blackbrook

Haven't read either of these two authors, but by "cut away stories" do you mean stories within the story? If so there is a long tradition of that, going back to the 1001 Arabian Nights, post modern authors like John Barth, etc.

I'll just offer one particular situation. I have a door to my kitchen that is metal and glass like a sliding door but swings on a hinge. More mass than a typical wooden door and it swings on the hinge very freely, no resistance to slow it down. So it swings with pretty much the velocity you give it, and it requires a decent amount to make it latch.

Commonly I go in or out with stuff in my hands so I can rarely close it slowly and carefully. I end up giving it a little shove, often with my foot. If you get the force just right, it will latch with out being loud, but it has to be just right. Any less and it doesn't latch. Any more and it slams pretty loudly. It's really hard to get right, an not slam it more loudly than you intend. And I'm sensitive to noise so it's not like I don't care. But with this particular door it's hard to avoid.

The Family Circus cartoon (and probably other old newspaper cartoons that never die). I saw a video analyzing how they reuse the same cartoons over the years with small changes to keep them from looking too out of date, but increasingly lazily.

Weren't the original Hardy Boys slop from the start? It's been a while since I read about it, but I think I remember reading that they were kind of cynically churned out by some paid hack, and occasionally revised to keep them from getting too dated. (Human slop generating practices have gotten worse over the years, tho)