{"id":463,"date":"2014-06-13T00:20:48","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T07:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/monicanolan.jayuen.com\/pulppep\/?p=463"},"modified":"2020-07-10T14:14:25","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T21:14:25","slug":"the-queen-of-pulp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/2014\/06\/13\/the-queen-of-pulp\/","title":{"rendered":"The Queen of Pep"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Lenora Mattingly Weber<\/p><\/div>\n

Once upon a time I was attempting to summarize my books<\/a> for a friend of my brother\u2019s while my niece and the friend\u2019s two kids ran around my brother\u2019s living room wreaking havoc.<\/p>\n

In the midst of my long-winded dissertation on lesbian pulp fiction, its historical context, my attempts to reimagine it, etc, my brother looked up from his iPhone and interrupted.<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, they\u2019re like these Beany Malone books<\/a> we read when we were kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Busted!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Of course my brother would be the one to out me. As a former member of the Beany Malone fan club (one meeting, one newsletter, six members all bearing the same last name) he is intimately acquainted with Lenora Mattingly Weber\u2019s unmistakable literary style and fictional techniques, from which I have borrowed freely.<\/p>\n

How to communicate the appeal of LMW and her most famous creation, Beany Malone? How to acknowledge their seminal influence on me as a person and a writer? I’m not the only one<\/a> who owes her books to Beany. So maybe you’ve already heard of Beany. Maybe you’ve read the books. But if you haven’t, I’m here to help. Let\u2019s Meet the Malones<\/em>!<\/p>\n

\"\"Meet the Malones<\/em>, by Lenora Mattingly Weber, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1943<\/p>\n

Classic line: “I’m through being a nice, well-meaning kid!”<\/p>\n

Beany is only a secondary character in this first Malone tale. Her older sister Mary Fred takes center stage in a narrative that LMW will repeat with variations throughout the series. This is the pattern: one or more Malones are tempted away from their old-fashioned values by the siren song of luxury, arriving in the shape of a new formal, a private rumpus room, or a fancy wedding. Initially the heroine resents her mundane lot and longs for a more glamorous life, only to realize that such worldly vanities are hollow, unsatisfying, and that she is actually happier \u201cscurrying around\u201d cooking for others instead of going to a party; and that she prefers wearing an off-the-rack dress over a designer creation. To scurry and to bustle in these books are sure signs of moral good health.<\/p>\n

The Plot:<\/strong> In Meet the Malones<\/em>, the Ur-version of the LMW narrative, the Malone kids need money. High school junior Mary Fred has bought a lame horse, Mr. Chips. Johnny, a boy-genius writer at fifteen, is saving for a new typewriter and has to pay damages for a fender bender with an egg farmer. Thirteen-year old Beany wants to replace the childish rabbit wallpaper in her bedroom.<\/p>\n

Because money is tight in the Malone household (although Dad Martie Malone has a steady job as a well-known newspaper columnist, money is in short supply throughout the whole series), their widowed father makes a deal: the three kids can take over for the departing housekeeper; he\u2019ll gives them a lump sum every month and they get to keep what they don\u2019t spend on groceries.<\/p>\n

This happy scenario of bustling around independently, shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc. is interrupted by two things. First, Dike Williams, \u201cthe biggest big wheel\u201d in high school,\u00a0 starts giving Mary Fred a rush. Mary Fred soon tires of going home to starch shirts when it means turning down Dike’s invitation to be his \u201csquaw\u201d for the French Club party. Earning horse feed for Mr. Chips begins to pall. This is temptation number one.<\/p>\n

Then Martie, the most morally superior father since Atticus Finch, goes off to Hawaii to report on the war, which makes everyone feel bleak. Scarcely has he left when oldest sister Elizabeth knocks on the door with a newborn baby (no she\u2019s not a single mom, she\u2019s married to a serviceman) come home for the duration.<\/p>\n

Into this chaotic household cruises temptation number two, Nonna, aka Mrs. Gaylord, aka the Malone kids\u2019 step-grandmother. A sophisticated (always a bad sign in these books), soign\u00e9e business woman who looks vampirishly young for her age, she\u2019s sold her decorating business in Philadelphia and has come to take care of her motherless grandchildren. \u201cIt looks as if our work is laid out for us here,\u201d she tells her faithful secretary-assistant, Hattie, as she starts showering presents on the bedazzled kids\u2014clothes for Mary Fred, a brand-new typewriter for Johnny, and a room makeover for Beany.<\/p>\n

Nonna thinks the housekeeping business is \u201cfoolish and unnecessary.\u201d Faithful Hattie takes over and Mary Fred is sleeping in and going off to school with a lunch someone else has packed. Nonna also stops Johnny\u2019s payment to the egg farmer\u2014the farmer has no legal claim on Johnny, Nonna tells him. A debt of honor you say? What nonsense!<\/p>\n

Do you see the deadly poison in this red, polished apple of luxury? I hope so. The new formal, the typewriter, the wallpaper all come with a hidden price tag. The Malones have given up their independence and self-respect; they are weakened like the cosseted Manchus, ripe for enemy takeover. \u201cHave you Malones learned the salute yet?\u201d sneers Emerson Worth, an old newspaper colleague of Martie\u2019s, after a visit. Yes, the fairy-god mother is actually Hitler in disguise.<\/p>\n

Nonna soon reveals her true colors. She sells Mr. Chips while Mary Fred is at school, and when she redecorates Beany\u2019s bedroom, it\u2019s her way, not Beany\u2019s. Beany takes down Nonna\u2019s store bought curtains and puts up her own handmade ones in a stirring foreshadowing of all the DIY craftsiness to come. Nonna punishes the thirteen year-old by locking her in her room.<\/p>\n

The luxe life is is a prison. Beany hates her \u201cjeune fille<\/em>\u201d room, Johnny can\u2019t type on his new typewriter because he feels so guilty about welshing on his debt to the egg truck lady, and Mr. Chips is being whipped and otherwise maltreated by his new owner. Dike, it turns out, is using Mary Fred, dating her in the hopes that her father will use his influence to get Dike a football scholarship.* Life is very bleak indeed. Even Elizabeth doesn\u2019t want to use the bassinet and fancy layette Nonna purchased, preferring the simple flannel onesies she and her husband saved their pennies to buy.<\/p>\n

But how to get rid of this tyrant they invited into their midst? Has Nonna\u2019s sinister influence weakened the Malones irredeemably?<\/p>\n

Fear not. Helped by a slew of refugee children from Hawaii and England, Mary Fred and the Malones find the courage to stand up to Nonna. When Nonna tries to send the sickly kids to an orphanage, Mary Fred tells her, \u201cFather sent them to us, so of course we\u2019ll take care of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democracy is restored and the tyrant is driven out. Ander buys back Mary Fred\u2019s horse, Johnny pays off the egg lady by selling the typewriter Nonna bought him, the plaid curtains stay hung in Beany\u2019s room, and all is right with the world. Nonna flees the noise and overcrowding at the Malones, hoping to repurchase her old redecorating business (see Joan Crawford in The Best of Everything<\/em><\/a>), admitting that she\u2019d \u201cbetter stick to color schemes and textiles, rather than other peoples\u2019 lives.\u201d Mary Fred turns down a dance with Dike at a mountain lodge realizing she is \u201chappier doing things at home.\u201d Martie returns from Hawaii, having missed all the moral turmoil as usual, and makes a patriotic speech about the war effort as Mary Fred chokes up with happiness.<\/p>\n

*There\u2019s a whole subplot, where Mary Fred discovers that Dike is using her, and has to pretend she doesn\u2019t care, and gets Ander to take her to the spring formal, and Nonna buys her a super fancy dress, and Dike gets interested in her for herself, but its kind of beside the point.<\/em><\/p>\n

Parties:<\/strong> The Spring Formal; a square dance with soldiers; the French Club shindig<\/p>\n

Clothes & D\u00e9cor:<\/strong> Let\u2019s just admit it, the clothes are half the pleasure of reading these books. Nonna\u2019s first gift to Mary Fred is a \u201cLove of a skirt,\u201d \u201cpleats in front and back with shades of gray and green and enough yellow to go with her yellow sweater.\u201d Beany\u2019s vision for her room: Yellow plaid curtains and a matching ruffled dressing table skirt. Mahogany stain on the furniture. Walls painted a shade of blue between Robins egg and the color of the sky in August, or maybe the Virgin Mary\u2019s gown. Nonna\u2019s jeune fille redo: furnishings of modern bleached wood, curtains and bedspread of sheer, yet silken chartreuse material. Pink paint job (\u201cDesert Coral\u201d Nonna corrects Mary Fred) with a border of roses and cherubs. Do you blame Beany for taking down the greenish-yellow curtains and covering up the cherubs? Sophisticated, Nonna calls it. That word again! Nonna arrives in a silvery fur, lapis lazuli earrings matching her eyes, and a black hat framing silvery hair. The black hat should have tipped the Malone kids to what was coming. Mary Fred\u2019s formal has \u201ca black lace bodice and a pale pink cloud of a skirt. There was sure sophistication<\/em> [italics mine] in the way the dress was cut low to the waist in back, in the long, snug fitting sleeves.\u201d She also gets a new blond fur evening coat with shell pink satin lining.<\/p>\n

Slang:<\/strong> De-Gee: praise for a boy, from \u201cthe guy\u201d. Studes: \u201cspectacled grinds with high grades.\u201d Mop-squeezers: The ones who do the \u201cgrubby, behind-the-scene jobs,\u201d like working extra in domestic science to bake cookies for mother\u2019s day. Queens: the girls who dance, carefree, reading news about themselves in the school paper put out by those grubby studes and mop-squeezers. To compliment Mary Fred, Dike calls her \u201ca straight-arm stagger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prices Back Then:<\/strong> Mary Fred purchases Mr. Chips, the lame riding-horse, for $30. Johnny pays for 48 dozen broken eggs at 29 cents a dozen — $13.92. Mrs. No-Complaint Adams, the departing housekeeper got $40 a month, plus $60 for groceries. A new pleated wool skirt costs $5.95.<\/p>\n

The Moral of the Story:<\/strong> \u201cThe highest price you can pay for something is to get it for free.\u201d Readers know right away that Dike is a bad egg because he trades his sports stardom for free clothes and theater tickets. Meanwhile Elizabeth gives birth in Wyoming, by herself, without even calling her dad because: \u201cIn times like these everyone has his own burden.\u201d I guess labor and delivery weren\u2019t covered by the army back then. Martie pretends he wants to give his kids the material goods they long for, but actually, \u201cmy reason tells me it\u2019s a blessing I can\u2019t.\u201d Hattie says: \u201cKindness makes slaves and weaklings of people so much easier than unkindness.\u201d\u2014she has been enslaved by Nonna\u2019s helping\u00a0 pay for a needed operation. Turns out this fiscal conservatism and rabid independence (Ayn Rand would smile on the Malones, except for their unfortunate tendency to help the ill and weak) is what makes our country great. Ander says: \u201cI\u2019ve always heard that phrase \u2018of the people, by the people, for the people,\u2019 but doggone if it ever made real sense until I sat there with you folks and saw that your family was a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Critics:<\/strong> \u201cThe Malones are certainly worth meeting,\u201d said The<\/em> New York Times<\/em> in 1943. \u201cAnd if the story occasionally verges on the sentimental, this is more than offset by the tonic tone of the whole.\u201d One reviewer for The Library Journal<\/em> criticized it as \u201cHighly improbable tale with too many unreal situations\u201d (I think she meant the orphans) and dismissed it: \u201cNot recommended.\u201d However another reviewer for the same publication called it a \u201cLively story,\u201d concluding, \u201cNot necessary, but will be popular, especially with girls twelve to fifteen.\u201d She was right.<\/p>\n

My take:<\/strong> Funny to think I\u2019m almost as old as Nonna, who\u2019s 49. Rarely has a career woman been as vilified as Nonna is throughout the series (by the time you reach Something Borrowed, Something Blue<\/em>, she\u2019s utterly irredeemable, without even the \u201cI\u2019m better with textiles than people\u201d excuse). I bought the Malone kids’ independence when I first read the books — the fantasy of teenagers running their lives without adult supervision (Dad is gone at least 70% of the time) was a big part of the stories’ appeal. Beany and Mary Fred are like mini-adults: they shop, cook, clean, work extra jobs, buy horses when they feel like it — it’s a wonder they have time for school. However I find it a bit tedious that the importance of independence lessens considerably when it comes to dating. \u201cI\u2019d like you better if you were a little scared,\u201d Ander tells Mary Fred, as Mary Fred sallies off to the dance, full of confidence in her new dress and ready to show Dike she\u2019s not crying on her pillow over him. After Ander buys back Mr. Chips, Mary Fred tells him humbly, \u201cI like you to boss me.\u201d Who\u2019s an obligated slave now? Mary Fred marries Ander years later, in between Something Borrowed Something Blue<\/em> and Come Back Wherever You Are<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time I was attempting to summarize my books for a friend of my brother\u2019s while my niece and the friend\u2019s two kids ran around my brother\u2019s living room wreaking havoc. In the midst of my long-winded dissertation … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,8],"tags":[24,101,126,136,151,195],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-pep","category-teen","tag-beany-malone","tag-lenora-mattingly-weber","tag-mary-fred-malone","tag-nonna","tag-pulp-fiction","tag-writing-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":911,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions\/911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}