Without a doubt, I can see why I loved his books as a child and how they impacted me well into adulthood. Also, I could see my child-self very much in his characters – Johnny Dixon, especially. These same pulp stories would influence major cultural touch points like Star Wars and Indiana Jones which were, of course, of the same era as Bellairs’ writing and huge parts of my childhood. There is a very pulp style to his novels which is, in and of itself, evocative of the writings and radio dramas (like Johnny listens to in The Curse of the Blue Figurine) of the 1950s. On the other hand, Bellairs definitely delivers for atmosphere, mystery and style. If I, who can remember being a child without modern technology can have that issue while reading, I can only imagine what response a child of today would have. I was recently watching early episodes of The X-Files and realized the mystery and suspense of the show wouldn’t work if Mulder and Scully had cell phones (maybe that’s why the revival did not interest me).
I think that is why a show like Stranger Things works so well because it is before instantaneous communication and a state of constant connectedness. Even as an adult, some of what happened seemed ludicrous, not because it was supernatural, but because having an iPhone would have solved an issue. Twenty five to thirty years is a much more relatable distance of time and experience than seventy, especially when the last forty of those seventy years have seen such a drastic change in technology as well as the lives of children in general. I think that as a child in the 1980s, I may have still been able to relate more to the world Johnny Dixon and Lewis Barnavelt inhabit.
My major issue, though, while reading ends up being more about when the novels take place – the early 1950s. So, how did these books from my childhood stand up, having revisited both The House with the Clock In Its Walls (the first in the Lewis Barnavelt series) and The Curse of the Blue Figurine (the first in the Johnny Dixon series) so many years later? Was I let down by the expectations created by the impressions of my youth?īellairs’ writing probably can’t actually compare to what thirty years in my memory have built it up to be.
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