A 28 year old MFA Graduate Reconsiders Her Prior Allegiance to Ex-Hero R.L. Stine

          When I was in my early twenties, I ordered several R.L. Stine books off of Ebay and Amazon.  The reason I did this was because I used to be in love with his stories when I was in middle school, and I was going through a nostalgic phase.  What the heck, I’ll probably end up handing them over to my future niece one day.  I apologize in advance to my brother and future sister-in-law.

          Anyway, Hit and Run was an R.L. Stine book I read at the age of about 23.  It came with one of the Ebay lots.  I never read it as a kid.  I’d spent good money on it.  So why not?  I don’t know what I would have thought of it had I read it as a kid.  It had to have been one of the worst books I ever read, and that’s saying a lot.

          I was able to predict the ending maybe three pages in.  The story itself was a rip-off of I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan, Chain Letter by Christopher Pike and probably several other nameless horror books out there that remain nameless for a reason.

         After reading the book, there was a single question in my mind.  Did R.L. Stine actually manage to write a bad book?  Or have my tastes changed so considerably in the years following sixth grade?  Maybe a mixture of both?  If there’s any consolation, it’s that I doubt R.L. Stine even wrote the book himself anyway.  It does give me comfort to know I can probably fault a ghost writer for this travesty that calls itself Point Fiction.  R.L. Stine is not to blame.

            I remember the days when Fear Street was the Forks, Washington of my generation.  Books like Cheerleaders: The First Evil were followed by the equally compelling Second, Third and even New Evil.  The evil just kept coming until whole basketball teams and cheerleading squads were possessed by ancient demons, and it was great!  Babysitters spent more time making out with their boyfriends and accepting prank calls than watching their charges and, on your average school day, you were bound to run into at least one new kid who was really a ghost.   Stepsisters were presumed to be evil and evil biological sisters were presumed to be innocent.   Teenage girls had high cheekbones and heart-shaped mouths.  They said stuff like “Smooth move, Ace” and rolled their eyes a lot.  When you aren’t allowed to smoke, have sex or even utter a curse word every now and then, there isn’t much else for you to do other than roll your eyes, I suppose.  

          Those were simpler times when it didn’t matter if the stories were well-written, or even coherent, so long as they had just the right amount of blood and just the right amount of evil.

          Just for the heck of it, I checked out the R.L. Stine messageboard on IMDb a few years ago.  There was a thread on there where several posters gave their informed opinions on who would win in a battle of the pen----R.L. Stine or Stephen King.  The victor is obvious.  Stephen King would whip R.L. Stine’s butt.  And then R.L. Stine would trot out a time machine in a closet, go back to before the fight began and forfeit.