Comments on: Colson Whitehead Responds to YA “Controversy”

By: mikio4

mikio4 — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:21:40 +0000

^He comes off as reasoned and your response here as petty or maybe just trolling for clicks. Remind me why anyone should care about your opinion enough to read it online on your blog?

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:03:10 +0000

Great responses!

Thanks for weighing on on what I started! I love it when he says he wasn’t huffy, but then paints a near perfect picture of huffy, what with the exasperated eye rolling!

Check out my more detailed response here:
http://alilsumpinsumpin.blogspot.com/2009/05/follow-up-colson-whitehead.html

And then read my review of his writing:
http://alilsumpinsumpin.blogspot.com/2009/09/whitehead-revisited.html

By: Johnny99

Johnny99 — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:41:17 +0000

I met Whitehead at the Book Fest on the Capitol Mall this weekend. My son wanted Rick Riordan’s autograph, but there were thousands of YAs on line for it. Whitehead had no line at all. I jokingly asked him if he could get Riordan’s autograph. “I don’t know who that is,” he said. I pointed to the line that stretched for about half a mile. “Oh,” he said.

Maybe that YA category ain’t so bad afterall.

By: love to read

love to read — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:33:17 +0000

The fact that he stole someone else’s first novel idea might explain why the YA issue has come up for him now after his third or fourth novel.

Gone and quickly forgotten.

Good riddance!

By: dawg

dawg — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:38:47 +0000

‘lson should thank all the allahs that he’s lucky enough to have a job. He doth protest too much. Maybe his next novel should portray Muhammad the prophet as gay–Naah, that would be too edgy for a bourgeois novelist like ‘lson.

By: ehslibrarian

ehslibrarian — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:27:07 +0000

My impression of what I read of the book was that it was written from an adult perspective about what his 15th summer was like. In my opinion teens don’t want to know what adults thought of what their life was like as a teenager. If it was written more from the perspective of a 15 year old I might think it would be a good crossover book since it does have some important messages.

By: Palli Davis Holubar

Palli Davis Holubar — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:57:50 +0000

Mr. Whitehead, well said. I’m sure my UW- Madison Professor of Children’s Literature, David C. Davis, would have whole heartedly agreed with you about trade publishing and library classifications are people management tools. Universal ideas are universal. You would think the present political reality of America’s Alice in Wonderland would be all one needs to understand the of folly of artificial age appropriate labels. Lewis Carroll wrote for a thinking person who happened to be his young daughter, the rest of us- young and old- shouldn’t read it? Please.

By: One Writer’s Rant « Zebra Sounds

One Writer’s Rant « Zebra Sounds — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:19:28 +0000

[...] novelist (yet). So, let me just conveniently pull one in here to make my point. Recently, author Colson Whitehead was asked about the classification of his latest novel, Sag Harbor. Here’s how he responded: [...]

By: rc

rc — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:07:30 +0000

I had to comment…I appreciate CW but please people stop with the I “heart”! What is that? It’s not cute by any measure of modern speak.

By: Paula Chase

Paula Chase — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:45:14 +0000

I heart Colson Whitehead. I’m so over labels! I mean, I get why the industry needs them, but I like that he pushes them aside as a writer.

By: leon

leon — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:18:45 +0000

I’m midway through it now and loving every page. Though I honestly don’t see why anyone should feel the need to label this a “YA novel.” Because it concerns teenagers? So is Catcher in the Rye now to be considered YA too? Or Lord of the Flies?

I can understand Whitehead’s annoyance at being unnecessarily tagged in this way. Call it top-shelf literature; that seems about right.

By: Missing Person

Missing Person — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:01:44 +0000

Whenever anyone calls me huffy, I get all…huffy. It’s impossible not to. Really, try it. I think CW is feeling vulnerable for having FINALLY written an obviously autobiographical novel. People say “autobiographical” as if it’s a dirty word, like “confessional” for poets. It’s ridiculous. I can’t wait to read it. I hope I can find it!

By: Mark Bastable

Mark Bastable — Tue, 05 May 2009 10:04:15 +0000

I’d be really very surprised if anyone were to say, “You know why I became a writer? I’ll tell you – in order to fit into a publisher’s preconceived notion of how product should be presented to a sub-set of the reading public. That’s the bit I love. I take huge pride in making my work fit neatly into a genre definition, and I mercilessly crush any creative impulse that might threaten my conformance to those holy conventions.”

Publishing is a spread game – they want to hit as many people as possible within a targeted demographic, and they know that the closer to the periphery of that target a reader may be, the less likelihood there is of picking him off. That doesn’t matter, because marketing budgets – like napalm – work best when they’re aimed at concentrations of civilians.

Writers don’t write with the napalm model in mind. They tend towards the germ warfare model, according to which a microbe can be introduced into practically any community and will then spread by contact infection throughout the entire population, regardless of demographic, age, religion or ethnicity.

Different models – different expectations. Writers need to understand why publishers do what they do, but they don’t have to like it.

By: Kathie

Kathie — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:22:47 +0000

Must be nice not to have to identify a genre when going about publishing a book, but to all of those first-time authors out there that are forced into having to put a label on it just to get their manuscript in the door and on an agent’s desk, it is a bit snobbish. Was there a need to behave in such a manner? Sounds more like someone just got their nose bent out of shape, he certainly doesn’t sound unapproachable in the response. If anything, I’m hoping he *is* approachable. I wonder if he could be the turning point to eradicating labels completely and opening up the whole literary world for everyone’s benefit.

By: Harold Borges

Harold Borges — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:40:42 +0000

It would have been funny if he’d said, “YA?–YA?!? Fuck that jive-ass YA shit!”
Also, does Richard Ford have a son? Whitehead should send that child a copy.
Also, has anyone noticed that when Richard Ford talks it sounds like he’s sucking on a marble?
When Updike was old he had that marble-loll speech too.
It just creeps me out and I have to mention it. When I heard either of them speak, I felt like they could pull a baby out of their pocket at anytime and eat it.
Also, do YAs have souls?
Also, I’m a bit of a faggot.

By: Colleen

Colleen — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:33:29 +0000

Actually I think this is a very solid answer. The guy has no control of where his books go or who they are marketed to and I’m sorry – most literary reviewers do ignore YA lit. I haven’t read Sag Harbor yet but as someone who reviews YA every month (at Bookslut) it sounds like an excellent crossover to me. I understand his frustration about the whole issue because it is frustrating. More power to him for just writing his books and not worrying about audience; hopefully teens will find him just fine. (If every bookstore would just shelve in more than one location like Powells does then none of this would be an issue.)

By: Bat of Moon

Bat of Moon — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:17:50 +0000

Sounds like a perfectly logical answer to me.

By: Book Blog - Likely Stories, by Keir Graff - Booklist Online » Blog Archive » Adult at heart

Mon, 04 May 2009 16:20:49 +0000

[...] the suggestion that Sag Harbor might be marketed as a young adult novel? Or does he hope to be beyond category , as Whitehead himself explains here, and simply wants to be read? Having read and reviewed each of [...]

By: Steven Augustine

Steven Augustine — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:17:37 +0000

On the other hand, I find it troubling that writers should have to submit to an attitude check at all.

By: Andrew Wheeler

Andrew Wheeler — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:09:20 +0000

Ah, he’s a special perfect snowflake, the kind who writes books that simply everyone in the whole wide world will love. One of those writers.

I guess that’s better than entirely dismissing non-adult readers, but not by much.