If you ever watched a lot of American 1980s TV sitcoms, you probably saw several “Very Special Episodes.” In these episodes, little things like humor, characterization, and plot take a back seat (or maybe a ride in the trunk) to what are generally ham-handed attempts by aged, and usually pretty clueless, adults to impart very … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels: A Very Special Episode
Last time, we started looking at some hysterical letters by F. C. W. (who may very well be Francis Channing Woodworth) that were published in The Mother’s Magazine in the 1840s. Fourth on the list is “Moral Poisons: The Antidote,” which starts with the rather worrying sentence “Under the general caption of ‘Moral Poisons,’ I … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels: F. C. W., Poisonous Literature, and Cranky Letters to the Editor: Cruise Control
JT Crane isn’t alone in comparing novels to drugs. I was browsing merrycoz.org, which is where I’ve found a lot of the characters I’ve written about, when I found a couple of articles written by F. C. W. (quite possibly Francis C. Woodworth) published in The Mother’s Magazine, . In “Moral Poisons: The Antidote,” F. … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels: F. C. W., Poisonous Literature, and Cranky Letters to the Editor
Last time, I promised you some actual peer-reviewed academic research on romance novels, but then I immediately undermined both the words “peer-reviewed” and “academic.” Let’s get started right away by looking at “Love Means Never Having to be Careful: The Relationship Between Reading Romance Novels and Safe Sex Behavior”, in the Psychology of Women Quarterly. The … Continue reading The Kids These Days and the Novels: 2 Stoning 2 Romance
Picture yourself at a yard sale on a weekend morning. You can find used furniture, clothes and toys from kids who left home for college a few decades ago, some kitchen gadgets that were “As seen on TV” back in the 1980s, and so on. But what really has your spidey sense screaming is a … Continue reading The Kids These Days and the Novels: Stoning the Romance
J[onathan] T[ownley] Crane’s book Popular Amusements was published in 1869. As you might guess (or maybe you can figure out from the teaser in my last post, or from the title of this one), the answer to the question “What popular amusements does Crane suggest?” is “NO!” Base ball (sic)? It’ll kill you dead. Dancing? … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels: JT Crane, Popular Amusements, and Other Things That Will Kill You
Let’s turn to James Baldwin, Ph.D., who included an absolutely hilarious warning against bad books in his rather comically titled The Book-Lover. Dr. Baldwin says, “In these last years of the nineteenth century there is no more prolific cause of evil than bad books.” Wow, if the worst that people in his part of the … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels: James Baldwin, Ph.D., and the Absolute Worst Things Ever
Hannah More, a well-known philanthropist and playwright, author of one novel and many Evangelical moral tracts, saw the growth of novel reading as a serious threat. More is actually a really interesting and complex character, so before we chuckle at her silly ideas, let’s learn more about her. More was a strong believer in education. … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels: Hannah More and Novels as a Tool of Oppression
The Reverend James Fordyce was quite a popular author for a while, and like Clara Reeve, he would be thoroughly horrified by how many modern women just aren’t into being hooted at in the street and treated like mobile vending machines for sexual favors. Reverend Fordyce was the author of the popular-in-its-time Sermons to Young … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels: The Reverend James Fordyce and Sexy, Sexy Modesty, feat. Mary Wollstonecraft
So far in The Kids These Days and The Novels, we’ve seen people complain that novels can cause earthquakes, that novels can be written by women, that novels can cause false taste in criticism and art, that novels are too much fun to possibly be good for you, and that there are so darned many … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels: Clara Reeve and the Circulating Library Menace
