another one of those "why are grownups reading YA books????" concern pieces
Only slightly related thoughts about literary enjoyment:
- Yesterday, one of my students remarked after class that although she could see that Hemingway was really good at what he was doing, and there was a lot to uncover about his writing, she still hadn't found a way to like him. I have not yet found a way to like Hemingway, either, but I think I would have said the same thing to her even if I had: that it's okay not to like things, because if we didn't like some things and dislike others, we wouldn't have taste. And that as long as she was taking the material seriously and not just dismissing it without thinking about it, then she was doing all I could ask from her as a student. I think this made her feel better, although perhaps she really wanted an actual way to like Hemingway instead.
- Maybe it's because I'm suffering from stuffy cold-brain right now, but I can't seem to make sense of this piece in the New Yorker by Christopher Beha about reading Henry James and (not) reading YA:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/henry-james-great-ya-debate
Beha writes at the very end: "Putting down 'Harry Potter' for Henry James is not one of adulthood’s obligations, like flossing and mortgage payments; it’s one of its rewards, like autonomy and sex. It seems to me not embarrassing or shameful but just self-defeating and a little sad to forego such pleasures in favor of reading a book that might just as easily be enjoyed by a child."
The one thing I genuinely never understand about these silly debates is the idea that reading is some sort of zero-sum game. By Beha's terms, I am a person who doesn't exist in the universe: if I have read Harry Potter as an adult, then I cannot also be a person who has read Henry James for fun. Now, admittedly I haven't gone through his collected works like Beha has, and I'm still waiting for my brain to work well enough to be able to deal with later-Jamesian syntax (seriously, what was anyone even talking about in those first fifty pages of The Ambassadors that I read while studying for the generals?), but I liked "In the Cage" and "The Aspern Papers" and The Europeans, and I've got a copy of What Maisie Knew waiting for me (though it has been waiting for a couple of years; my book purchases are often more ambitious than the amount of free time I have, and James is not a quick read). But the fact that I sometimes - even often - read books with teenage protagonists and magic in them has not prevented me from also spending some of my reading time on other things. Strange, huh? It's almost like what someone is reading at the moment you see him or her doesn't actually tell you anything about that person except what he or she happens to be reading at that moment.
Then there's this bit:
the [YA] label is sometimes wielded to make a real literary distinction. It is obviously possible to give a subject a treatment that is more appropriate for a young audience. For the most part, this involves simplifying things-first the diction and syntax, but finally the whole picture of life. There is nothing dishonorable about this simplification-it is a way to make material accessible to children. Nor does it strike me as shameful for adults to spend a lot of time reading these simplified treatments. But it does strike me as strange. If someone told you that he was an American-history buff and that his favorite work of American history was “Johnny Tremain,” you might not think this a cause for embarrassment but you would probably suspect that he didn’t know as much about history as he thought he did, and you would wonder why his interest in the subject had not led him to adult treatments of it. In some sense, you might even think he was missing out, that the simplified treatments of history that we give to children are not just less true but less interesting because of their lack of complexity.
Well, no: actually I'd just wonder why this person doesn't understand the difference between fiction and nonfiction. But mostly, [citation needed]. Seriously, can you find me one of these YA books that so greatly simplifies life? Or are you just talking about a bunch of books you haven't in fact read? And let's say you do find a book that simplifies life - like The Goldfinch, apparently, which Beha mentions in his piece because of that review that said it was basically a YA novel or whatever - does that mean that it's simplified because it's for teens? The fact that The Goldfinch can be criticized as simplified means that books for adults can be simplified too. In fact, it looks to me like a simplified book is a sign of a bad book, not an inherent quality belonging to YA novels exclusively. In order to make this comparison work, both Beha and John Wood (the original reviewer) have to set up a syllogism that relies on an unproven assertion:
a) The Goldfinch presents a simplified view of the world.
b) Young adult novels present simplified views of the world.
c) Therefore, The Goldfinch is basically a YA novel.
But neither Wood nor Beha actually proves the second part of the syllogism - they just take it for granted, because YA novels are for teens, right? They're obviously simplified; how could they not be? I feel like this argument is being had more and more often because a small handful of YA novels have gotten splashy, successful big-screen treatments, so we're probably going to keep seeing it with more frequency, but I always find it curious that the argument always seems to be about whether or not it's okay to read these "lesser" forms of entertainment, without the suggestion that maybe a lot of really talented writers are working in YA because the genre (if you can even call it that, really) is more flexible and lets you get away with more than the traditional literary fiction genre?
There's sort of a companion piece on the Tor blog (or at least a companion to another NYT piece that seems to have inspired Beha's) about what this "lack of adulthood" looks like in the SF world (look at all these grownups collecting Pokemon!), but this line really stood out to me: "adults are seeing fewer and fewer compelling reasons why they should live out their lives consuming media only produced for adults" (emphasis in original).
(piece here: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/09/the-death-of-adulthood-in-american-culture-nerd-culture-edition )
That's what strikes me, most of all: if good, compelling stories are being told in YA fiction, by writers who care about their craft (I don't understand the assumption that YA writers don't, just because they don't write prose like Henry James. Newsflash: nobody writes prose like Henry James. And plenty of qualified, all-dues-paid-up adults really hate his prose), why should I not read those stories? What is an actual good reason that I shouldn't? And why do columnists seem so concerned about what other people are going to get a chance to read, anyway? Because if I actually want to make time to read the works of Henry James, all the YA fiction in the world won't stop me from doing it - and if I don't, then taking away all the YA fiction and giving me a house full of James isn't going to make a dent in my desire not to.
tl;dr. Basically, I am still waiting for one of these pieces to boil down to something other than, "But whyyyyyy are you guys having so much fuuuuuuuuuuun?" or "But whyyyyyyy aren't you guys more like meeeeeee?" Christopher Beha, I'm happy that you seem to have found so much fun reading all of Henry James, but that is not actually a mark of adulthood. That just means you like Henry James.
- Yesterday, one of my students remarked after class that although she could see that Hemingway was really good at what he was doing, and there was a lot to uncover about his writing, she still hadn't found a way to like him. I have not yet found a way to like Hemingway, either, but I think I would have said the same thing to her even if I had: that it's okay not to like things, because if we didn't like some things and dislike others, we wouldn't have taste. And that as long as she was taking the material seriously and not just dismissing it without thinking about it, then she was doing all I could ask from her as a student. I think this made her feel better, although perhaps she really wanted an actual way to like Hemingway instead.
- Maybe it's because I'm suffering from stuffy cold-brain right now, but I can't seem to make sense of this piece in the New Yorker by Christopher Beha about reading Henry James and (not) reading YA:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/henry-james-great-ya-debate
Beha writes at the very end: "Putting down 'Harry Potter' for Henry James is not one of adulthood’s obligations, like flossing and mortgage payments; it’s one of its rewards, like autonomy and sex. It seems to me not embarrassing or shameful but just self-defeating and a little sad to forego such pleasures in favor of reading a book that might just as easily be enjoyed by a child."
The one thing I genuinely never understand about these silly debates is the idea that reading is some sort of zero-sum game. By Beha's terms, I am a person who doesn't exist in the universe: if I have read Harry Potter as an adult, then I cannot also be a person who has read Henry James for fun. Now, admittedly I haven't gone through his collected works like Beha has, and I'm still waiting for my brain to work well enough to be able to deal with later-Jamesian syntax (seriously, what was anyone even talking about in those first fifty pages of The Ambassadors that I read while studying for the generals?), but I liked "In the Cage" and "The Aspern Papers" and The Europeans, and I've got a copy of What Maisie Knew waiting for me (though it has been waiting for a couple of years; my book purchases are often more ambitious than the amount of free time I have, and James is not a quick read). But the fact that I sometimes - even often - read books with teenage protagonists and magic in them has not prevented me from also spending some of my reading time on other things. Strange, huh? It's almost like what someone is reading at the moment you see him or her doesn't actually tell you anything about that person except what he or she happens to be reading at that moment.
Then there's this bit:
the [YA] label is sometimes wielded to make a real literary distinction. It is obviously possible to give a subject a treatment that is more appropriate for a young audience. For the most part, this involves simplifying things-first the diction and syntax, but finally the whole picture of life. There is nothing dishonorable about this simplification-it is a way to make material accessible to children. Nor does it strike me as shameful for adults to spend a lot of time reading these simplified treatments. But it does strike me as strange. If someone told you that he was an American-history buff and that his favorite work of American history was “Johnny Tremain,” you might not think this a cause for embarrassment but you would probably suspect that he didn’t know as much about history as he thought he did, and you would wonder why his interest in the subject had not led him to adult treatments of it. In some sense, you might even think he was missing out, that the simplified treatments of history that we give to children are not just less true but less interesting because of their lack of complexity.
Well, no: actually I'd just wonder why this person doesn't understand the difference between fiction and nonfiction. But mostly, [citation needed]. Seriously, can you find me one of these YA books that so greatly simplifies life? Or are you just talking about a bunch of books you haven't in fact read? And let's say you do find a book that simplifies life - like The Goldfinch, apparently, which Beha mentions in his piece because of that review that said it was basically a YA novel or whatever - does that mean that it's simplified because it's for teens? The fact that The Goldfinch can be criticized as simplified means that books for adults can be simplified too. In fact, it looks to me like a simplified book is a sign of a bad book, not an inherent quality belonging to YA novels exclusively. In order to make this comparison work, both Beha and John Wood (the original reviewer) have to set up a syllogism that relies on an unproven assertion:
a) The Goldfinch presents a simplified view of the world.
b) Young adult novels present simplified views of the world.
c) Therefore, The Goldfinch is basically a YA novel.
But neither Wood nor Beha actually proves the second part of the syllogism - they just take it for granted, because YA novels are for teens, right? They're obviously simplified; how could they not be? I feel like this argument is being had more and more often because a small handful of YA novels have gotten splashy, successful big-screen treatments, so we're probably going to keep seeing it with more frequency, but I always find it curious that the argument always seems to be about whether or not it's okay to read these "lesser" forms of entertainment, without the suggestion that maybe a lot of really talented writers are working in YA because the genre (if you can even call it that, really) is more flexible and lets you get away with more than the traditional literary fiction genre?
There's sort of a companion piece on the Tor blog (or at least a companion to another NYT piece that seems to have inspired Beha's) about what this "lack of adulthood" looks like in the SF world (look at all these grownups collecting Pokemon!), but this line really stood out to me: "adults are seeing fewer and fewer compelling reasons why they should live out their lives consuming media only produced for adults" (emphasis in original).
(piece here: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/09/the-death-of-adulthood-in-american-culture-nerd-culture-edition )
That's what strikes me, most of all: if good, compelling stories are being told in YA fiction, by writers who care about their craft (I don't understand the assumption that YA writers don't, just because they don't write prose like Henry James. Newsflash: nobody writes prose like Henry James. And plenty of qualified, all-dues-paid-up adults really hate his prose), why should I not read those stories? What is an actual good reason that I shouldn't? And why do columnists seem so concerned about what other people are going to get a chance to read, anyway? Because if I actually want to make time to read the works of Henry James, all the YA fiction in the world won't stop me from doing it - and if I don't, then taking away all the YA fiction and giving me a house full of James isn't going to make a dent in my desire not to.
tl;dr. Basically, I am still waiting for one of these pieces to boil down to something other than, "But whyyyyyy are you guys having so much fuuuuuuuuuuun?" or "But whyyyyyyy aren't you guys more like meeeeeee?" Christopher Beha, I'm happy that you seem to have found so much fun reading all of Henry James, but that is not actually a mark of adulthood. That just means you like Henry James.