From the DUH files

[barbarienne]

The New York Times, late as usual to spot the trends that begin among geeks, has an article about grown ups reading kids' booksAt least the article in general comes down in favor of the situation. "The themes are serious and the discussions intense, but the books are fast-paced and fun

Comments

[kouaidou]

You know, I really wonder if this is a new trend, or if it's just the latest iteration of the classic pattern, "today's low art is tomorrow's masterpiece."

Japanese ukiyo-e is today considered the highest and most Japanese of all art forms, but at the time it was considered trash, produced by merchants as advertisements for stores. The Tale of Genji was initially "low-class" writing, because it was written by a woman, in a Japanese style. Nothing but a diversion for the masses; not like the "high art" that was poetry written in the Chinese style.

(I speak mostly within the Japanese milieu because it's the one I've studied, but common wisdom is also that the likes of Shakespeare, Melville, and Twain faced similar dilemmas before posterity declared their work a masterpiece.)

So I just wonder if there is always a yearning in the masses for something more creative and fun than what's being served up by the "high art" they're supposed to be consuming.

[barbarienne]

I'm sure this is merely the latest iteration of something that has gone on since humans first discovered how to make fire.

Thag: Tell story of hunt!

Gog: No! Tell story of skinning animal!

Thag: Skinning mammoth boring. Want story of hunt!

Gog: Story of hunt always same. Follow, sneak up, throw spear. Boring! Skinning animal different for every animal.

Thag: You stupid!

Gog: No, you stupid!

[kouaidou]

"Cave paintings only high art when they so deep inside cave no one want to go read them."

[dorianegray]

#2 is hardly new. When it was first published, "Anne of Green Gables" was an adult novel. By the late 1920s/early 1930s, it was being considered kitlit.

One thing I find interesting is Diana Wynne Jones' comment on the difference between writing fiction for adults and for children: she says adults need to have stuff spelled out for them, but children are used to trying to figure stuff (the world) out. For this reason, she prefers writing for children.

[msagara]

I'd like to add a 3. from the bookstore:

A handful of readers have said (to me) that they now read YA because it's not all sex. I'm not kidding. They don't mind sex in the context of plot, because YAs certainly have that--but they want more plot than sex.

[barbarienne]

A perfectly reasonable approach. OTOH, is this because any book that isn't blatantly a hard-R rating is shoved into YA because that's the hot category? Is the grown-up section so full of sex because that's all that's left?

[scbutler]

Does that mean reading is no longer "fun-damental"?

[barbarienne]

No, it's funDUHmental!