending on how p.c. you
are, you might not want to read them.
 You mean the unrevised ones? 
The unrevised ones. [Pauses to think for a minute.] Boy, this is hard.
Well, actually, one of the earlier ones that I really love, which I talk
about a little in the introduction, is "Mystery of the Tolling Bell,"
the revised one. There were certain ones as a kid I was obsessed with. I
was obsessed with that one, and I was obsessed with "The Clue of the
Leaning Chimney." Some other ones that I loved: "The Quest of the
Missing Map" is a great early one.
It depends on what your taste is for. "The Secret of Shadow Ranch" is
great because they go out to Arizona and they're on this ranch and they
go riding a lot. There's all kinds of natural-world forces. And then
there's a really creepy early one called "The Secret of Red Gate Farm"
that has a cult in it. It meets in a cave and the three girls, of
course, manage to infiltrate the meeting. But then, of course, they're
discovered. I think the reason I love the early ones is that they're
very atmospheric; the stories are really drawn out. Even the very first
one is fantastic: "The Secret of the Old Clock." I think it's hard to go
wrong.
-- 
UFV:L'estate di Bobby Charlton(VHS)/Romanzo criminale/Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory/Fury(DVD)/Viva Zapatero!/I tempi che cambiano/Il
grande cocomero(VHS) - 
http://www.albertofarina.tk