Tag: adult lit

The Latest YA/Adult Lit Debate

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It happens whenever there’s a YA/children’s book bestseller or movie adaptation: someone writes an article about whether or not YA/children’s books are worth reading if you’re over the age of 17. The New York Times features just such a discussion over at their Room for Debate.

YA Patricia McCormick holds down the fort for YA. She argues:

“…adults are discovering one of publishing’s best-kept secrets: that young adult authors are doing some of the most daring work out there. Authors who write for young adults are taking creative risks — with narrative structure, voice and social commentary — that you just don’t see as often in the more rarefied world of adult fiction.”

Obviously I very much agree. It’s a wonderful time for YA, when authors are allowed to push boundaries, and readers are enthusiastic about these risks. Teens already seek out innovation in technology, music, and other fields. Why should it surprise anyone that this happens for literature?

Columnist Joel Stein argues that adults should be embarrassed for enjoying anything that a young person might appreciate. But I find it hard to listen to an argument by anyone who claims that he can’t appreciate Pixar films–has he seen the heartbreaking depiction of love and married life in Up?–and hasn’t even read a YA novel. I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate or understand these novels, but I also think he wrote the article to be controversial and get hits. As such, I’m even more inclined to ignore him.

Lots of other articles included as well, most of them in favor of adults expanding their bookshelves with YA novels. In short: just as with adult literature, there is a lot of good and a lot of bad and a lot in the middle. But you shouldn’t cancel out a whole genre simply because you assume it’s beneath you.

(HT: Chronicles of a Mountain Librarian)

Storytelling and Reporting

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Gene Weingarten is one of my favorite feature writers ever. He knows how to craft a story and isn’t afraid to look at complicated characters. A couple of pieces he’s written are “The Peekaboo Paradox,” about children’s performer the Great Zucchini, and “Fatal Distraction,” about parents who accidentally leave their children behind in a car on a hot summer day. Both are heartbreaking and wonderfully written, and I highly recommend checking them out.

Writer’s Digest has an interview with Weingarten about the writing process. About storytelling and reporting:

One of the things I admire about your work is that you consistently prove that great writing begins with great reporting. Talk about the importance of reporting.
Well, let’s start with the maxim that the best writing is understated, meaning it’s not full of flourishes and semaphores and tap dancing and vocabulary dumps that get in the way of the story you are telling. Once you accept that, what are you left with? You are left with the story you are telling.

The story you are telling is only as good as the information in it: things you elicit, or things you observe, that make a narrative come alive; things that support your point not just through assertion, but through example; quotes that don’t just convey information, but also personality. That’s all reporting.

What distinguishes a well-told story from a poorly told one?
All of the above. Good reporting, though, requires a lot of thinking; I always counsel writers working on features to keep in mind that they are going to have to deliver a cinematic feel to their anecdotes. When you are interviewing someone, don’t just write down what he says. Ask yourself: Does this guy remind you of someone? What does the room feel like? Notice smells, voice inflection, neighborhoods you pass through. Be a cinematographer.

Very much like Weingarten’s focus on the story itself, not extraneous flourishes, and creating a cinematic feel in a piece. Even though this is about nonfiction, I think both of these tips are extremely useful to fiction writers as well.

Urban Legends, Loss, and Facebook

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Last weekend, Walt and I went to see Company One’s production of Hookman by Lauren Yee. The synopsis, from Company One’s page:

“Being a freshman in college is hard when your roommate is weird, home is far away, and Hookman is everywhere! What’s Lexi to do when her old high school friend, Jess, gets killed…I mean – has an accident, a car accident, I think? Not even Facebook stalking the dead can calm the creepy feelings spilling out of the shadows in this existential comic horror slasher – a new play by Lauren Yee.”

I never watch scary movies, so I wasn’t sure how I’d like this play. It ended up being fantastic–a nice blend of comic and horror, matched with moving themes of loss, guilt, and growing up. The cast did a great job, especially since most of the dialogue was very grounded in the experience of being eighteen and just starting college. My favorite exchanges came from Lexi and Jess; they really felt like they were old friends who were trying to maneuver the fact that they were now in college on different coasts. Although this wasn’t a play for young adults, it managed to hit an almost YA vibe–it played with genre, wasn’t afraid to be funny, and focused on growing up. (Or maybe I can just connect anything with YA.) If you’re in the Boston area and are an adult/very mature teen, I’d check out Hookman.

Part of the play also dealt with how we find out about death via networks like Facebook. Like other life events, you can find out personal information about people even if you haven’t seen them for years. And if someone dies suddenly, you might find out that they’re gone (via lots of “we miss you, so sad you’re gone, etc.” wall posts) but find no information about what actually happened to that person. I think this is going to become increasing more common, especially for young people who don’t tend to experience the loss of friends very often.

At the Atlantic, there’s an interview with Patrick Stokes about death and Facebook. One part I found interesting was this mention of Facebook walls becoming online memorials:

“What’s interesting about it is that offline we physically create places, specially demarcated places, where we put dead people, but on Facebook these aren’t demarcated—they exist side by side with living profiles. So in that sense, what we have now is not so much like an online graveyard or cemetery; instead we just have these dead people among us.”

This reminded me of Hookman’s look at what it means to survive someone and how we connect. I’m curious to see how teens now and in future generations will deal with having these kinds of memorials among us. It can be a huge help in the grieving process, but I wonder if it would also make it harder to let that person go. Whenever you go online, there’s a reminder that you’ve lost someone. And not necessarily someone you were very close with, either. Are teens going to grow up in a world of virtual ghosts?

Friday Fifteen

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We made it to Friday! Time for a Friday Fifteen, in which I review fifteen books in fifteen words or less.

1. How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
A favorite collection of short stories. Sharp and evocative, potential for YA crossover.

2. Fodor’s In Focus Barbados & St. Lucia, 2nd Edition by Fodor’s
Picked this up before going to St. Lucia. Moderately helpful.

3. Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen
Nice balance of sweet and serious, with charmingly beach-y setting.

4. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
A dynamic novel and a cool look at the history of comics, but the Pulitzer?

5. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
A must for writers of any level, with lots of humor and tenderness.

6. Miss Manners’ Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding by Judith Martin
Didn’t agree with everything, but made me feel more sane about my own wedding.

7. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
Still want to read this every time I have a day that cannot go right.

8. Walking to Martha’s Vineyard by Franz Wright
A gorgeous collection of poetry. “The Only Animal” is a favorite.

9. The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy (The Penderwicks #1) by Jeanne Birdsall
Sweet and cozy family story set in Massachusetts. I would have been obsessed with this at nine.

10. Antigone (The Theban Plays #3) by Sophocles
My English teacher had to explain Oedipus to us. First use of fuck in class.

11. Hip Hop Til You Drop (Full House Stephanie) by Devra Newberger Speregen
When you can’t take dance, you read about it in a bad television spin-off book.

12. Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Lively fairy tale-esque adventure with a fallen star. Not as deep as other Gaiman books.

13. The Gardner Museum Cafe Cookbook by Lois McKitchen Conroy
Haven’t tried anything yet, but it’s a fun look at culinary history.

14. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
One of my very favorites. Thoughtful and touching, with New York fifties chill.

15. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Beautifully written saga of love, plus old people hooking up.

The Literary Secretary

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It’s no secret that writers need day jobs. Nowadays, a lot of writers try to break into academia or publishing. Another option: the secretarial position. At NPR, All Things Considered looks at the literary secretary with Lynn Peril, author of Swimming in the Steno Pool: A Retro Guide to Making It in the Office.

Maybe Mad Men will reveal that Don’s secretary/wife Megan is actually a novelist and I’ll like her more. (Probably not though.)

(image: Adolph B. Rice Studio, via the Library of Virginia)

The Truth is Complicated

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By now you’ve probably heard about This American Life retracting Mike Daisey’s story about the Apple factory in China. As with previous, similar cases of articles/memoirs being found less than accurate, it’s brought up a lot of questions about what it means to be honest as a journalist and as a storyteller. One argument I particularly liked comes from John Warner at Inside Higher Ed. Warner talks about how we all lie/fabricate details to some extent, but lying doesn’t always make for a more compelling story:

“The thing is, that these lies, these distortions, these fabrications, these untruths don’t make for a better story. They make for an easier one, a story with fewer thorns to swallow on the way down, a less complicated story….Maybe I’m just suspicious of these “better” stories because to me, the best stories are the most complicated ones, the ones that refuse to resolve in easy ways. Those are the stories that are most true because resolution is something that always remains just beyond our grasp.”

I love this focus on truthfulness as a necessary part of storytelling and life. If, as writers, we endeavor to connect with readers on a basic, human level, shouldn’t part of that connection be based on how complicated normal life can be? Sometimes there is no villain. Sometimes the hero has other motivations. Sometimes the resolution isn’t so satisfying. But that’s all part of the real human existence. I’d rather get the full, complicated picture than be condescended to as a reader.

Even though Warner’s article mostly talks about journalism and nonfiction books, it’s a good idea to keep in mind for fiction writers, too. While we get to make stuff up (flying ponies do exist!), we also need to remember that being alive is complicated. Existing in the world means that you may encounter people who don’t always conform to your ideas about who they should be, or you may struggle with your own feelings about a particular event. These complicated interactions need to be a part of fiction just as much as they need to be a part of nonfiction.

Make sure to read the rest of the article as well. Do you think truth plays an important role in fiction?

The Crossover Question

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With books like The Hunger Games dominating the bestseller lists and The Fault in Our Stars being reviewed by Slate and the New York Times, there’s no question about how popular children’s and young adult literature has become for readers of all ages.

At the Globe and Mail, Jeet Heer has an interesting post about why these reading groups seem to be merging. He looks at Victorian literature, which bridged that age gap as well, and finds a focus on reading as a family activity:

“What accounts for the curious populist reading culture of the Victorians, which assumed that kids could read Moby-Dick and adults could enjoy Little Women? Partly, there was the enduring power of the family. This was an era when many people read together under the roof of domesticity, complete with recitals and theatrical performances based on books. Given that families shared novels, books were assumed to have a multigenerational audience.

But beyond the role of family life, which we see echoed in President Obama reading with his daughters, there was the unstated but widely held idea that reading is a democratic act, open to anyone who applies effort. Every child aspires to learn more, so she can push herself through difficult texts. Conversely, every adult was once a child and can, through reading, recapture some of the wonder and purity of earlier life.”

I find this as a very interesting connection, and one I very much hope to be true. I liked being able to share books with my parents when I was young. Once, on vacation, my mom and I swapped our beach books–she read The Outsiders and I read Sophie’s World. It was great to be able to have conversations about both books that we ended up really enjoying.

I would add that this crossover of adult and children’s lit also comes from there being a greater acceptance of content in children’s books. It’s not all just Sweet Valley High or The Hardy Boys anymore. Children’s and YA writers are allowed to take greater writerly risks now. (Just pick up The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing if you want proof of what YA writing can be. Stunning.) Boundaries are being pushed, and adult readers are increasingly realizing that there are some arresting, engaging stories over at the YA section.

Also, I think YA and children’s writers manage to balance pushing boundaries with telling a compelling story. Young readers don’t necessarily want to see literary gimmicks. They want a compelling story with compelling characters. As a result, writers can play with genre but still need to have a grounding in the literary basics, which all readers can appreciate.