Not Thinking About the Children
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on August 17, 2008
Filed Under Speculative Fiction, YA
Two essays — one from Annalee Newitz and one from Lizzie Skurnick — express needless hostility to books that involve the young. The first essay quibbles over YA science fiction with protagonists under 18 being categorized as YA as niche marketing gone horribly awry. As Newitz writes:
When scifi novels with adolescent protagonists are marketed as “just for adolescents,” a curtain of taboo falls between most adults and that novel. In an era where there is so much legal panic around relations between adults and young adults, it’s hard to deny your knee-jerk response that there’s something slightly distasteful and pedophilic about an adult reading stories aimed at people under the age of 18.
Let me try and understand this strange logic. If I, a balding and bearded thirtysomething man, wander into a YA section at a bookstore, I will immediately find my name listed in the Megan’s Law database. I cannot possibly purchase a book and claim it to be “for my son” or “for my niece.” (Not that I would. Because a book purchase is nobody’s goddam business but mine. And besides, I have braved the apparent choppy waters of the kiddie section many times in purchasing several copies of E. Nesbitt and L. Frank Baum for friends to give to their children to read.) To wander into the kiddie section is now apparently equivalent to clumsily divagating through the beads separating the “adult” titles from the regular movies in a video store. Never mind that, when it comes to YA, it is parents who hold the purchasing power.
And, of course, I cannot possibly read a YA book on a subway. Not even if I remove the dust jacket and make the book’s title difficult to identify. Apparently, the minute that I open up a YA book, all eyes will veer to my perverted and demented form. There can be no other judgment. Not even the usual apathy. You may not know this, but every YA book can be easily identified by the government-mandated bleeping yellow light whenever anyone over the age of eighteen starts reading it. The appropriate authorities will be summoned. I will be thrown in jail and sentenced to a chemical castration. For I have transgressed the boundaries.
For what it’s worth, I have read a few YA titles on the subway and have not yet experienced any such problems. Perhaps Ms. Newitz has some legislative evidence with which to support her utterly strange claim. But I seriously doubt this.
Then there is Ms. Skurnick’s essay, which quibbles with Chris Adrian’s short story collection, A Better Angel. She first casts doubt on a 9-year-old narrator’s ability to recite Emily Dickinson’s poems. (Casual YouTube searches suggest otherwise.) The idea that a 9-year-old would consider More Joy of Sex is likewise impossible. (Never mind that kids are quite curious about anatomy. I should point out that I acquired an illicit copy of The Joy of Sex when I was 6. Puritanical households make children curious quite swiftly.)
Both essays have been dutifully responded to by, respectively, Colleen Mondor and John Fox. Fox suggests that Skurnick failed to read one story correctly and used this to paint a needlessly broad stroke against the capacities of children.
But what is really going on here? I have appreciated both Newitz and Skurnick’s work in the past. However, these essays both represent foolhardy and illogical positions. These two idiotic essays read as if they were written to draw traffic to their respective outlets. Forget reason, ratiocination, or even a modicum of common sense. Newitz and Skurnick both decided that they’d throw all that into the incinerator. And in doing so, they have both settled for pernicious and discriminatory positions that threaten the possibilities of literature. If we cannot accept a 9-year-old who likes Emily Dickinson, then I suppose we should disregard the wisdom of Holden Caulfield or the musings of Huckleberry Finn. After all, all dem kids must be dumb! Likewise, it’s worth pointing out that there was once a time in which anyone reading or writing science fiction was considered a pervert or a loon. (For example, consider this 1954 Time article in which a Cleveland psychiatric social worker declared that science fiction plots betrayed “schizophrenic manifestations” in the minds of their authors.) It is extremely disappointing to see the editor of a sizable science fiction website fall into this same fallacious line of reasoning for YA.
Comments
4 Responses to “Not Thinking About the Children”
Leave a Reply
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
- Must hear segment with Bob Garfield calling Alicia Shepard on the "torture" debate. http://tinyurl.com/mlmolx (Thank you, @annaleighclark) 3 hrs ago
- @annaleighclark Not yet, but thanks. Shepard appeared Thursday on "Talk of the Nation" and here's the link: http://bit.ly/X0v6Y in reply to annaleighclark 3 hrs ago
- More on NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard's silence from @simonowens here: http://bit.ly/5K6FX 4 hrs ago
- More updates...
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
- Will Resurface Later
- The Bat Segundo Show: Hal Niedzviecki II
- Alain de Botton on Responding to Critics
- Alain de Botton Clarifies the Caleb Crain Response
- Despotism (1946)
- Inside BookTour.com: A Q&A With Kevin Smokler
- Dia de los Vivos — Flower Parade 2009
- Alice Hoffman: The Most Immature Writer of Her Generation
- The History of Verizon, Part Three (September to October 2000)
- Hoaxes Are Still Possible in the Internet Age
Here, here! Amen! Bravo!
…I liked your post. A lot.
Beth Fehlbaum, author
Courage in Patience, a story of hope for those who have endured abuse
http://courageinpatience.blogspot.com
Chapter 1 is online!
As a former bookseller,I agree with you,Ed,that finding an adult in the YA section of a bookstore would not immediately set off any alarm bells(I also saw the movie Happiness and if Ms. Newitz can’t see the world of difference between a grown man getting off on Tiger Beat magazine vs. any adult picking up a couple of YA novels for their own personal reading,perhaps she needs some summer school lessons there).
From my browsing on the blogosphere,I have found many adults who enjoy YA titles,in all genres,and appreciate the writing skill and talent of those authors who seem to be considered the red headed stepchildren of literature these days(no offense meant to red heads or step kids,I swear!)
Part of the appeal of YA to adults is that in some ways,they get more out of it than the target audience does. After all,most folks have reached the “been there,done that” stage in their maturity and can look back at that period of their lives thru fiction and recognize the reality of the emotional growth(or lack of)of the characters much more quickly.
Not to mention that the metaphors used in horror and sci-fi YA can be witty to both sets of ages;as a Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan,I reveled in the snappy dialog along with the vampire/demon/witch pathos(and was a full fledged adult at the time)and I’m sure plenty of the fanbase that grew up with BTVS was inspired to increase their knowledge of lit and pop culture just as much as any Gilmore Girls fan(which I am now a Jenny-Come-Lately admirer of)did.
To wrap this up,I find it amusing that young people have no trouble crossing over the age barriers for books but that some adults seem to feel that their fellow grown-ups either need a kid as a beard or should put their YA books in plain brown wrappers:)
Re Chris Adrian’s short story collection, A Better Angel
I always fall back on Marilynne Robinson’s view when issues of implausibility are brought up: it’s not a problem of likelihood but of style. However, since I haven’t read Adrian’s collection, I can’t give an opinion and only offer this as one possible criterion.
[...] bunch of people are all up in arms over some fresh Young Adult attacks. Good for them. But as for Ed, or anyone who looks like Ed, reading teen fiction on the subway is, [...]