Frank Merriwell and the Fiction of All-American Boyhood: The Progressive Era Creation of the Schoolboy Sports Story by Ryan K. Anderson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Frank Merriwell and the Fiction of All-American Boyhood: The Progressive Era Creation of the Schoolboy Sports Story by Ryan K. Anderson Renée M. Sentilles Frank Merriwell and the Fiction of All-American Boyhood: The Progressive Era Creation of the Schoolboy Sports Story. By Ryan K. Anderson. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2015. xxiv + 310 pp. Paper $27.95. In an article for North American Review in February of 1889, juvenile novelist J. T. Trowbridge asserted a prevailing opinion of the time: “The man is an enlightened being, the boy is a barbarian.” And yet, he concluded, “With all his failings, which are many and manifest, he has courage, gayety, endurance, readiness of wit and potency of will. Give direction to these forces, deepen his conscience and elevate his point of view, and the future of the American boy, the future of America itself, is secure.” Trowbridge articulates an ideology that would develop over the next three decades through the work of psychologists, youth organizers, educators, writers, and politicians—a cohort so well defined they became known as the “boyologists.” Within their ideology “boys” were by definition white, middle-class, Protestant, and native born. Yet despite such rich primary source material, the subject of boyhood masculinity in the Progressive period remains largely unexamined. Ryan K. Anderson’s Frank Merriwell and the Fiction of All-American Boyhood: The Progressive Era Creation of the Schoolboy Sports Story is a much-needed step in the right direction. Anderson begins by asserting that Frank Merriwell was “the Progressive Era’s most popular fictional schoolboy athlete” because he was “moral” but no “mollycoddle” (xv). He ostensibly uses Merriwell to explore turn-of-the-century ideologies of American boyhood and how they were conveyed, and shaped by, juvenile fiction. Somewhat confusingly—given that stated intention—Anderson’s first chapter functions as a cultural biography of Merriwell’s creator, George Patten, and how his life and choices illuminate the emergence of boyology. Anderson moves from cultural biography to history of the book in the second chapter, as he enlarges his scope to implicate major publishing houses now competing for the pocket change of middle-class adolescent readers. Anderson’s writing becomes vibrant when he analyzes the Merriwell books themselves in the second part of the text. Chapter 3, “Yale Spirit” is not about Yale per se, but asserting that juvenile “readers wanted a story about [End Page 135] how they became adults other people respected.” In other words, they wanted stories detailing the steps of how Trowbridge’s “barbarian” could become the “enlightened being” so touted by American popular culture. Anderson’s attention to race issues elevate the chapter beyond his stated purpose. Anderson is yet more compelling in chapter 4, when he explores the surprisingly nuanced ways that female characters are used to highlight Merriwell’s masculinity. In chapter 5, “Dick is Tin,” Anderson finally confronts the fact that even many of Merriwell’s fans were disheartened by their own inability to live up to his example. If one steps back from the text, Anderson suggests that the publishing houses were peddling an ideology that served to both inspire and defeat their customers. My criticism of Anderson’s work is that I see a much stronger, more useful book hiding behind a text that needed to be pruned, tightened, and more brightly framed. I often felt I was working far too hard to figure out what he was trying to say; his greatest insights had to be gleaned from the shadows between his words. Although rich with important material, the framing devices of the chapters (particularly the first two) get lost in tangents. Buffeted by detail, I craved evidence. I was deeply frustrated by his tendency to circle a subject without actually landing on it. That said, Anderson’s work on Merriwell is a welcomed addition on the subject of American boyhood, a field growing surprisingly slowly given the wealth of primary sources, and the remarkable strides made in scholarship on masculinity, girlhood, and youth. Anderson’s work adds a much-needed cultural history angle to complement Kenneth Kidd’s 2004 Making American Boyhood: Boyology and the Feral Tale. Chapters from Stephen Mintz...