Writer

Biography and Origins

While there exists no doubt that Arthur S. Halsey, Jr. (ASHjr) is a current, and secretive, writer, there are distinct questions concerning his identity, most notably a general confusion as to his absolute time spectrum. Reports have indicated that ASHjr “attended schooling” in the 1980s and is a member of Generation X, having been born in the early 1970s. This would put him in his late 30s (summer 2010), and the general consensus is that ASHjr is a current author, writing contemporary to now. (In fact, much of his material is concerned with the interaction of the 21st century networked world with that of the recent past, especially various pinpoint moments of the 20th century.)

However, there are other contradictions in the historic account. Arthur S. Halsey was known for developing a “bomb rack and control” in 1933, and his appearances had been briefly documented in both Great Britain and New England at various points in the early 20th century. It has been proposed on at least a few occasions that the real ASHjr, a visionary, had written his entire oeuvre in the past and the work is only surfacing now due to delayed agency release. This proposition does not seem likely. Other speculations indicate that some of these references are actually to ASHjr’s father, or to other persons of no apparent relation. Whatever the case, the secrecy and confusion has only elevated Halsey to cult status as a writer.

Online “disappearances”

Inexplicably, there were occasions when it appeared that Halsey had all but disappeared from the Internet. This phenomenon has not been explained and cannot be caused by brief network outages as the actual references in the links appear to have been cut, but appear later in a future time. The “disappearance” has an uncanny connection to actual situations and themes in his work, as will be shown.

Writing style and work

ASHjr is primarily known for a new fiction style described by readers and critics at times as “extraordinarily fun,” “cinematically vivid,” “extremely strange and frightening” and “thrilling.” This style appears concerned with exploring lost and contemporary ideas of history, the paranormal and the unknown in a literal “fabulist” manner, heavily atmospheric in an often noir mode, and his material (often literary in style while blatantly commercial in character and design) is sometimes described as paranoir, a genre that seems exclusive to him. A characteristic ASHjr piece involves “timebending” and “time splicing” (varous events occuring at two separate moments in time and connected, or two distinct scenes at different times occurring at the same location, or a linear scene whose principles or narrators are operating in regular time but are cutting through time and space at a different speed, or multiple isolated moments — distant in time and space — that are conjoined in the narrative to reveal plot motion and meaning); elevation or reduction to different mental states involving experimental psychology, psychotropic pharmacology and NLP; the use of stylistic and atmospheric elements from vintage commercial genres (film noir, espionage, true crime, western and classical mystery); “lost” legends, secret histories and paranormal tropes; a thematic obsession with the loss or breaking-away from reason; popular scientific models and cultural artifacts as they exist not at the narrative present but from some different time (1910s Egyptology accounts, implications of 1930s cosmic ray theory, long descriptions of rare 1967 acid rock vinyl, unsigned memoirs of 1990 Manchester “acid house” scene, Sony Discman hacks, Palm Pilots, Ray-O-Vac 9v battery flashlights as a handheld “electric torch”) juxtaposed in or on top of other eras; breakdowns of character, “character molding,” and alternate or subconscious views of the same person; “constant themes of disappearance, obscurity, resurgence and bilocation” (Hapsburg 2008); cut-up dialogue or description; philosophical puzzles or logical paradoxes that are what he calls his characters’ “barriers to entry.”

The Agency

Little has been revealed about the “agency” that ASHjr has been associated with; it is unclear if this agency is a writing group, a sponsor or benefactor, or some other type of organization who are working to develop the ideas presented in his fiction. It is known that the agency operates online and consists of a great many writers, possibly in the upper hundreds. It has been speculated that the agency exists or was formed as a counter to the prevailing postmodernism. But the precise origin and even name of the agency is not known; ASHjr fans have at times referred to it as “The Agency.”

Published fiction and excerpts

Information on published material by ASHjr has been difficult to obtain, as apparently much of his early work had been published on small press broadsides and distributed via local channels and have yet to be properly catalogued or collected. However, as of this writing (Aug 2010) there appears to be a new resurgence of his work.

“The Dreamreapers,” a new story, has been collected in The Lifted Brow no. 7 (Aug 2010); it chronicles the work of agent Arthur Munfrey and has been noted as part of a larger “story-cycle”; the unnamed “agency” that Munfrey is or has been employed by is thought to be a fictitious parallel of the secret agency that Halsey works for.

Various quotations have been attributed to ASHjr, most notably the early phrase “Become who you hate,” but the original context of this quotation is not known.

Other quotation-graffitis that are known as ASHisms:

• TAKE OFF THE LOGIC CHAIN

• MOVE BEYOND REASON

For futher reference

In development.

Oversaw ghostwriters for many lines of children’s books, including The Hardy Boys, The Bobsey Twins, The Ted Scott Flying Series, Nancy Drew, and others. Founded and run by Edward Stratemeyer (1862-1930) [more], a writer himself who’d created The Rover Boys series for boys. As ideas and plots for various series books came to him much faster than he could possibly write them he had the idea to industrialize it, creating many childrens series books by contracting writers for work-for-hire based on the various outlines, plots and notes that he provided. The first series to be produced in this manner were The Bobbsey Twins series (first book in the series was actually written by Stratemeyer himself in 1904; the first sequels came in 1907); eventually the Syndicate branched out to various mystery and action-adventure series. [wikipedia] [Keeline’s stratemeyer.org] [google] [Jan 2009 blog article] [more]

Although some of the series books were very popular, they were not always (or immediately) so. Stratemeyer researcher and collector James D. Keeline analyzed the early sales figures of the Franklin W. Dixon books. [more]

Stratemeyer is the subject of Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Deidre Johnson (Twayne’s United States Authors Series 1993). [buy]

Syndicate authors included Lilian Garis and her husband, Howard R. Garis; Mildred Wirt; Leslie McFarlane. [more]

Mildred Wirt

Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson (1905-2002) wrote the Nancy Drew series as “Carolyn Keene.” Lived in Cleveland and later Toledo, Ohio. [obit] [timeline] [bio] [profile] [wikipedia] [1993 photo]

The Mildred Wirt Benson Digital Collection

Leslie McFarlane and The Hardy Boys

The Hardy Boys series by “Franklin W. Dixon” was ghostwritten by Leslie McFarlane (1902-1977), a Canadian writer. [google] His life and work was eventually detailed in The Secret of the Hardy Boys: Leslie McFarlane and the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Marilyn S. Greenwald (Ohio University Press 2004): “Embarrassed by his secret identity as the author of the Hardy Boys books, Leslie McFarlane admitted it to no one — his son pried the truth out of him years later.”

James D. Keeline’s “The Writings of Charles Leslie McFarlane“ (illustrated)

“The Man Who Was Leslie McFarlane”

“A reluctant author of bestsellers”

Remembering Hardy Boys author Leslie McFarlane (CBC broadcast and radio interview, Oct. 7, 1972)

“Library acquires first editions of Hardy Boys books” has an early don’t-miss photo of McFarlane

The Hardy Boys Unofficial Home Page

The Hardy Boys, an illustrated article.

[google] [wikipedia]
[longer bio] [quotes]

Archived chronology and bibliography.

Articles

“Eliza Haywood: The ‘Female Spectator’”

“Texts, Lies and the Marketplace: Eliza Haywood and the Literary Marketplace at Mid-Century”

For further reference

Online writing of fictitious characters appearing in the guise of Web sites, Usenet and mailing-list authors, online avatars, and other virtual “personalities.” Also called Net Fiction.

A lot of younger netusers don’t even read fiction anymore; instead, they follow blogs because “the real world’s more interesting than made-up stories.” In other words they’ve never cultivated the ability to hold themselves through a prose narrative and have no ability to stay down inside the world of a work of prose art — but they could read the web fictions of artificial bloggers, avatars and other fictitious, manufactured “personalities.”

Pre-Web online netfictions

Any accounts from early usenet or BBSing?

The early Web and “Way New Journalism” era

There were several netfiction projects and popular online “characters” that existed before the peak of blogging.

alt.personalities

alt.personalities was the title for a collection of online characters and fictions active in the mid-1990s. The characters appeared in netnews threads, gopher files, early blogs, web sites, and even hardcopy chapbooks.

Walter Miller

Little is left of this Pathfinder-era character, who was quite possibly the first “electronic hillbilly.” There’s the original Geocities page: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/9179/walter.htm. At the turn of the millennium this was supposedly updated to www.waltermillerhomepage.com, but — like most sites from these “characters” of the 90s — it’s gone.

Walter’s mentioned in Levi Asher’s 2009 online memoir of the 90s Web era, and he’s also included in Asher’s 1997 hardcopy anthology, Coffeehouse: Writings from the Web.

Web-fictions in the 21st century

The age of blogging and other online messaging (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) makes net-fiction easy. There’s probably some out there.

Gary Benchley

Gary Benchley is the name of Paul Ford’s fake character, who turned up with a series of letters in The Morning News beginning in the autumn of 2003, and eventually turned into the lead protagonist of an eponymous novel, Gary Benchly, Rock Star. (Ford had previously experiemented with fictitious online web-characters on his Ftrain.com site.)

Related pranks, forgeries and fakes

Not all of what would be web-fictions are done with a literary intention. Several elaborate fake-jobs have been perpetrated. There’s probably a lot of that out there now.

BAD

Apeared in MIT Press. Instead of fictitious characters, this “prank” impersonated Timothy Druckery, Mark Amerika and others. [archive]

“Art prank” in Vice Magazine

This disappeared from the net but a reference exists in archive, sans images. (Vice Sept 1999?) (References original article)

Paul Maliszewski’s “Faking”

Paul Maliszewski began online “faking” in this period, but he apparently did not have a literary motive. An article called “I, Faker” (The Baffler #11, 1998) publicly revealed his work. [archive]

The Baffler also printed a directory of the “fakes,” including letters and other public writings by the following characters:

• Gary Pike
• Carl S. Grimm
• Pavel R. Liberman
• T. Michael Bodine
• Noah Warren-Mann
• Irv Fuller

[archive]

He then authored a book on the history of (offline) “faking”: Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders [brief interview] [more]

“Confessions of an Ebay Opium Addict”

In 2005, “Peter Thompson” of the Reno News & Review wrote an article entitled “Confessions of an eBay Opium Addict,” detailing his supposed addition with psychedelic drugs (including poppy pods he’d begin to purchase for the cheap on eBay, eventually selling everything to keep up with his addiction. The tagline: “Looking for drugs on the cheap, a writer found poppy pods available on the Web. He also found himself hooked.”).

The article was syndicated and appeared in many newspapers. The piece was a satire of Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism; however, many readers took it for face value when it was posted to AlterNet, and for over two years the comments thread was filled with concerned readers (as well as others who had figured out the prank). [google]

For further reading