The OG YA Novel: Lois Duncan’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer”

Unknown Speaker 0:00

I just want to read you the Wikipedia synopsis of the 1997 movie at the croaker beauty pageant, Helen witnesses Barry being murdered on the balcony, but finds no sign of the killer or Barry, the police officer escorting her home, is murdered by the killer. Helen runs to her family store, where the killer murders her sister, Elsa. She escapes and runs toward the street, but the killer slashes her to death.

Unknown Speaker 0:23

That's just a lot. That's a lot. It's a lot of murdering

Unknown Speaker 0:30

Come on, get happy. Is

Unknown Speaker 0:33

what we'll

Unknown Speaker 0:40

be bringing

Unknown Speaker 0:41

we'll make you happy.

Unknown Speaker 0:44

Welcome to the pop culture Preservation Society, the podcast for people born in the big wheel generation who grew up knowing that the call was coming from inside the house.

Unknown Speaker 0:59

No terrifying. We believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters and images, and if we don't talk about them, they'll disappear, like Marshall will and Holly on a routine expedition. And today, we'll be saving the book that just won't quit, the 1970s classic that keeps coming back in every new generation with new covers, movie adaptations, again and again and again, Lois Duncan's, I Know What You Did Last Summer. I'm Carolyn, I'm Kristin, and I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture preservationists.

Unknown Speaker 1:35

You

Unknown Speaker 1:40

You Did Last

Unknown Speaker 1:45

Summer in 1973 Lois Duncan, the pioneering and prolific author of books for and about teens, released the book I Know What You Did Last Summer, a pop culture juggernaut that has spawned tons of iterations and adaptations spanning five decades, meaning that no matter what generation you identify with, Boomer Gen Xer, millennial Gen Z or alpha, I Know What You Did Last Summer. Has a version for you. The basic premise of that original 1973 book is that a group of friends, Barry and Helen and Julian Ray, accidentally kill a boy on his bike while driving a dark country road, and instead of stopping to help him, they keep driving, making a pact to never tell anybody what they've done. Exactly one year after the accident, a note appears in Julie's mailbox with a simple message, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and whoever wrote that message is super pissed, and over the course of the novel, he appears to be seeking revenge. The book has been in print over 50 years, and has had, by my count, at least 15 different covers. And I swear I saw this somewhere, but now I can't really verify it, so don't google it. I think it's sold over 10 million copies, and part of the reason it sold so many copies is because the book has given birth to not just a movie, but a movie franchise, and those movies keep the book alive for subsequent generations. So there was a 1997 movie a full 24 years after the book, called I Know What You Did Last Summer, starring Sarah Michelle Geller, her future husband, Freddie Prince Jr, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Ryan Phillip, which is basically like the 1990s Brat Pack. Then there was a 1998 sequel called I still know what you did last summer,

Unknown Speaker 3:33

a 2006 straight video sequel to the sequel called, I always know what you did last summer, a 2021, limited series that was canceled after one season called I Know What You Did Last Summer, and now, just a few months ago, we have a brand new sequel to The 1997 movie called I Know What You Did Last Summer, with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prince Jr reprising their roles as now middle aged Julie and Ray. So like I said, I've counted like 15 different covers, basically a new one every few years, including the 1997 movie tie in edition of the novel featuring the 1990s Brat Pack on the cover. And that sold that one iteration of the book with the Brat Pack on the cover, yeah. Sold 517,000

Unknown Speaker 4:24

copies in one year. It's the book that will never die, even if you accidentally run over it on a dark country road.

Unknown Speaker 4:33

I mean, I that is no, that is not a surprise at all that the the book with them on the cover, yeah, sold so many because, my God, they were just beautiful. They were really beautiful. 1990s quattro, weren't they? I know and they are. I feel like it should have died

Unknown Speaker 4:53

when I feel like a car should have say it, yes, yes. Say it did you guys.

Unknown Speaker 5:00

Read it when you were growing up, or what is your experience with I know what you did this summer. Wait, not this summer, last summer. Do You Know What You Did Last Summer?

Unknown Speaker 5:10

Last night? I don't even know what I did this summer.

Unknown Speaker 5:16

I did read it in the 70s when it came out, and I loved it. And I think that was because this was my first little foray into this whole genre of suspense, and, you know, just kind of that edge of your seat reading and trying to figure it out. And I'm pretty sure it was right around the same time I would have read, are you in the house alone that 1976

Unknown Speaker 5:41

Richard Peck novel. They're both, they both live in the same place in my mind,

Unknown Speaker 5:47

the one that is are it's come the call is coming from inside the house. Okay, so that's where that comes from. Okay, good, yes. And so those are all in that same, you know, realm for me, and I loved those kind of books. And Richard pecks even won the Edgar Award for Best juvenile fiction in 1977 so it was a big deal. It was a really big deal. This whole genre was, and there were other ones that, if you showed me the covers, I probably would said, Oh yeah, I read that one too, but I loved that kind of Yeah, that that genre and that mystery. And also this is the tiptoeing into almost young adult, like I'm getting out of that, yeah, you know, younger kind of reading the Judy bloom and stuff like Valley Cleary, it is not, it is not, yeah. And it's about teens doing kind of crazy, naughty things. And I think that's what is the hallmark of of a young adult novel, which, by the way, you just said Richard Peck won the Edgar Award for Best juvenile fiction book because there was no young adult designation. So Lois Duncan was really at the forefront of writing books about teens that are for teens. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 6:59

I honestly can't remember if I read it or not, but I definitely remember the, oh, the original cover, so hard one. So maybe my sister had it. Yeah, that one that they're kind of off to the side. They're almost like silhouettes with the bike the the kids. Isn't that the one? Is it pastelly, or is that photo realism? Okay? I think it's pastel. Okay, that's the hardcore. I think that is the and, so maybe my sister had it because I was not and, and by saying like, like, certainly, because this book has gone on generation generation, just because I wasn't old enough, and, you know, the early 70s to read it, that doesn't matter. But I was really never a fan of that genre, the the murdery, scary books. And the thing about this one, though, is it's not too murdery and scary the book, isn't it really, isn't that. You know, I was much more interested in middle school and high school, and like sweet dreams and Norma Klein type books, more like relationship books,

Unknown Speaker 7:55

where, whether that was a family relationships, like, say, Norma Klein type books or the Sweet Dreams, romances, but,

Unknown Speaker 8:01

but Lois Duncan, I mean, I remember all of those books because they were at the Scholastic book fairs, and they were in the Scholastic Book orders. The one that I do remember reading just, I just have to mention it, because we're not going to talk about it after this. But I was so freaked the fuck out by this book, you guys. And I read that whole thing probably several times. It was called five we're missing, and it was later retitled and called ransom. It was about five kids are on the school bus, and the bus driver just passes their stops, and he kidnaps them, and he takes them to like this shack, and he locks him in there. And then it's all about the ransom and and and then the relationships and how they're going to get out and everything. And I rode the school bus, so I was so freaked out, I used to think about it all the time, like, what if, what if, like our our school driver's name was, so our school bus driver's name was Sylvia when I lived in Washington, and I that's probably when I read it, because I used to think, what if Sylvia really like an awful kidnapper, and she wasn't. She was so nice. I love Sylvia.

Unknown Speaker 9:04

But anyway, I think I think just her name is Lois Duncan, right? That That name is so familiar to me. She did write Hotel for Dogs. So that is a little bit more. Yeah, a kid friendly book, yeah? But the other one I just wanted to mention, just because when I was looking at all of her titles, the other one that jumped out to me. So maybe I read it. But do you guys remember killing Mr. Griffin? Yes, that one, I really, really remember. Yes, that's the one that almost was more important to me than I Know What You Did Last Summer came out in 1978 so that's very much in our Scholastic Book Fair era that we would have seen it. But anyway, back to I Know What You Did Last Summer. I I think this might have been the first time I read it. It maybe it wasn't, but I certainly it wasn't memorable to me if I read it before, and I, and I, I'm so surprised that it wasn't I don't think I read it. I really don't.

Unknown Speaker 9:54

And until I perused all the covers, I would have told you that I wasn't even aware of it until 1997 when the movie.

Unknown Speaker 10:00

Came out, but all of those 1980s covers were all familiar to me. I was very familiar with every single one of those covers, probably from the Scholastic Book Fair or from the spinners at Snyder's. And of course, just the title is like a phrase we've always known. It's not like the 1997 movie came out. And I was like, Oh, I wonder what this is about. If you came of age in the 70s or the 80s, this book was, like, wallpaper. It just was, you just knew it. You know, that's a really good point. Because if you think about it, like, you know, Flowers in the Attic. VC, Andrews books, I was very into those, yeah, because they weren't like as much. I wanna say they weren't as murdery. I don't know. I think that Lois Duncan was kind of synonymous with these types of this. Somebody died, Carolyn, somebody died. But I Know What You Did Last Summer was almost like a Flowers in the Attic or a forever if I didn't read it. I knew what it was about. We were all talking about it, right? There was lore. You knew about that note. You knew the note said, Yeah, I Know What You Did Last right? I mean, you can just say that to a Gen, well, really to any generation now, as you pointed out, but just that one line, or same with Are you in the house alone? Yes, knowing the calls coming from inside the house. Those are just one liners that you can say to somebody, and they immediately know what you're talking about. And they did, again, is there a book that our kids generation has that they could just say, well, there probably is. But yeah, it was that much a part of the Zeitgeist. It was, it really, really was, and I was really more in the Richard Peck category than I was Lois Duncan, for whatever reason I have no idea. I think his books were more ghosty, and that could be one reason. Like I remember a book called ghosts I have been which was from the Scholastic Book Fair, for sure. And I loved that book. I loved that book. And Lois Duncan's were much more in the real world, kids killing adults. That's what was happening, or other little kid on a bike, killing kids. Kids killing kids on a bike. Yeah. So there was a People magazine article that came out just this summer when when the new version of the movie came out, and it was so interesting, because I can't believe how little we knew about Lois Duncan. I cannot believe the content of this article, and how did we read all of these books? And how is she so much a part of the zeitgeist, as you said, without us knowing this factoid. So apparently, Lois Duncan hated the movies. She really hated the movies because, in her words, they were they turned them into slasher movies. And, and I agree with her on this point. This is a quote that comes directly from this is awkward. It's a quote that comes from a book that is quoted in The People magazine article. And I'm sorry, I don't have

Unknown Speaker 12:50

really hard to understand,

Unknown Speaker 12:53

yeah.

Unknown Speaker 12:55

Well, a lot of that kind of writing now it's just like, they're doing a research paper. They don't even talk to any of the people, they're just like, oh, let's find a quote in, in this case, another book, and I'll include it in this article. But I never really talked to any of the people. It's almost like they're saying, like, my cousins, aunts, brothers, cousins, Yes, Uncle, yes. And you're like, you're trying to follow it. So yeah. So when I feel bad we don't have the proper

Unknown Speaker 13:23

designation. What's the word I'm looking for? Citation. We don't have the proper citation for you. But we'll put the we'll put the link to the People magazine article so you can see the author and the book that this actually comes from. And what Lois Duncan said, and again, I cannot believe that we don't know this. So she said it was my characters and my plot gimmick, but then it went in all directions. I was quite horrified by the sensationalized violence. Several years earlier, my own teenage daughter Kate had been chased down in her car and shot to death, and I had seen right in front of my eyes what real violence is to have people screaming and laughing about it did not go down well, is what she said. So and the author says, while she was not happy with the movie, she was admittedly happy with the fact that the book had been made into a movie, because that made all of her backlist very popular, and she sold,

Unknown Speaker 14:17

you know, you'd have to be a liar to say that, yes, like that. Did you guys see that movie, The 1997 movie? No, I never. I did it because I'm not a, I'm not a horror slasher movie person, but it's sort of like when I read that, and I had just read the book for this episode, you know, she says in the movie, and all of you guys listening, they love this movie, by the way, we know this, and they're screaming at us, right? But

Unknown Speaker 14:42

apparently, and I'm going to say it, and they're going to be like, of course, there's a character called the fisherman with the hook. I didn't know about this that wasn't in the book. Like, the books were a little bit more palatable, right? Because you could, kind of like, like Carolyn was saying, like, you could test your toes in this kind of genre, in this.

Unknown Speaker 15:00

This water, right? Like, because it wasn't bloody and so murdery. But in the movie, I guess there's

Unknown Speaker 15:07

a fisherman hook. Let's just read the synopsis of the movie. So essentially, what happened? She's correct. They took the premise, kids kill somebody, don't tell anyone, make a pact and receive a note that says, I know what you did last year. That's where it ends, and the names of the people here is what the movie poster says. If you're going to bury the truth, make sure it stays buried. After an accident on a winding road, four teens make the fatal mistake of dumping their victim's body into the sea, not in book, exactly one year later, the deadly secret resurfaces as they're stocked by a hook handed figure. I mean, we're talking like, you know, what's the guy's name from Friday the 13th, or whatever? Yeah, it was like they were trying to create a Michael Myers character. And the director has said that is exactly what he was trying to do. His hook handed figure is trying to create a Freddy Krueger or a Jason or a Michael Myers. That's exactly what he was trying to do, and he was basing it on his he took the story that Lois Duncan created, and he said it in his hometown, in on the coast of North Carolina, where there are a lot of fishermen. And so the hook handed figure is a dead fisherman well, and listen, it's Kevin Williamson. Is the guy who's doing this. And here's the thing at with, with what he did, take an idea from a book that was popular, but then we know now these other slasher movies are, you know, making big box office, right? Yeah, so I'm gonna add a slasher element to it, and I'm it's gonna be a fisherman with a hook. This is all fine, as long as a couple of things happen. One, you make sure you say, based on the book by Lois Duncan, which it might have but two, you do a little research into this author. And when you're researching and you discover that her daughter was killed so violently and horrifically. You then say, I'm gonna find a different book. Yeah, let's do this on I just feel like it was so super insensitive and horrible and unforgivable, in my opinion, what Kevin Williamson did to Lois Duncan, yeah, and how she was not a part of any of that. That's something too that I I guess I'm curious about when a book is sold the rights, or whatever, to make a movie or a TV show or whatever, how much does the original author have in terms of a say in how they adapt this book? Because obviously she didn't even know it was happening until, I think she said she saw the movie or whatever. Yeah, she literally saw the movie was run by her. So I guess when she signed the little contract, it was take it all, and you don't run anything by me. It does. You know, your contracting can vary greatly and and sometimes you're literally just signing over a license to do whatever they want with it. And it sounds like that's what happened, because, like you said, Carolyn, she had no idea what would be in the movie till she sat in the movie theater. So here's the actual story, as it happened. This is so sad. Duncan's daughter Caitlin Arquette, was shot to death in 1989 at the age of 19, and she was murdered the summer after she graduated from high school, and at that this is all from this People magazine article. At the time of her killing, she was driving home from a friend's house when she was struck in the head by two bullets that entered the driver's side of her red Ford Tempo. And it wasn't until July of 2021

Unknown Speaker 18:30

which is five years after Lois Duncan died, that a man finally confessed to not just three murders, but also three rapes. And one of the murders, of course, was her daughter. So he was sentenced to 45 years. 45 years, I said, 45 years insane. You kill three people and rape three women and you get 45 years. I didn't understand that at all. Maybe he's maybe he's super old and he's gonna die in prison. But I mean cares trauma is,

Unknown Speaker 19:00

I cannot. It's obviously, I have no words. We have no words. That's all we can say about that. And then for her to be subjected to this slasher film is based on her work, I think I understand. I'm really sorry,

Unknown Speaker 19:14

and I feel really sad too, because so she's she wrote a book called who killed my daughter in 1992 Oh, yeah, that's kind of a memoir ish. And then she actually had a sequel in 2013 called one to the wolves on the trail of a killer. And her, that was her whole mission after her daughter died, was to find this killer. And it's so sad that she didn't obviously live to see that actually happened, but it was something she till the day she died, she was in search of, and it's just sickening, and then just that weird kind of, I don't know what the word is, there's probably a better word than irony or something, but that bitter irony, it's a bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter, yes,

Unknown Speaker 19:59

this.

Unknown Speaker 20:00

This is just to, just to characterize the slasher film status of the 1997 movie. So I read you the premise of the book at the top that was pretty accurate, not pretty accurate. That's exactly what the move is about. Some people, some there's some there. It's not that it's devoid of violence. There is violence, but it's pretty run of the mill, you know, like network TV style violence in the 70s, not now, I just want to read you the Wikipedia synopsis of the 1997 movie at the croaker beauty pageant, Helen witnesses Barry being murdered on the balcony, but finds no sign of the killer or Barry, the police officer escorting her home is murdered by the killer. Helen runs to her family store where the killer murders her sister, Elsa. She escapes and runs toward the street, but the killer slashes her to death. I mean, that's just a lot. That's a lot. It's a lot of murdering. It's a lot of I just, I'm just go back to what I said. Like, you know how, you know bless Lois Duncan's like, I mean, but at least it made people know my books and everything

Unknown Speaker 21:06

true, but, but how did they just, how did they go forward with this? It's so wrong, yeah, and it's so there's a lot of other stories that he could have based his slasher. Oh, exactly. Or just, you know, I my theory, or my idea is that he liked the premise of this, they did something bad, you know, the summer before, and now they're being, you know, taunted with this a year later. Yep, beyond that, like when you read the similarities and the names of the characters, there is nothing similar. It's not and, yeah, is there a fear that if you take this premise of a story, that Lois Duncan would come and say, You stole that from my, you know, my idea, and I'm gonna sue you, not if they paid for it. I mean, you know, I know, but originally, like, so they paid for it, yeah. And as someone who read the original, it just makes me sick to my stomach when you just read that description, and it's like, murder, murder, murder there. It's two totally different things. So to have much like when she goes in to see the movie, if I had gone in like that, I would have been this isn't even anything like this. It's kind of not fair in a lot of ways. It's not fair to the book. It's not fair to Lois Duncan, because he should have just bought the premise and then not called it that. Yeah, buy the premise number, credit her and make a different movie. Yeah, I'm just wondering how pissed off you would be if you went and saw the movie first. Say you're, you know, you're only like, 17 and 1997 you go see the movie and you're like, This is awesome. I'm gonna go buy the book. And then, really, as milk toast as it is, we're about to talk. Yeah, the book is so almost just like, Yeah, huge eye roll. Now it's a big nothing burger. Be really mad. I would be like, I need my money back for that book, because it's so different. And yeah, they don't. I thought they were exactly the same until, like, yesterday, yeah, yeah. So this is interesting, the 2025 movie, which you can stream right now, like I said earlier, is a sequel to The 1997 film, and that, that little tagline for it is, you get the ending you deserve when five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident that they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a Secret rather than face the consequences. A year later, their past comes back to haunt them, and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth. Someone knows what they did last summer and is hell bent on revenge. So this sounds exactly the same, right? But remember, this is a sequel. How is it a sequel? Because it's a brand new accident, like, oh my god,

Unknown Speaker 23:40

it happened again. They're they go back and they are like, hey, this happened to those older, that middle aged couple, yeah, a long time ago. Like, did they just get out of jail? I don't even know. So they're like, Let's go talk to them. And also, can I just say something else for me? And I know listeners, a lot of you disagree with me. You love really slashery, Bull slashery, yeah, there's a there's a place for that. Yeah, yeah, bloody films, to me, psychological horror is way scary. Oh yeah, for sure. 110%

Unknown Speaker 24:15

they could have made, like, I Know What You Did Last Summer. Like you do something, you cover it up, and then you just start getting these notes that can be made, really freaky, like that, super scary, super scary, looking over your shoulder constantly, yes, yeah, I feel like that would have been way more effective. Yeah, for me, that would have been scarier. And like Michelle said, the new accident, where they're like, oh my god, I can't believe it happened again. And so they know Julian Ray had this happen to them back in 1973 and so they go and find 46 year old Jennifer Love Hewitt and 51 year old Freddie Prince Jr. Were like, so you guys, what should we do?

Unknown Speaker 24:54

The thing that is funny is that Sarah Michelle Gellar was invited back to reprise her role.

Unknown Speaker 25:00

As Helen. But as you heard in the Wikipedia thing above that I read, Helen got slashed to death, to death in the street. And so to Sarah Michelle gellars credit, she refused, because Helen was killed in the 1997 movie, and she did not want to vocabulary word retcon her death. Retcon stands for retroactive continuity, like they're just gonna bring Helen back from the dead, pretend she didn't die, or maybe she should do that all the time. And, yeah, yeah, she's like, not reserved. I'm not doing any of that. Or, yeah, well, yeah, she could have been a twin sister that we never know good for her. Go ahead. Yeah, twin sister. It could have been twin sister. Okay, Carolyn, I have a little, a little nugget for you about the Yeah, it's always a cousin like you looking identical to your cousin. That's not a thing. You don't even look identical to your sibling, identical cousins. Yeah, oh, my God, that's such a 70s cartoon thing. Okay, so this little interesting nugget is for Carolyn, so for the beginning of the 1997 film, the coastal areas of Sonoma County, California stood in for that North Carolina setting where the director grew up. And the opening shots of the movie, where the sun is setting on a rugged coast, were filmed on Highway One in the town of Jenner.

Unknown Speaker 26:23

Get out of town. I know you guys. This is where Carolyn and I stayed when we were all when we almost missed our flight home from San Francisco, when we went for a little Bodega Bay excursion. This, this March, we stayed in a little Airbnb in the town of Jenner. I mean, it's like population four, and this is where the opening scenes of that movie are filmed. And then the car crash scene, which is the impetus of the movie, was also filmed on Highway One, in the same area. And Carolyn, I swear to God, it could be the place where I really urged you to ignore the red light, the red light, oh yeah,

Unknown Speaker 27:00

we would have died. I think it's a for sure that we would have died. There was construction on the road, on the two lane hairpin curve cliffside Road, where, you know some people, if you just turn a little like an inch too much, you'll go into the ocean. And they had narrowed it down to one road, and there was a stoplight there. Yes, yes, one lane, because they were doing construction. And so they, you know, they put the temporary stoplights, and there was a red light. And so we stopped at the red light. And we're the first, very first car, or the first car. There is no action. We're sitting there for like, seven minutes. I'm like, Carolyn, I think it's broken. I think it's broken. And this, I think we can just go, just go. And Carolyn's like, No, I can't. No, you can't just go. It's clearly broken. There are 100 cars behind us. There are no cars coming. There are no cars coming toward us at all. And I didn't see any construction. Like, just go. Well, like, 30 seconds later, then cars start coming and like, oh shit, we would have legit died. We would have gone into the ocean and died, because once we it did turn green, and we were allowed to go, and then we, you know, obviously, traveled that path. I've just kept saying to Kristen, we would have died.

Unknown Speaker 28:14

There is not a question in my mind that we would not be on this planet. It was so scary. I'm just like, so grateful to my dad or in that I stood my ground because Christian can convince me to do a lot of things that maybe I don't always want to do. But this, I was like, no. I mean, I crept up a little. I kept thinking I was one of those things like, Oh, I'm just not to trigger a sensor, yeah, to trigger it. And then I thought, well, if somebody goes around me, then maybe I'll go by. But it was, and then it was the pressure of being the first car, because, you know, it's triggering all of those, like, I don't want the people behind me mad at me. Like, that was, that was a huge thing traveling that whole road. I don't want this stranger

Unknown Speaker 28:53

in my entire life mad at me. I just thought, oh gosh, somebody's gonna be mad at me. Kristen wants me to go, and they're like, go. Why aren't you going? But Carolyn stood her ground. She's like, No, I'm not going. I'm staying here. Yes, thank God. And you know, what's so ironic to Kristen that you and I can both speak to is that there are no cliffs in North Carolina, like, you're not going to, like, get in an accident off of a windy hair pin turn cliffy, hilly road next to the beach. I mean, it could not be flatter in North Carolina. I never even thought of that. There are no cliffs to fall off of in North Carolina. Do people think we're stupid? I just write, we'll get on to into this later. But I am. I am just mad when people think of that I'm stupid and I'm not stupid. People just so, you know. Okay, so in that beginning scene, it gets even better. So the first scene of the 1977 movie after you see the crash, and by the way, a crash. Can you imagine Carolyn on that two lane cliffside hairpin road? I mean, that's the end of the movie, right there. As far as I'm concerned, I've had all the fright that I need. So in that first scene is a bunch of kids.

Unknown Speaker 30:00

Friends, they're around a campfire on a beach next to a wrecked boat like turned upside down. And so the art department went and found that old boat in Bodega Bay. Everybody who's been listening to this for a long time, or who has read worldwide crush you know all about Bodega Bay. It's the home of Rory Calhoun. They found that old boat in Bodega Bay. They cut it in half and they placed it on the beach as a prop in the first scene of I know what you did this last summer. I keep saying, this summer again, yeah, again, always, and still, we still know what you did last

Unknown Speaker 30:36

okay. So one thing that we discovered when we were picking up this book for the first time in 52 years, the I was uninformed. I just picked it up cold, and I start reading the book from 1973 and he talks about having GPS. And I was like, wait, what? How? And then there's a reference to a cell phone. Like, no, no, no, what? So then I had to do a little bit of Googling, and what we found out is that there was a 2010

Unknown Speaker 31:03

update to, I Know What You Did Last Summer in order to make it more attractive to contemporary kids, to make it not sound old and and they wouldn't even understand some of it, I suppose. So. I just want to know, what was your opinion of that up quote on, I'm using quote fingers. You're the update. Did it make it more readable and easier to identify with? I'm like, No, I had the 2020 update, actually. So mine was only five years i i noticed it right away, and I just started, I was reading it on my Kindle, and I just started flagging, flagging things, things like pages. Texted him, yeah, pages of it. You know, Barry likes to drive the Lexus. They go to Starbucks.

Unknown Speaker 31:46

I I get that the I get why they did it. I get why the antiquated references. Because I'm going to read some in just a minute that are so kids today wouldn't even know what they mean, but, but they left with the antiquated references. This is what I was about to say. I get that they would turn them off, but the fact that they left so many of them n, so they come right after a new thing. It's so obvious. Like, yeah, for instance, like, it might say something about texting or using a phone, and then all of a sudden it talks about, it'll say, like a quote, like it's on the front page of the phone directory, written in red, or she, she takes something, she goes and she looks at the phone book. I just feel like they were it was too consistent. It was incredibly inconsistent. Yeah, and it and then they don't even always make sense, like some of the ones that say things like, I don't know what this means, you guys, but this is a quote directly from the 2020, version. She even DJs her own webcast in the afternoon.

Unknown Speaker 32:57

Yes, that. I don't think that kids today would get this at all? We know what this means, but I don't think kids today would. I'd like it even better if the prettiest girl here wasn't all tied up to some jerk before I can even get my bid in.

Unknown Speaker 33:11

My bid in

Unknown Speaker 33:14

1973

Unknown Speaker 33:16

is that

Unknown Speaker 33:17

he take out, but then the next sentence says, Have you been hooked up with this guy for long? Not Have you been hooking up with this guy for long? Have you have you been hooked up with this guy? And then she says, almost two years we were studies in high school, 1973

Unknown Speaker 33:34

do you think kids so they're mixing? Yeah, they're all in

Unknown Speaker 33:39

the

Unknown Speaker 33:41

same like sentence, it's just ridiculous. Yeah, it's all I was picturing. And Lois Duncan did not do this update. I don't think, I think they hired somebody to do it. Didn't, but it came. But it felt to me like a very old woman was updating something in the party Lance that she thought that children were speaking in. And then some of the things were just like, apropos of nothing, or just tacked on. So this is just, this is par for the course to humor her mother, Julie, got up and went over to the telephone. She lifted the receiver, listened a moment, and set it down again. I can't call anyway. There's trouble with the line again. There isn't even a dial tone. And I left my cell phone and raised car. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 34:24

you're combining

Unknown Speaker 34:28

somebody who doesn't even know. Here's one. You know how kids are sometimes making crank calls and writing notes to people and sending spam? Yes, bam.

Unknown Speaker 34:39

So some kids, decides to play a prank on people. He writes a dozen of these notes and sends the strangers right out of the sins to strangers right out of the phone book. So somebody is like, I use the word spam because that's an up to date. The kids are going to know spam, but it goes right next to crank calls writing notes. It was just the phone book.

Unknown Speaker 35:00

But somebody did not edit it after, like, No, you're so right. The person they got to update it was like, 63 and no offense, 63 year olds, but you know, you're still wanting to leave in your we were studies, and I didn't know that studies wasn't the word anymore. And then they were just like, the acrobatics were painful. I love this one. At some point, someone has proof of their crime in the form of a photograph, and so they're going to blackmail them. And he says, I'm willing to make a deal with you. I'd like to sell this picture, plus the negative. It wasn't taken digitally and I haven't scanned it, so that will be the end of it. I'm not asking you to buy it sight unseen. I'm calling from here on campus. I can show it to you like they had to. They were like, well, wouldn't they just, they could just, like, keep a digital copy of it so they have to say, I wasn't taken digitally. See, I just think it's the person going, let's throw as many photo references in, yes, current and past. Let's do scanned, let's do digital. Let's do negative. Let's do like. I haven't scanned it. I promise, I promise. I haven't scanned it. I just like some of the ones that just the the 1973 references they left in Yes, are so like, so Leave It to Beaver like we have. I don't even know the beginning of the sentence. I just wrote down the end of it, but because he was pretty burned up about my taking off last fall, just burned up. And then here's one, you'll have your chance, Elsa, you'll meet some nice boy like, you'll meet somebody like you'll have your chance. You'll become a wife. You'll meet some nice boy, yeah. And then when, at the end, when the tensions getting out, their tensions getting so great, and oh my gosh, someone might be murdered, and I clobbered him with my flash. Clobbered him. I clobbered him. Wanted so bad to just see in my head, I could just see, pow,

Unknown Speaker 36:54

yeah, and okay, you touched on the Sexual Politics of it all. They didn't. I mean, maybe they did, and I don't know, but they left in such egregious 1973 sexual politics. We're not blaming Lois Duncan. She was just writing how people thought in 1973 but if you're going to add in cell phones, you should probably take out things like this. If Paul was here, he could probably get your car started for you. I don't know a carburetor from a battery myself. But then I guess most girls don't do they she smiled at Julie. It was a wide, sweet smile that lit up her face. It's so gross. Yeah, and then they the hot the you'll meet some nice boy. But I also wrote down gross things like this. The girl I was talking to was a real hot little number. Oh, a hot little number. There was the dads talk, just in general, about about girls, and it was just so not of this time where there was a sentence that I wrote down. This is talking. This is Helen, and she was dreaming about these domestic evenings with Helen running around, serving pot roast by candlelight. Were rough to handle like Helen, that was her, her dream of if she was going to be with, right, with

Unknown Speaker 38:07

18 years old.

Unknown Speaker 38:09

I mean, yes, that's okay, serving pot roast. Can we? Can we? Can we address for just a second one of them the most? Oh, I can't wait that Helen to me, this was the biggest one. It starts from the very beginning. Helen's big claim to fame is that she's the she hasn't graduated high school, but she's the Channel Five future star, future star, such a 1960s thing. What Kristen, would you please just explain to our listeners what they meant? Like, what was what did that mean? So

Unknown Speaker 38:39

Helen sent in a photograph of herself and nothing else, no resume, no interview. There was this is not what they nowadays. They say beauty pageants are scholarship pageants. They no longer say beauty pageants. There was nothing here except her photograph. And so based on her photograph, and they do say really quick, they try to make it current, because I remember this specifically, they say it wasn't even photoshopped. Oh my god, yes, they just tacked that on. They just tacked that on. So based on her photograph, she is given a job at the local TV station to report on various innocuous things because of her photograph. And she's very proud of this. She's so proud of this that she dropped out of high school. She doesn't need anything because of her pretty face. And so throughout the whole book, all we talk about is how pretty Helen is, and there's so much talk about her figure. There's so much objectification of women. It's painful. It's absolutely painful. But this is the most egregious next to that one, I think so when the topic of Barry and Helen getting married comes up, which, I mean, they're 18. Remember, they're 18. And because she wants to serve pot roast, and someone says she has a great job at the TV station, Barry says, screw that. I wouldn't want a wife of mine working. That's why would you leave that in? Okay, I don't know. Do.

Unknown Speaker 40:00

Carolyn's like, ready to go on? Well, I am ready, but I'm gonna let everyone say their thing before I explode. Well, no, you go inconsistent. And you know what? You guys reading it now, since they've updated it, I was way too distracted by all of this inconsistency, and then it just became laughable, and then it almost became like a treasure hunt. How many could I find? I was so distracted by that that's all I could think about when reading it through. It's a drinking Jake, yeah, yes, it'd be a great. I agree with you 110%

Unknown Speaker 40:30

Michelle, I was so angry. I got angrier and angrier as I read this book. And I am not kidding like I would, I could start a petition about this, because, to me, the only reason that it was updated at all, it was motivated by dollars, because this movie was going to be coming up. They wanted to make it like, you know, current, and they wanted people to buy it again instead of, this is where I really can get upset. Instead of giving the reader kind of the benefit of the doubt that they might be kind of smart, it was very disturbing to me to think that they do. Did not think the readers would be smart enough to understand this book if it was remained in 1973 agree, or would be

Unknown Speaker 41:12

dumb enough to just read it and think, oh, this all makes sense. Like, much like we're saying, those things stick out. It's distracting. You miss the whole premise of the story, because you're all of a sudden thinking this, what? What are they talking about? What's bread like? At one point, he's like, Oh, I had to go make some bread last summer. You know, people are gonna think, is that a sourdough starter? People talk Baker about that was the term for money back in the 70s. It? It just made me so mad. So I looked up, I wanted to know, how often is this done? How often do they take a book that especially might have meant something to a generation, we'll talk in a bit of the fact that this book is has reading guides to go with it, to be taught in classrooms. It's not seen as just like junk fiction for kids.

Unknown Speaker 41:59

And so I thought, well, is this done often? Because this just is so bad, and so really, I could not find many other examples of this being done. I did read that some Nancy Drew Hardy boy mysteries had been updated mostly because of outdated stereotypes, you know, some kind of racist thing, some things that just you wouldn't want to to perpetuate So, yeah, so it was pretty much Nancy Drew Hardy Boys. They mentioned, they mentioned goosebumps and some stuff like that, which led me to think about books that I read as a youngster or a kid that left an impression on me, those Beverly Cleary books, those sister of the bride 15. I loved those. I did read those in the 70s. They were written back in the early 60s, about, you know, teens and early 50s, yeah, and early 60s. And I enjoyed that aspect of it, knowing before, yeah, yeah, exactly. And, like, historical fiction, yes. Well, that's exactly what I kind of wrote here, all of the aspects of this book that you lost when you tried to update it, but didn't do it in the right way. I mean, everything from that, the historic authenticity of it, right? I mean, if we had talked about the correct war that this, oh, my god. Oh my god, the timeline is so I'm so sorry to interrupt you. They present a story problem by trying to update the by trying to update the text. So in the original, the bad guy, the villain, has just returned from Vietnam. So in the 2010 update, they make that the Iraq war, but they, but it's 2010

Unknown Speaker 43:41

but they but he came back from Iraq, but they have cell phones, but, and I didn't exactly, I didn't know anybody with a cell phone. And by the way, if he came back from Iraq, is 17 year old Julie dating a 40 year old man. It's so inconsistent. I'm just, I'm confused. Plus some of the times when it would say, like, we're gonna meet at Starbucks, I would stop and I would go over a coffee cake,

Unknown Speaker 44:08

just a coffee leave it at coffee. But I wanted to try to figure out, okay, so what do you think it said in the original like, Did it say, did the corner diner, no, or the coffee shop? But a lot of the times, you guys, I would say, like, at least half of the times they just added sentences. And one time, Barry just randomly was going to go to Wendy's and get a frosty, yeah, random, just random things that don't even add to the story don't make sense, and they were just throwing them in. Like, we need to make this current. It's always tapped on. We still have all the old stuff in there, right? And we're not the time to read through it and see if this makes sense. And it was so this is what makes me so mad. It was so lazy. It was last day. It was just lazy. And again, that annoys me as a reader, and I right now, probably more than any time of my life.

Unknown Speaker 45:00

Am very sensitive to being talked down to, or thought I'm not smart enough to think for myself, or I can't figure things out. It's just right at the surface. So this book, I was just like, This is so incredibly lazy. I mean, beyond it was just like you said, Michelle, just sticking in a random sentence, or tacking one thing on an existing sentence, and it would say, and a cell phone.

Unknown Speaker 45:26

And then I texted him, the line was dead, so I texted exactly I was getting a busy thing were so annoying too, because this book really works only because it was written in a pre digital era. Yes, oh my God, to justify the fact that it was in the digital era. But so then don't make it historical fiction. How about it's historical fiction, and you have these opportunities in a classroom or whatever, to talk about those things we said, the misogynistic, you know, dialog, the ways that, you know, what else. Just the fat phobia. I mean, there was a whole like, body type, so much fat women. So you could talk about that. And the war. You could talk about Vietnam, yeah, and the demonstrations. I mean, there was a whole part of the storyline where they're talking about, they were having demonstrate, war demonstrations, if you think this was written in 2010 I mean, now I could see, okay, there could be some demonstrations on campus, right? But not 2010 No, not 2010 not really, since the, you know, since the Vietnam War, we never had anything like even Iraq was not like, it wasn't Vietnam, right? Exactly. It was not a daily part of the high schoolers experience like it was for Vietnam, right, the conversations that you could have in a classroom, and also the fact that it does highlight some universal themes that no matter if it's 1940 1973

Unknown Speaker 46:49

2010

Unknown Speaker 46:51

that are continuous throughout time, like peer pressure and making a right decision, or how one wrong decision can really affect the rest of your life. There's so much richness in the story without the other stuff that you really dumbed it down. Yes, they dumbed it down, and they made it more confusing. It would have been a straightforwardly story. But now you're now, you're 13 years old, and you're going, I'm so confused. When was the Iraq war again? And the whole the what you said about it, the whole premise is dependent on it being in a digital age, is the argument for it, remaining updated pre digital age, right? Because when you're driving down the road and you hit a boy, and what are you gonna do? You're gonna pull out your cell phone and you're going to call 911,

Unknown Speaker 47:40

and so then they have to do these acrobatics in the car. Like, no, don't call 911, we'll just wait to tap till we get to town, and then we'll call an ambulance. Well, why would you wait to get to town to call an ambulance when you have a cell phone in your pocket? Would you just told me you did like, there's no justification for it. It was just going around. It was circles. It was all. It was all so wildly inconsistent that, Carolyn, you're so right. The the point of the book and the themes of the book, all of it gets so lost. Yeah, right. I mean, let's just go to the very basic. There wouldn't have even been a note that said, I Know What You Did Last Summer, or an email, or, Yes, snap, it'd be a snapshot, or you'd get hacked, or something like, it would appear digitally somewhere and freak you out. Yeah, the whole thing is pre digital. So I'm confused. How did we all feel about

Unknown Speaker 48:34

this?

Unknown Speaker 48:36

Or a bad experience? Okay, I'll give you one, one good thing that actually brought me just a tiny little bit of joy. And it's not technically Sexual Politics of 1973 but it is very 1973 and it is not something that you would see today. And the quote is Mrs. James was kneeling on the floor, cutting around a dress pattern. She straightened up with a gasp. Why? Julie? How awful. And just the image of my mother on the floor cutting around a dress pattern. It's not that people don't sew today, they do, and God bless you. We love you, and you're selling all of our stuff that we buy on but in those days, all of our moms were on the floor cutting out a dress pattern. Totally. Did your moms have that big cardboard thing that folded it.

Unknown Speaker 49:24

Right when she said that I was imagining, because my mom wasn't on the floor, we had a pool table that really got, I bet we played three games of pool on it in five years. It was for folding laundry, and it was for my mom cutting out patterns. It was in the basement, you know, but that's where, and so, right when she said that Carolyn, I picture it folded like an accordion, kind of, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 49:45

the lines on it

Unknown Speaker 49:48

would have those pinking shears. Do you remember those were the only scissors you could find in that? Well, they like, had the one too, yeah. And so sometimes at my house, like I could only find Pinky.

Unknown Speaker 50:00

Shears to cut something out, and it would be like, I mean, did you guys get I got I would be, I mean, in so I can't even describe the amount of trouble I would be in if I was ever caught using any of my mom's sewing scissors. Yes, naughty. Don't you touch. Don't you do it. Don't remind me of one other thing I want to ask you that has nothing to do with anything except, did your mom use those pins that had, like the little colored balls on the end, like in a tomato,

Unknown Speaker 50:29

always had the flower

Unknown Speaker 50:32

memory has been stuck with pins when my mom, oh, yeah, come here. I need to measure, you know, I need to try this on you, and she would have like, 15 of them in her mouth.

Unknown Speaker 50:42

Yeah? What? Would sit there while she was pinning, and I was constantly getting under my armpits or in my thigh or but the ones with the little balls, I would take a couple, and those would be the pierced earrings for my Barbie dolls. They would have little, you know, or, and I thought it was so cool. But sometimes, yeah, they were sometimes that wasn't always good. I had to do them, like, angle them down a little come out, like Frankenstein or something like,

Unknown Speaker 51:12

so I had to put it where there was enough space so the other one wouldn't come

Unknown Speaker 51:16

out. I wish I'd thought of that. I know. Okay. Can we talk about the ending of the book for a minute, because when I read the ending of the book, I texted Carolyn, and I'm like, I don't get it. I just was so confused because I read the last line of the book and they turned the page for what came next, and there was nothing. It was just acknowledgments. I'm like, wait, wait, I had done the same thing. So I'm gonna read the end of the book to you people, to you listeners, and then we're going to discuss but this is I'm I'm going to give it an award. It is the award for the lamest ending I've ever read in my whole life, because the book feels unfinished so the way, and this is not spoilers. We're not, yes, we're spoiling it for you, but you're not going to read it. You just need to have this information in the end. The man who has sent the note turns out to be a man that Julie has been dating, oops. And also Helen has been dating. His name is Bud, and so Julie was dating the same guy. Helen was dating the same guy. That man was, unbeknownst to them, the older brother of the boy they killed, and he was out for revenge, so he shot Barry. He came after Helen. He tried to strangle Julie. And then this is how the book ends, Ray discovering Julie blacked out on the floor after being attacked by Bud and and Ray says she wakes up. And he says, You don't have to worry. He's not going to be doing anything much for a while. I clobbered him with a flashlight from behind. It's not the way the good guys do it on television. But there wasn't time to think about that. Also, we were led to believe that Ray walked in on budge, strangling Julie, but we don't actually know, because she doesn't tell us. She just blacks out and she wakes up with Ray going, Julie, Julie, come out of it. Julie. So aloud, she said, Why not you? Ray, you were involved as much as the rest of us. Why is it that bud never tried to do anything to you? He did. Ray said, softly, tonight, his arm tightened around her. He knew the worst punishment for me would be to stay alive in a world that didn't have you in it and seen and this is what I wrote in my note, where the fuck is, bud, there's a killer on the loose, and you guys are just gonna end the book right here. This feels like my eighth grade creative writing project.

Unknown Speaker 53:33

Also me going forward, going, they're gonna come clean, but now, like, are they gonna be in jail? They're gonna have to go to jail. You can't explain this away, right? Like you still broke the law and killed a child? Yes, are you going to jail? Is there a trial? Are you going to the cops? Well, maybe that's why it was, like, taught in schools or whatever. Maybe Lois Duncan's whole thing was, let's have these discussions in classrooms. Now, what? What happened after, like, you know, she didn't hand that to us on a silver platter. Are they going to tell whatever? But I agree with you. I was the same way in that I went to turn the page and there was nothing more there, although I want I wonder, back when I read it, if at that age, I wasn't like, enamored with his final declaration, like, oh, it would have been cruel to know that you weren't here anymore. And maybe my little, you know, 12 year old heart was just like, oh, beating so fast, like happily ever after, and maybe I was satisfied. I don't know. Where would you like to know? Would you like to know why Lois Duncan ended it that way? Oh, please. Oh, oh, my god, please tell me yes, yeah. So I have this little interview with a young adult author named Barry Liga, l, y, G, A, and he says, Now the book ends before we can learn what will happen to the main characters for covering up the hit and run. And I assume that was intentional on your part. You wanted to end the book there. I'm curious. What was your reason? And she says, there's a natural cut off point for every story. And I thought we reached it.

Unknown Speaker 54:59

Mm.

Unknown Speaker 55:00

It's when you know that Julie's going to survive, and the questions have been answered as to why things happened.

Unknown Speaker 55:08

I felt the book came to closure there, and to go on spinning along for another few chapters, adding things on would be an anti climax, to say the least. No, I've done

Unknown Speaker 55:19

I've done that with all my books. I've ended the story as soon after the as soon after the climax as I could, because I've seen too many books written by authors who just don't know when to stop. So well, okay, I understand, I understand what she's saying. Yes, that sometimes there is an end point and you're like, stop right now. But that wasn't it, because the killer is out there, like we don't even know where he is. We just know he clobbered him with a flashlight. But did you kill him? You didn't say that you killed him. In my mind, he got clobbered and then he ran away. Isn't he gonna come back? And I also am little peeved with Lois for robbing us of the scene in which Ray discovers bud attacking Julie and clobbers him with the flashlight, right? Doesn't that seem like a good scene we'd want to be in on instead of him just going, don't worry, I clobbered him with a flashlight. I go back to what Carolyn said earlier. I love that. She said, It's lazy. Sorry, Lois Duncan, but that was tired, too. Yeah, there are sometimes, there are some books that I feel do that, where they get to that resolution in terms of, okay, now we know who did it, and I'm tired. I've been writing this for a long time, and then because all of a sudden we go from him strangling her to She's waking up and her mom's talking to her. And I was like, where's the like, Did they forget a chapter or something? I just again, it was lazy. She probably thought, Oh, my deadlines coming up. And yeah. So I ended here. Yeah, we'll just, we'll just end it. It's fine. But think about, from the movie perspective, would you have ever left that scene out of the movie in which, in which Ray discovers bud strangling Julie? You would never leave that out. That's the climax. That's the climax. So she's thinking, I don't know what she thinks is the climax, but that's the climax, and she left it out. It's really weird. Okay, so that begs the question, then, what is its role as a young adult classic? We now do have young adult literature. She pioneered it. She was one of the pioneers of young adult literature. She's one of the highest selling authors of all time. It's in classrooms. There are new advocate adaptations, there are movies. So why is it a classic? But do you think it deserves this status? How do we feel? Because we've kind of taken it apart right here?

Unknown Speaker 57:34

I mean, I think, like, I'm going to go back to again, to Carolyn's point earlier, another one you made, Carolyn about, there were good, maybe, like themes or good discussion points

Unknown Speaker 57:50

that you could take the book and then run with with your classroom. I just think that they changed a lot of them. But I think, you know, I think you can get into things like, okay, they've all made this pact, but now some of them are, like, having, you know, this whole moral dilemma of, I don't think we should have made that pact. I want to go tell and this is a good discussion. So, yeah, I think the book and the plot you're going to get kids to read, which is always your number one goal as a teacher, right? I'm going to give you this book and you tell kids, they hit this kid, and then they cover it up, and then he's like, I know what you did. That's juicy. I want to read that. So let's get our kids to read first. Yeah, so excellent. And yes, you absolutely could start talking about, was this right? You could start talking about a lot of the different issues and and the moral dilemma that they go through. So for that reason, I think, yes,

Unknown Speaker 58:43

does as a teacher, do you have to think that the book that I'm going to use as a lit study in my class is, you know, a secret garden esque type book? Is it, you know, the best book I've ever read? No, because, like, I keep saying, you want to get your kids reading all of the kids, and then it's almost your job as the teacher to start trying to figure out, now, how can we learn from this? So for that reason, I say yes, because I do think, I do think kids would be very interested in the premise of this book. The premise is gold. I think the premise everything I said, I think they wrecked it with the updates. And so because of that, no, I

Unknown Speaker 59:25

wouldn't

Unknown Speaker 59:28

73 right? Because I think she had a great she had a great idea with this premise. I think it's juicy. Kids want to read it. Two things I wanted to say, because I don't know when it would have first been considered a classic. I mean, were teachers using it in real time in like 1975 in classrooms? Question, and when did it start to be used? Because I think the 1973 version has a lot of teachable moments, beyond the moral themes and that kind of stuff. You could even talk about showing and not telling. I mean, there was writing. You.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:00

Just particular pieces of writing clobbering him with a flashlight instead of telling us, Well, exactly that, or how you create suspense without being gory or whatever. Like she was really good in that aspect of her writing. Do you use the updated version? Because I want to say I looked and I think you did too. Kristen, high and low for the 1973 version I wanted to read the one that I originally read. It is impossible to find. Obviously it's out of print, because the one that's getting printed is this 2010 Who knows 2021 they might have done so. I don't know that a teacher could have access to a 1973

Unknown Speaker 1:00:37

class set of books. But how interesting would it be to to read the current one and find all the things that are wrong with it and teach it like that, as looking at it through a writer's eyes, or getting both copies and comparing the updates to the original, you know, good or bad. So in I guess, the term classic, you know, to me, it's a classic for different reasons, because it was, again, the first book like this that I read first time. I'm starting to feel grown up. Obviously, our generation has these reference points to that, that we've already talked about some the title of the book and stuff.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:14

But to be like in a classroom and taught as a classic alongside, you know, whatever Catcher in the Rye or something like that, the giver, right? Yeah, the giver,

Unknown Speaker 1:01:24

bithya, I don't think so. But depending on what your your angle is with that, I guess. But classic, no, I think that's going a little too far. I think, I think if we designate, like, very specifically young adult classic, I think it has enough historical significance that I would designate it a young adult classic. Because if you think about it before, and I've already said this before, Lois Duncan and a handful of others you consider, like the outsiders and things like that, there was no young adult literature. There were children's books and there were adult books. Catcher in the Rye is about teens, but it is an adult book. So if you were in, if you were 13, you were probably reading adult books. So in that way, it has and she was one of the first people to do that. I'm reading books for teens, about teens. And so it really does have historical significance, because look where we are now with this entire genre that is one of the better, best selling genres that we have in print. The writing may not be what would get published today, but it was a trailblazer in creating a whole new audience of readers. So I'm designating it a young adult classic. I can't imagine teaching it in a classroom. That's ridiculous. It would only be in what not to do. I would love to teach about it historically. Like to look at things from another era, but I do think that it's it just once again points out that we Gen Xers. We're we're not just the big wheel generation and the Sesame Street generation. We're literally the young adult literature generation, like we were the first the 70s were the first time. I guess the outsiders was like 1967 but that lit the spark, right? The Outsiders lit the spark. And then here we go, and it's all thanks to our generation, or maybe I shouldn't say thanks to our generation. We were the beneficiaries of all of that. I think this should be our new K tel record that we're looking for. Remember when? And we were all looking, yeah, that Kristin didn't have in in vintage stores. Right now our mission is, anytime we're at a used bookstore, we need to start looking for this book. I know,

Unknown Speaker 1:03:31

yes, also at the back of my Kindle edition, it does have reader discussion questions, and so I do see a lot of value now that I've just kind of passed through these especially with kids that might want to pick it up, you know, like a lot of moral issue type things, like, even though we can say, okay, it's not a great lesson in how well a book should be written, Yeah, but look at like this question, a lot of different elements led to little Daniel's death. Do you think Barry is most responsible? Is Daniel's mom responsible in some way for not picking him up from his friend's house? Can more than one person be responsible for a tragic event? Why do you think this is, I mean, my God, there's a journal

Unknown Speaker 1:04:13

right there. There's about 20 of them like this.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:17

And so I now I'm reading these, and I'm like, okay, maybe you could, you know, teach it still, and you could say this was a classic back and I don't know not that anybody is really pulling this one to teach as a classic, but I don't know that that that, even though we were all very negative about the updates, I do still think maybe it had the book has value, oh, 100% and I again, put it back in that time frame of when it was written. And we talked even Judy Blume the way she wrote. It seems like that era of writing was kind of more simplistic sentences, yeah, kind of to really was. And I think with the exception of that ending that was kind of weird. And then, of course, all of the.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:00

Um, updates. That's really what killed it, made it bad. I can see all of those questions being answered and asked during if you read the 1973

Unknown Speaker 1:05:10

Can you imagine? Can you imagine updating? Are you there? God, it's me. Margaret. Like, What a travesty that would be. It's terrible, terrible. So at the end of the day. I think, really, my favorite part of reading this book was going back to 1973

Unknown Speaker 1:05:25

which gives us that reason to start looking for I don't need it to be a 1973

Unknown Speaker 1:05:31

issue that we, you know, edition. It can be a 1980s edition, as long as it's like a 1980s cover, as long as it's the 1973 text. We need the 1973 text. I really did in in the places where you felt 1973

Unknown Speaker 1:05:48

I really did feel like I went back to 1973 even though they were trying to make me believe I was in the present day. But it did not work. The whiff of 1973 is too strong on this book, just like Margaret. Are you there? God, it's me. Margaret has a whiff of 1970 and I want it to stay there. Yeah. So that's why finding a 1973 copy would be so great, I know. And truthfully, if you're looking for a distraction from the news, a way to, like, escape the nightmare of what's happening outside for just a few minutes each day, reading something you read when you were a kid will lift you out of this timeline and put you into another, just temporarily, even if it doesn't live up to your expectations, or if it lands with a thud and it's okay, you still got to time travel a little bit. And that's not nothing. It's almost like a form of dissociating a little bit, which is it's a legit coping mechanism. Let's just about to say, I call it survival. That's right, whatever it takes. So they weren't kidding on those read posters when they said, reading can take you anywhere it really can. Thank you for listening today, and we will see you next time

Unknown Speaker 1:06:57

and

Unknown Speaker 1:07:02

before we go, a huge thank you to our Patreon supporters. You help keep the mics on, the memories alive and the pop culture love flowing. We couldn't do this without you, so consider this your official shout out, and today we are giving a specific shout out, I guess I could say to these patrons. Bonnie, Laurie, Liz, James, Maria, CN S I A n, that's a cool name. Richard, Laura Shannon, Jen, Theresa, Dawn, Melissa and Annabelle. And if you're enjoying the pop culture Preservation Society and want to join our community of patrons, just head over to patreon.com to learn more about the different tiers and exclusive perks available to our supporters. And we thank you all. In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast. Courtesy of Lois Duncan. Thank you, Lois Duncan, for this historic book, and from the cast of Three's Company, two good times, two Happy Days to Little House on the Prairie. The information,

Unknown Speaker 1:08:05

opinions and comments expressed on the pop culture Preservation Society podcast belongs solely to Carolyn the crushologist and hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we are always right, there is always a first time the PCPs is written, produced and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional wjm studios and our beloved Mary Richards Nanu. Nanu, keep on truckin and May the Force Be With You. You.