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Boat Club (Oliver Optic) #1
The Boat Club: Or, the Bunkers of Rippleton, a Tale for Boys
Excerpt from The Boat Club: Or, the Bunkers of Rippleton, a Tale for Boys
The author of the following story pleads guilty of being more than half a boy him self; and in writing a book to meet the wants and the tastes of Young America, he has had no difficulty in stepping back over the Weary waste of years that sepa rates youth from maturity, and entering fully into the spirit of the scenes he de scribes. He has'endeavored to combine healthy moral lessons with a sufficient.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
The author of the following story pleads guilty of being more than half a boy him self; and in writing a book to meet the wants and the tastes of Young America, he has had no difficulty in stepping back over the Weary waste of years that sepa rates youth from maturity, and entering fully into the spirit of the scenes he de scribes. He has'endeavored to combine healthy moral lessons with a sufficient.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
258 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1855
About the author
Oliver Optic
485 books8 followersOliver Optic was the pen name of William Taylor Adams, a Massachusetts schoolteacher whose magazines and stories for children reached a very wide audience from the 1850s through the turn of the twentieth century.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 30, 2015
A classic of the early type of the simpering, banal, pedagogic chums novel that became a staple of boy's novels for a century after Optic revolutionized the genre.
In this volume we find an array of simplified boys types:
1. The Boy who is saintly and whose first instinct is to give his pocket money to a recently widowed mother of a friend. This act, far from appearing condescending and the purest noblesse oblige that should be humiliating for the recipients, is instead a gesture that first inspires our second boy type into emulation, then triggers the rest of the plot by gratifying the saint's similarly pompous father into giving the boy a racing shell.
2. The Boy who lacks a moral anchor. He knows he should do good, and recognizes it, yet suspects that being good involves denial and suffering. Being bad is also very often the path to more fun.
3. The Boy who is just bad, but can be redeemed. His actions are established as purely selfish and callow, yet from time to time there are hints that he suspects he can be better if only he knew how.
4. The Boy who is poor, and is equally saintly as boy type one. His role is to accept charity and pity humbly while also being above moral reproach. He is An Example to All Poor Boys Who May Be Reading to not give into to despair because virtue is its own reward.
The other plot points of the classic boys novel are here; needless and obvious subplots involving false accusations so transparent that there is never any doubt they will be overthrown, a Christ-like moment of redemption, swift justice for the bad boy, pages of needlessly detailed instructions on parliamentary procedure, a mysterious stranger, and oodles of extended rhapsody about the importance of forming good character in boys.
This is a book that one must be familiar with to truly appreciate the sea-change wrought by Horatio Alger in the tone and flavor of these books. Also to see how revolutionary Mark Twain was, and the reasons behind his gusty disdain for their hollow moral bankruptcy.
But most of all, Optic was a pretty good writer. Shallow and simplistic though his plots are, and his prose is impossibly stilted at times, yet he still cobbled together stories that were light years ahead of other children's novels at the time: most of which seemed to be modeled on Pilgrim's Progress. Strange though it seems, we owe writers like Optic the invention of popular children's literature. If I have one damning thing to say about Optic, it is because of him and the runaway popularity of Boat Club in the mid-19th century that we have the plague of the Twilight series today.
In this volume we find an array of simplified boys types:
1. The Boy who is saintly and whose first instinct is to give his pocket money to a recently widowed mother of a friend. This act, far from appearing condescending and the purest noblesse oblige that should be humiliating for the recipients, is instead a gesture that first inspires our second boy type into emulation, then triggers the rest of the plot by gratifying the saint's similarly pompous father into giving the boy a racing shell.
2. The Boy who lacks a moral anchor. He knows he should do good, and recognizes it, yet suspects that being good involves denial and suffering. Being bad is also very often the path to more fun.
3. The Boy who is just bad, but can be redeemed. His actions are established as purely selfish and callow, yet from time to time there are hints that he suspects he can be better if only he knew how.
4. The Boy who is poor, and is equally saintly as boy type one. His role is to accept charity and pity humbly while also being above moral reproach. He is An Example to All Poor Boys Who May Be Reading to not give into to despair because virtue is its own reward.
The other plot points of the classic boys novel are here; needless and obvious subplots involving false accusations so transparent that there is never any doubt they will be overthrown, a Christ-like moment of redemption, swift justice for the bad boy, pages of needlessly detailed instructions on parliamentary procedure, a mysterious stranger, and oodles of extended rhapsody about the importance of forming good character in boys.
This is a book that one must be familiar with to truly appreciate the sea-change wrought by Horatio Alger in the tone and flavor of these books. Also to see how revolutionary Mark Twain was, and the reasons behind his gusty disdain for their hollow moral bankruptcy.
But most of all, Optic was a pretty good writer. Shallow and simplistic though his plots are, and his prose is impossibly stilted at times, yet he still cobbled together stories that were light years ahead of other children's novels at the time: most of which seemed to be modeled on Pilgrim's Progress. Strange though it seems, we owe writers like Optic the invention of popular children's literature. If I have one damning thing to say about Optic, it is because of him and the runaway popularity of Boat Club in the mid-19th century that we have the plague of the Twilight series today.
Displaying 1 of 1 review