Blogger beware…
January 28, 2006 2 Comments
A little bit of a different tone for this post.
Jon and I did a column in the Augustana Observer called “Movies Schmovies,” which took off from a feature of the same name done previously by the hilarious Dan Finn. Well, we tried turning that column into a blog after it finished at the paper, but really haven’t gotten anywhere with it. Still, we continue to watch and ridicule awful movies, as we did before we started writing that segment.
At one point, when ideas were sparse, we examined a number of fantasy battles and in the process accused R.L. Stine of crimes against the written word (that article is now available here). We stand by that assessment.
See, Jon and I read Goosebumps books while growing up, and even at those tender young ages, long before we met each other, we recognized the plot weaknesses, forced cliffhangers, formulaic stories, and other flaws of the series. Today, we look back on Goosebumps with a combination of bemusement and utter horror at how successful and omnipresent they were.
Fast forward to today, when while clicking through the “Next Blog” buttons on Blogger, I came across what is essentially Cliff’s Notes for Goosebumps. You know, for the people who couldn’t finish one off in ten minutes.
Ye gods, this site is, like the books it summarizes, both hilarious and horrific as you realize how much time and effort must have gone into re-reading and documenting the individual Goosebumps books. I plan to spend far too much time on this blog.
I thought about giving this post a twist or cliffhanger ending, but I decided against it.
Dubito Ergo Sum 
So I was scanning through the library catalogue for R.L. Stine books today when I saw that the system offered two categories of author. There was a search for authors and a search for “prolific authors.” At this time I had to pause and ask myself, what makes an author prolific? And is R.L. Stine that prolific? Would an author be made prolific by fame? Certainly R.L. Stine is as well known by our generation as Charles Dickens or William Shakespeare. Certainly we must consider volume of work as well. R.L. Stine churned out a book a month for almost an entire decade — although I now read that some of his later works were written by ghostwriters (pun not intended). Then we come to quality of work. It’s very subjective as R.L. Stine’s work is intended for a very particular audience. In this sense, I would argue that the Goosebumps series can hold its own beside “Wishbone” adaptations of classic literature. So I felt justified searching for R.L. Stine in the record of prolific authors. Sadly, I was disappointed to realize that the Augustana College library carries no R.L. Stine.
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