Ginger at GReads started a new weekly meme called TGIF at GReads. I love memes that are more interactive, so I decided to participate as often as I can.
This week’s question is:
YA Saves: How do you feel about the "dark" books filling the YA shelves today?
My answer:
Oh, my. After the WSJ published an article about how “dark” current YA novels are, the interwebz lit up. The author goes so far as to condemn current YA books as “depraved.” In addition to her views, I found her tone offensive. I don’t expect to be talked down to while reading a newspaper, especially one as noteworthy as WSJ. I am half wondering if the author didn’t write her article with the intention of stirring the pot, and getting more notoriety from this piece.
“How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.”
I like the trend toward “dark" social issues, because these books make me think. What would I do in this situation? What would I do if my friend was in this situation? How could I help them, or how could I help myself? Reading should engage the mind, and stories that elicit an emotional response are all the more cherished by me. Nobody’s life is perfect, and bad things happen to good people. Kids wander off down the wrong path, even when they have wonderful parents. What about the kids with not so great parents? Where do they find comfort from the challenges that they are facing? Sometimes people don’t have a trusted person they can discuss their problems with; books can offer an outlet, and assure them that they aren’t alone.
I have so many responses to this article, but I’ll keep it down to just a few points. Dystopian books are one of my favorite genres currently. They offer a wonderful escape from my everyday problems. Dystopian stories are suspenseful, and they offer a hopeful message. It doesn’t matter how awful things get for the protagonists – they refuse to give up, and they use their cleverness help them survive. They take charge of themselves, because waiting for someone else to save them would result in their death. Failure isn’t an option, so they don’t waste time even considering that possibility. They are the glass is half full kind of people. There is a solution to every problem, and they will find it. Why is that a bad message?
Exploring contemporary issues in YA literature should give the topics a platform for discussion. Go to CNN.com any day of the week, and you will read news articles that will turn your hair white. This stuff is really happening, in real life, to real people. Discuss it, people! Talk to your kids about it if you are a parent. Don’t ignore it! Become engaged in your child’s reading! My mom was – if I read something troubling, I talked to her about it. We didn’t (and still don’t) agree on solutions, but at least we talked about it. Minds are like sponges- in order to grow, they need to be filled up. Don’t deny young minds nourishment just because you feel uncomfortable with some of the problems facing your kids today.
What do you think about the article? And the current state of the YA market?
I am usually delighted to find graphic interpretations of my favorite literary works. This spooky adaptation of Franz Kafka’s most famous work, Metamorphosis, delighted me:
And I was amazed by Zak Smith’s painting-per-page reaction to Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.
The graphic novelization of major literary works is not without its detractors. I was very surprised to read an article in Slate slamming the recent adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s epic Fahrenheit-451, in which Sarah Boxer argues that presenting the book as a comic is insulting and ironic. I agree with her complaint that much of the language that makes the story great is lost when condensed into this form. Yet I wonder, would she have the same complaint were it made into a movie? She seems to ignore the ability of the comic genre to depict and illustrate ideas by juxtaposing words with images.Nevertheless, the genre of the graphic novel is growing fast. Publishers recognize it. Prize committees recognize it. The use of comic books in the classroom is becoming increasingly popular. Art Spiegelman’s Maus won the Pulitzer Prize Special Award (the Board found the book difficult to classify). In 2006, the National Book Award went to Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese. The Best American series puts out a yearly comics compilation, and comics are also included in the Best American Non-Required Reading, which is a compilation aimed at young readers. Nearly every U.S. bookstore has a section for comics and manga.
Now educators are starting to recognize it too. Programs like
2 Comments on Graphic Novels in the Classroom, last added: 11/4/2010
by Jim
Less than a week to go until Halloween, the best holiday of all time. Keep your fireworks, July 4th. I don’t need your candy canes, Christmas. I just want some candy corn, a scary movie, and the chance to see people wear crazy costumes and wander around.
I love a good scare. Admittedly, I go from zero to terrified pretty quickly and have been known to sleep with the lights on for days at a time when something really gets to me. But that’s never stopped me from going back for more.
I’ve said before (and maintain) that I’m looking for great horror novels. They’re not easy to find for a few reasons. There are no cheap scares in books—you can’t have a “gotcha” moment. So the suspense needs to be built, the discomfort seeded, and the terrifying aspects need to develop fully enough to stay with you as you turn each page.
As many folks know,
House of Leaves is one of my favorite books. As the narrator begins to come apart, the narrative itself does as well. The author removes the safety net, and you realize that anything could happen. I still remember the act of reading one passage—how scared I was, and how hard it was to shake the feeling of being watched that the book implanted.
I’m also a big Shirley Jackson fan. Whether it’s the horror that people do in
The Lottery or how convincingly spooky
We Have Always Lived in the Castle is, she’s a master of unsettling.
Stephen King was pretty much my hero growing up. Looking back, some of his books don’t hold together as well as others. Let us never speak of
Gerald’s Game. But when he’s on, no one can come near him. He has such an exceptional eye for what people are afraid of, and he can zero in on the most disturbing of our feelings. Whether it’s the viral fallout of
The Stand, the killer clown of
It, or the psychopathic fan of
Misery, his great talent is in exploring (and exploiting) just what it is about these things that we find so terrifying.
What are your favorite scary books? And what’s the scariest?
By: Ruth,
on 10/13/2010
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TWO WRITING TEACHERS
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I have been in a lot of different writing workshops lately. Just this week I’ve been in 13 writing workshops and have met with 13 different teachers in either reflective practice meetings or planning meetings. Therefore, I have SO MUCH I want to record. Which leads me to my current dilemma: what do I not [...]
by Lauren
Oh,
Danielle Steel! First
Nicholas Sparks, now you. How can we help you make peace with romance novels? It
may be true that your novels are not romance, narrowly defined by some conventions of the genre. I'm not sure I agree, but I'll grant the premise isn’t completely without merit, not least because I’m not immune to the packaging efforts of publishers. Which is not to say your books are without their conventions—I hate to judge*, but formulaic is a word that comes to mind—but perhaps in some way those conventions are quite specific to you and your prolific output, possibly distinct enough to consider them in a separate category from other titles. However, I get the impression here, Ms. Steel, that you don't want people to think of you as an author of romance because it devalues your work, which it turns out is some kind of lofty thing about the human condition, and that
is a problem. (To be fair, you handle the issue with quite a bit more grace than Mr. Sparks.)
Romance novels can be totally fabulous. Not all of them are, sure, but that's true in any category including whatever category you’d each like to be in. More than that, though, if you think a different label will change how seriously people take you, you’re being a bit naive. You're both giant targets, especially you, Ms. Steel, with your shelves and shelves of bright and shiny spines branded more thoroughly than any other set of books in any store. When I worked at Barnes & Noble, you took up half a bookcase all by yourself, even without duplicate copies of anything. Trust me when I tell you that that’s a noticeable amount of gold foil and fuchsia. When people notice success, they deride it. That, my friend, is the human condition.
But you're also massively successful with more readers than you can count and dedicated fan bases who come back for more every time it's on offer. Let the haters hate, as they say, and take a look at your bank statement when you're feeling insecure about what people think of you. Not because money matters more than respect or makes up for all the world's ills, but because it proves that people keep buying your books in droves, so you're doing something right.
Oh, and, don't make us link this blog to the
Ducktales theme
again, because you know we will.
*I love to judge.
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By: Matthew Cheney,
on 7/13/2010
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Readercon 21 was, for me, exciting and stimulating, though this year in particular it felt like I only had a few minutes to talk with everybody I wanted to talk with. I think part of this is a result of my now living in New Hampshire rather than New Jersey, so I just don't see a lot of folks from the writing, publishing, and reading worlds much anymore.
Before I get into some thoughts on some panels and discussions, some pictures: Ellen Datlow's and Tempest Bradford's. Tempest asked everybody to make a sad face for her, not because Readercon was a sad con (just the opposite!), but because it's fun to have people make sad faces. The iconic picture from the weekend for me, though, is Ellen's photo of Liz Hand's back. I covet Liz's shirt.
And now for some only vaguely coherent thoughts on some of the panels...
I actually missed my own first panel, "Interstitial Then, Genre Now", with John Clute, Michael Dirda, Peter Dube, and Dora Goss, because the battery in my car died because of absent-mindedness on my part the night before. Luckily, I have a car battery charger, but charging took just long enough to make it so there was no physical way I could get to Burlington, MA in time for the panel. (Andrew Liptak wrote a recap for Tor.com.)
My Saturday panel, "The Secret History of The Secret History of Science Fiction", with Kathryn Cramer, Alexander Jablokov, John Kessel, Jacob Weisman, and Gary K. Wolfe went pretty well, I thought, though as so often happens, it felt like it was just getting going when it was time to end. The panel allowed John to talk about the motivations for the book, some of what he thought it accomplished, etc. -- a lot of what he said parallels what he and Jim Kelly told me when I interviewed them about the anthology. Gary Wolfe offered probably the best line of the panel: "An anthology is, inevitably, a collection of the wrong stories." (This, of course, from the critic's point of view!)
I'm not very good at inserting myself into conversations, so I did a lot of observing during the panel, piping up only to offer a sort of counter viewpoint from Gary's -- where Gary was in some ways agreeing with Paul Witcover's assertion that writers like T.C. Boyle are just using science fiction as "a trip to the playground". I was hoping we'd be able to discuss this idea a bit more, but time didn't allow it. Had it, I suppose I would have tried to say that to me the resentment of writers not routinely identified with the marketing category of "science fiction" or the community of fans, writers, and publishers that congregates under the SF umbrella -- the resentment of these writers for using the props, tropes, and moves of SF is unappealing to me for a few reasons. It's a clubhouse mentality, one that lets folks inside the clubhouse determine what the secret password is and if anybody standing outside has the right pronunciation of that password. It is, in other words, a purity test: are the intentions in your soul the right ones, the approved ones? Had we had time, I would have tried to make some sort of connection between this attitude toward non-SF writers with an attitude I've seen within the field from people toward writers of a younger generation who haven't read, for instance, e
Happy summer, everybody! For the next while, there are going to be some absences from the blog as we take vacations, but we'd hate to leave you guys hanging. It's no secret that we blog much more now than when we started this baby, and there are far more of you reading than there were way back when. So we thought we'd bring back some blog entries of days gone by that you may have missed if you just joined us in the last year. If you have any favorites you think your fellow readers might enjoy, give us a shout below!
by Jim
It didn’t surprise me when someone asked me recently what the differences are in how I handle the projects I love and the projects I work on for money. It did, however, irritate me. The question came loaded with the insinuation that there are two kinds of books—the ones people should read and the ones they actually do. Often, I find that literary and commercial fiction are pitted against each other, as though they’re totally different beasts that serve entirely separate purposes. But is that really the case?
Too often, category fiction is treated like the bastard stepchild of the written word. But, frankly, I’m a whole lot more likely to pick up Stephen King’s new book than dive into Thomas Pynchon’s latest doorstop. Which isn’t to dismiss literary fiction, either.
Years ago, I was getting a ride to a train station from an MFA student in Massachusetts, and we talked about the challenges of fiction writing and writer’s block, not to mention how competitive the marketplace is. And then he unleashed this on me: “I could knock out the sort of mystery novels that sell hundreds of thousands of copies, but I’m better than that.” If he weren’t behind the wheel of the car, I would have smacked him upside the head. I mean, really. Do you honestly think the only thing holding people back from becoming bestselling authors is…integrity?
As I patiently explained to him (who am I kidding? I sounded like a howler monkey in heat), it takes a lot of talent to write a fantastic mystery, just as it does to write an amazing literary novel. They just happen to be very, very different talents. Anyone who thinks that just because someone is a wonderful writer means they can pull off working in other genres clearly hasn’t read Michael Cunningham’s
Specimen Days. I recommend they keep it that way.
And let’s not get too far without mentioning that literary and commercial are not exact opposites. There are plenty of authors who mix the two forms freely. One can see this by reading the stunning, bleak mysteries of Dennis Lehane or the thrilling horror of Clive Barker. And is it just me, or is the award winning
Cold Mountain as much a retelling of
The Odyssey as it is a historical romance novel?
What I’m saying is, let’s let the snobbery go. Reading
Madame Bovary can be as entertaining as reading
Valley of the Dolls and vice versa, and there’s nothing wrong with that. To those people who consider genre fiction to be “guilty pleasures,” let it go. I grew up on a steady diet of Stephen King, Charles Dickens, Jackie Collins, and Victor Hugo, and I’ll happily debate the merits of Lucky Santangelo and Esmeralda any day. I’m the guy on the subway reading
The New Yorker and
Romantic Times.
The lines for me just aren’t that sharply drawn. So whether I’m pitching a new cozy mystery or a collection of interconnected stories previously published in literary journals, you can know one thing links them: I love both.
Originally posted in June 2007.
With one post, Larry Nolen simultaneously offers a thoughtful and well-informed response to folks who got all "wwaaaahhrrr! waaaahhhhrrr! genre good! waaahhhhrrrr!" about the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" promotional list (whereas I just offered snark) and he proves what we already knew -- that he was the perfect successor as Best American Fantasy series editor, because his perspective is exactly the one we wanted for the book when we created the series (and he's a much faster reader than I am, which will make the work perhaps a bit less arduous for him than it was for me). It's a post well worth reading -- one of the things being inundated with piles of lit mags does is show you the extraordinary variety of writing out there, both in terms of content and form.
Now if I can just get him to stop calling it "mimetic fiction", I'll have achieved all of my goals for world domination, bwahahahahahahahaaaa!
Update: The link for "20 Under 40" above goes to interviews with the 20. Here are some questions and responses:
Chris Adrian:
Who are your favorite writers over forty?
Ursula K. Le Guin and Marilynne Robinson, John Crowley and Padgett Powell.
What was the inspiration for the piece included in the “20 Under 40” series?
Kate Bernheimer asked me to contribute a piece to her new anthology of fairy tales, “My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me,” and I was excited to have a chance to revisit a story that disturbs me: Goethe’s “The Erlking.”
What are you working on now?
A story about a haunted house.
What was the inspiration for the piece included in the “20 Under 40” series?
[...]I wanted to try a sort of fantastical-historical story—Hitchcock meets the swamp.
What are you working on now?
New stories and a novel about a whacked-out imaginary town during the Dust Bowl drought.
Who are your favorite writers over forty?
Just a very few on a long list would be George Saunders, Kelly Link, Joy Williams, Ben Marcus, Jim Shepard, and whole cemeteries of the well-over-forty deceased ones.
I was recently asked the question " What are your favorite cross-genre stories?" by John DeNardo of SF signal. My answer, along with ones by much smarter people can be found here. Thanks for the opportunity John, Ive always loved this column.
by Stacey
I received so many great responses last week when
I posted about different genres that it made me want to answer some questions, and offer some thoughts that might be helpful to all of you aspiring authors out there as you think about your writing future. Many of the questions you have about pitching your book effectively, finding the right genre for your writing style, and creating a work that is commercially viable are the same ones that we have when we consider a new project. Will editors know where it fits, will booksellers know where to shelve it, and will it be able to stand out in an increasingly difficult and competitive marketplace? I wanted to ruminate a bit about this, and answer a couple of specific questions posted by readers, so here goes.
First, I wanted to talk a bit about nonfiction since my post only referred to fiction categories, and I personally handle a ton of nonfiction across many categories. My list has changed a bit over my eleven years at DGLM, beginning with a love of food and cookbooks and quirky, fun how-tos, and then moving into various practical areas of nonfiction, from health and fitness to sports (especially baseball) to crafting, and finally finding some nice success with narrative nonfiction. The key thing to consider for pitching nonfiction is who your reader is and how you will target that reader. If it's a craft book, a popular category over the last few years, and you have the right credentials and platform, you'll be able to illustrate where your readers are and how you will find them. Same goes for any other category of nonfiction. Identify your reader and then clearly go on to explain why you are the person most qualified to write the book, and to market and promote it. Seems simpler than it is, of course, but if you aren't able to clearly and concisely do this, then you should focus on building your credentials and platform until you are at a level where it's an easier pitch to make.
Moving on to fiction, there were a number of questions about what constitutes literary versus commercial fiction, so I wanted to share a couple of comments and then respond with a few thoughts.
Anonymous said...I would love to see somebody post about what "Literary Fiction" really means. It seems to me that when writers use it in queries to describe their work, they label themselves as amateurs. Is that true? Is it something that agents put on their lists because many writers think of themselves that way, though they may really be writing, say, commercial/upmarket or women's fiction?Empty Refrigerator said... Exact same question as Anonymous! How do you tell the difference between lit fiction and commerical/upmarket? And if this is subjective as it seems, what would you, as agents, suggest using as a default? Does "lit fiction" make an author seem like a snob?
To go into this a bit, I often ask myself the same questions and when a project presents itself that I can’t find the answers to, I know it meant it wasn't for me. We always talk about this being a subjective business, and it can't be reiterated enough that our rejecting a project in many cases is not so much a reflection of the quality of the project, but where it fits on our list, or whether we are able to see pitching it effectively to editors whose job it is to say no more than yes. To speak specifically to the question about literary fiction, I once got a great piece of advice from a very well-known and well-respected editor who has been around a long time. We were talking about lit
[Marquita Sandefur asks, What's your favorite genre? Are you a writer? Do you write in your favorite genre? If no, why not? If so, do you find it difficult to be original since it's your favorite genre?]
Reading: I really like to read fiction that has stood the test of time--this means a lot of classics that might fall in either the literary or commercial categories. I also like to read new books if I know the author, or if someone sends me a review copy (with my reading list, this is about the best I can manage). I try to read a nonfiction book every now and then--I find I'm never in the mood to pick one up, but then if I make myself, I enjoy it about five times more than most novels. I also read some fantasy--I used to read tons, then took a 15-year hiatus, and last year picked up where I left off. Yum epic fantasy.
Writing: Am I a writer? ...Yeah, inevitably. I mean, I think I probably wrote more than 100,000 words on this blog alone last year. I write other stuff, like book reviews and endlessly re-edited novels. Up until now, all my fiction writing has been pretty much straight literary fiction, much like what I mostly read. But as I've been reading more fantasy, I've been thinking a lot to myself, "You know what would make a great premise for a fantasy world? It they just took..." etc. So I might have to branch out.
Re: is writing in genre difficult? So here's the thing I've noticed lately--perhaps because I've been reading too much. It is very rare to find a theme, motif, plot element, or even sentence I haven't seen somewhere else before. This can be a little crippling--every time I have a good idea, I remember that I read a similar idea in [FILL IN A FAMOUS BOOK OF YOUR CHOICE HERE]. It makes me anxious about how much I may be borrowing, how original my ideas are, and whether I should pursue the project. Do other writers have the same problem?
But I think there's one thing writers can control, where they can force themselves to be original: language. It takes more work to think of a fresh way to say something, but it's also more fun that way. I love thinking of inventive ways to say things, even in places like my diary, where I know no one is ever going to read them.
What about you guys? Do you write in the same genre you read? Or not so much?
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By:
Keith Schoch ,
on 3/2/2010
Blog:
Teach with Picture Books
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Almost daily I receive an email asking for a list of books on a certain topic, or genre, or time period, or skill. Many readers of this blog first came here from Google seeking just that.
Fortunately there are some terrific sites out there that can provide teachers with basic lists of picture books, categorized in almost any way imaginable. The ten sites I've listed below will help you locate "the good stuff." Also be sure to take advantage of the expertise available through your local librarian or media center specialist.
Know of a site that should be here? Email me and let me know!
Dr. Sue LeBeau's Links to Picture Books
This nicely categorized collection of picture books provides a comfortable starting point for any teacher looking to incorporate picture books in a purposeful way. Sue has categorized them by Math, Science, Social Studies, etc. A site worth bookmarking.
Help Readers Love Reading
Here you'll find short and fun reviews of picture books. It's hard to keep up with all the new books out there, so a resource like this is your best bet. Blogger Brian Wilhorn reviews a single book every few days, and he seems to have some passion for it.
Reading Workshop
This site features a list of picture books that you can use to teach specific reading skills and strategies (foreshadowing,, predictions, setting, etc). For those looking for ideas for incorporation, and for those seeking specific titles, this site is an excellent resource.
Writing Fix: Picture Book Prompts
This site is packed with tons of resources, although for our immediate purposes I recommend the 60+ picture book inspired writing lessons (that's what I've linked to). You'll find some of your favorites here, along with complete lesson plans and ready-to-go printables for student use. All free! No registration or membership needed. Equally cool at this site, however, is the chapter book excerpts as mentor texts section, which enables you to use just a few pages, or a chapter at most, of a novel as a writing model.
Storyline Online
Famous celebrities read aloud from popular children's books! A fine and growing collection of favorite picture books.
Picture Book Database
A really terrific online tool that allows you to search picture book titles alphabetically by theme or topic.
Trade Book Matrices
Although it says at this site that these are book for adult learners, many of the titles in these downloadable Word docs are picture books. Books are grouped by topic (Westward Expansion, Civil Rights, Grandparents, Immigrants, etc.) and some teaching ideas are included for select topics.
Book Wizard from Scholastic
At this site, Scholastic provides a really valuable tool called BookALike. This allows you to enter a book title, find the exact grade-equivalent level of that book, and then browse books of similar reading difficulty and topic. What's even more useful is that you can use a "slider" to choose books of slightly greater or lesser difficulty. So if a student loved The Magic Tree House as a second grader two years ago, you can simply enter that title and then slide up two grades to locate appropriate titles for fourth grade.
Database of Award Winning Children's Literature
This database all
Richard Hughes's first and most famous book,
A High Wind in Jamaica
, is one of the strangest novels I've ever read, which is really saying something. It's both delightful and disturbing in the way it presents -- in an unfailingly light tone -- children as amoral aliens. The novel is rich with irony, and it's not a satire so much as a relentless attack on sentimental notions of childhood. The possible interpretations of the novel are likely endless, but in many ways the book itself is about interpretation -- about the futility of trying to interpret a child's experiences and thoughts through adult eyes. (It's also worth noting that the novel was first published in the U.S. under the title
The Innocent Voyage, which I'm rather more fond of than its better-known title. It was also once
illustrated by Lynd Ward.)
I was surprised this morning to discover an essay by British teacher Victoria de Rijke in a 1995
issue of
Children's Literature in Education,
"Reading the Child Invention", in which de Rijke explores the very concept of "children's literature" by having children read
A High Wind in Jamaica. The majority of the essay consists of transcripts of a conversations de Rijke had with an 11-year-old who read the novel, Ayeshea Zacharkiw. It's possible that Zacharkiw was extremely precocious, but de Rijke writes of many other children who read and appreciated the book, too. Toward the end of the discussion, she asks Zacharkiw if she thinks Hughes's novel is a book for children or for grown-ups, and Zacharkiw says she thinks it depends on reading ability, and a child's willingness to use a dictionary.
AZ: ...It’s an old book as well, so it’s got all these old expressions, but I think anyone could read it whether they’re children or grown-ups. Yeah. It might take the children longer than older people, but cut at two year olds, cos you have to be sensible about ages.
VdR: Right. I agree. And do you think there’s anything in it that adults now wouldn’t like children to read?
AZ: I don’t know why it’s been republished for adults. There are words in it I suppose, rude words (laughs) and piracy, but you can get horror books especially for children, but adults read them. Well, anyone can read any book. It’s just what level you are at reading, whether you like that particular type of book, and if you don’t like it, you can always put the book down.
VdR: Mmm, absolutely. You’re free to do that, aren’t you? It’s not in control of you! (laughs)
AZ: (laughs) No, course not. Once you’ve bought it. It doesn’t matter who you publish it for. Anyone can buy it and read it, or get it out of the library.
VdR: So what kind of particular type of book do you think this is?
AZ: Well, it’s about life. It’s about life on the schooner, and about children, as they’re the man characters, and about the difference between grown-ups and children, who’s in control.
De Rijke draws some interesting conclusions from this exchange:
Children’s observations are often valued by grown-ups for their blunt honesty and wisdom, for cutting through the adult flannel and exposing simple truths, most often because adults are already uncomfortable about hypocrisies which they are concealing. Ayeshea reminded me that there are a number of basic requirements for effective reading: a level of basic literacy, information retrieval and developmental skills ("cut at two year olds, cos you have to be sensible about ages"). What a terrifically blunt reminder of the low expectations teachers and adults have of reading potential! ... The act of reading cannot be controlled by publishers’ reading-age targeting, or price, given access to the library and a free choice of genre. In conversation, Ayeshea and I also emphasized, by the repetitive use we made of the word control the significance the book places on power relations, in terms of its subject. The term subject could be applied to both reader and plot.
It's a fine reminder not to underestimate readers.
For another view of the book, Francine Prose's
introduction (PDF) to the
NYRB edition is a good overview of some of its strange wonders and terrors. And I'm entirely in agreement with
Mr. Waggish: "The sheer oddness of this book really defies summary."
In place of summary or analysis, I'll leave you with a direct quote from the middle of
A High Wind in Jamaica:
In short, babies have minds which work in terms and categories of their own which cannot be translated into the terms and categories of the human mind.
It is true they look human -- but not so human, to be quite fair, as many monkeys.
Subconsciously, too, everyone recognizes they are animals -- why else do people always laugh when a baby does some action resembling the human, as they would at a Praying Mantis? If the baby was only a less-developed man, there would be nothing funny in it, surely.
Possibly a case might be made out that children are not human either: but I should not accept it. Agreed that their minds are not just more ignorant and stupider than ours, but differ in kind of thinking (are mad in fact): but one can, by an effort of will and imagination, think like a child at least in a partial degree -- and even if one's success is infinitesimal it invalidates the case: while one can no more think like a baby, in the smallest respect, than one can think like a bee.
How then can one begin to describe the inside of Laura, where the child-mind lived in the midst of the familiar relics of the baby-mind, like a Fascist in Rome?
I previously mentioned the "Best of the Millennium (So Far)" list at The Millions, and Andrew Seal posted some ruminations on why the results were what they were. In the comments to his post, there's some interesting discussion, well worth reading, but one paragraph of Seal's original remarks does not seem, so far, to have been discussed, and I think it's among the most interesting of his observations, so I'm posting it here to see if anybody wants to say anything. I haven't thought too much about it, so am not proposing agreement or disagreement, just that I think it's an interesting observation about how the value of fiction is constructed in the U.S. especially (since most of the panelists are U.S.-based):
The writer-heaviness [of the panelists] also, I think, accounts for why so many of the works included are of the hybrid variety—"literary fiction" that cleverly incorporate genre (SFF, thriller) elements—while there are so few (actually none) books which are actually categorized as genre fiction. Writers who practice this boundary-crossing (while keeping a strong "literary fiction" audience) are simply the most empowering models for aspirant writers: an ambitious young writer would be a fool not to like them. These hybrid books suggest the extent of a writer's powers (crossing or playing with genre boundaries is assumed to be a proof of the writer's talent and imagination) while also instructing on how to rein that power in before falling all the way into genre. "You can play with reality," these books say, "and if you do it like me, you can still be shelved in a respectable location in Barnes and Noble."
I don't have time or desire to expose all the errors and bad assumptions in Lev Grossman's essay "Good Novels Don't Have to be Hard", but thankfully I don't have to: Andrew Seal has already shown how wrong Grossman is about so much.
Grossman's essay reminds me of a lot of things I've read in science fiction fanzines and blogs over the years where people want to justify their taste and pleasures against armies of straw people marching through an alternate literary history. But I don't really feel any malice toward SF fans and amateur critics who are passionate about what they spend most of their time reading; that they don't have a nuanced understanding of Modernism is really not a big deal.
That a man who has a degree from Harvard in literature and did work toward a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Yale, has written for Lingua Franca, the Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Salon and the New York Times, and has been Time's book critic since 2002 -- that a man of those qualifications can write something this clueless, though, is impressive. After all, plenty of fanzine and blog writers produce better-informed and more thoughtful stuff.
A few quick points before I go...
- "Modernism" can be, and often is, used as a term to describe an era rather than a set of techniques primarily associated with an era -- an era and set of techniques fiercely debated just about from the moment they first appeared -- but pretending that "Modernism" is a settled term is likely to lead you toward the same sorts of problems you encounter by assuming that, for instance, "science fiction" is a settled term.
- Books are not popular or unpopular simply because of their accessibility. Consider Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury does, indeed, sell quite well these days. Before teachers realized how much fun it can be in classrooms, it didn't do nearly as well. The bestselling novel in 1929, the year Sound and the Fury was published, was All Quiet on the Western Front (an episodic novel that is not especially suspenseful, at least not in the way we generally talk of popular fiction being suspenseful). In 1931, Faulkner's "pot-boiler" Sanctuary sold well and helped raise the sales of his backlist, but still not in the way his Nobel Prize and academic canonization did. And then a few years ago Oprah helped.
- Which is just to say that confusing what makes a book popular with how a book is written is likely to lead to distorting simplifications and confusions.
- Also, confusing the popularity of a book within an academic context with its popularity within a general context is likely to lead to distorting simplifications and confusions.
- Also, confusing a book's reputation with its popularity is likely to lead to distoriting simplifications and confusions.
- There is no link between the ideas that A.) a group of writers Lev Grossman defines as Modernists wrote books that are hard to read, and Z.) "millions of readers" "need something they're not getting elsewhere". Look at the lists of 1920s and 1930s bestsellers. Most of the names have been forgotten, but of the ones people today might possibly recognize -- Zane Grey, Sinclair Lewis, Edna Ferber, Rafael Sabatini, John Galsworthy, Booth Tarkington, Edith Wharton, Thornton Wilder, J. B. Priestley, Pearl S. Buck, Willa Cather, James Hilton, Isak Dinesen, Franz Werfel, Margaret Mitchell, George Santayana, Rebecca West, Aldous Huxley, Kenneth Roberts, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, John Steinbeck -- hardly any of them are bestsellers with books that are "difficult" because of the reasons Lev Grossman identifies. (One notable exception is Virginia Woolf's The Years in 1937, though it's a more "accessible" novel than many of her others.)
- Here's an interesting analysis of bestseller lists that is relevant to this discussion.
- Lev Grossman sez: "The revolution is under way. The novel is getting entertaining again." This is a meaningless statement outside of a personal context. Its meaning is closer to, "I've recently enjoyed more of the novels that 1.) I have encountered, 2.) have been published within the last few years, and 3.) I identify as 'literary fiction'."
- Lev Grossman sez: "This is the future of fiction." Do not trust anyone who utters such a sentence. They are likely a charlatan, a mesmerist, or a dolt.
- Lev Grossman sez: "Old hierarchies of taste are collapsing. Genres are hybridizing." This is called The History of the Novel. Those two statements could have been made at any time during the last 300 years at least.
- Lev Grossman sez: "The balance of power is swinging from the writer back to the reader, and compromises with the public taste are being struck all over the place." When did writers have power, exactly? Writers do not have power (well, at least before they establish a proven track record of bestsellers). Publishers, editors, marketing executives, reviewers, teachers, booksellers, and readers have power. And what are these "compromises with public taste" of which you speak? Are people writing on walls with their feces or something?
- Lev Grossman sez: "Lyricism is on the wane, and suspense and humor and pacing are shedding their stigmas and taking their place as the core literary technologies of the 21st century." I'll agree that within this article, lyricism is on the wane.
- Lev Grossman often sez "the novel". This is even less useful than talking in general about "the internet". It can be done. But it's seldom enlightening.
- Lev Grossman sez: "In fact the true postmodern novel is here, hiding in plain sight. We just haven't noticed it because we're looking in the wrong aisle. We were trained—by the Modernists, who else—to expect a literary revolution to be a revolution of the avant-garde: typographically altered, grammatically shattered, rhetorically obscure." Whoa, man, you are, like, soooo 1960s!
- "Lev Grossman is the book critic at Time magazine and the author of 'The Magicians,' a novel." Lev Grossman seems to have mistaken the indefinite article a after The Magicians for the definite article the.
I don't have anything against Lev Grossman. I'm not his
Mortal Enemy. I didn't call him
"the Uwe Boll of the book reviewing world". I read
The Magicians and thought it was a fun idea not very well executed overall, but entertaining sometimes. If this were just one insipid article I wouldn't really care. But it works from assumptions and misperceptions that keep getting trotted out, and my tolerance for it all is low at this point.
A reader writes to Tin House:
I have read several issues of Tin House, including the most recent. Two vegetarians go on a hunting trip . . . enough said. I feel that I have several pieces that would fit the magazine, however, I am struggling with just one thing. This question is geared not only toward the magazine but the writing workshop as well. Do you accept genre fiction? I was also wondering how I might go about determining whether or not my piece fits into a specific genre and what general fiction is. Thank you in advance.
—Confused in LA
And
Tin House responds.
Now, I happen to like
Tin House very much. We've reprinted stories from the magazine in each volume of
Best American Fantasy. Their
"Fantastic Women" issue was awesome. Their
current anniversary issue is also awesome. Just about all of their issues are awesome.
But the response to Concerned in LA is not awesome. It's disappointing.
I spend too much time, perhaps, defending writers, editors, and publishers of "literary fiction" from being maligned by writers, editors, and publishers who would never utter the term "literary fiction" without a sneer. I do this because some of my best friends happily embrace the term "literary fiction" for themselves. I don't even mind being seen in public with such people, any more than I mind being seen in public with my friends who insist the only thing they write is "science fiction". I'm all about the kumbaya.
So please, literary fiction people, STOP MAKING MY LIFE SO DIFFICULT!
Let me try to address some of the things I dislike in the three paragraphs that most annoyed me in the response, one by one:
I think you know genre fiction when you read it. My personal definition goes something like this: fiction that almost purposefully avoids the literary, in hopes of keeping the reader (or the writer, for that matter) from having to “work” too hard. It also tends to employ some stock tricks, like ending very short chapters with cliffhangers, often hopping predictably from one POV to another. Characters tend to be one-dimensional, with the kind of awkward and false-sounding dialog you’d expect.
Maybe I'll mail
Tin House a copy of Peter Swirsky's useful book
From Lowbrow to Nobrow
, which counters some of the assumptions about certain forms that appear in "genre fiction" and are supposedly absent from "literary fiction". But I actually don't have a big problem with this paragraph on its own; it's a statement of personal taste, and there are certainly general differences that it is, generally, somewhat accurate in general about, sort of. How this paragraph moves on to the next bothers me more:
Genre writers know their audience, and it’s a large one: John Grisham sold 60,742,288 books during the 1990s. That’s certainly nothing to sneeze at, and I won’t do that here. But that audience, for reasons that sometimes seem obvious and sometimes are madly mysterious, is almost universally not interested in the same things we are.
We move from: Genre fiction is lazy, formulaic, predictable, one-dimensional, awkward, and false ... to: it's more popular than the Pope ... to: why is it so popular? huh. ... to: that's not what we're interested in.
What are they interested in? So glad you asked:
We’re interested in good stories. Contrary to what many people think, it’s not work to read them. A good story is a thing to savor, something you want to make copies of and pass around, something you might find yourself inexplicably wanting to read out loud. (Or not so inexplicably—good writers all have musicians living somewhere inside them, whether they know it or not, and have perfect pitch when it comes to the sounds of the words they use). If you read a lot of good stories, then you know what they are. If you don’t, then you should start, beginning with the summer reading titles on this blog. Sometimes it takes me days to parse out what made a good story so damned good, sometimes I never can.
Ah haaaaa! Genre fiction is not good stories! So all these writers who just want to write crap for the masses are not interested in good stories! And the fans who love cliffhangers and want good plots and hate stories about two vegetarians on a hunting trip -- they don't want good stories, either! These gazillions of people making those genre fiction lame-os rich don't savor what they read, don't pass it around, don't want to read it aloud. And why? Because they haven't read good stories and don't know what they are. (Oh, and though genre fiction makes sure you "don't 'work' too hard", "it's not work to read [litfic]". Apparently the economy has hit
Tin House hard, too, because ain't nobody working around there...)
The problem here is one I've blathered on at length about many times
before -- the problem of confusing descriptive and evaluative labels. (Come to think of it, in the package including
From Lowbrow to Nobrow, maybe I'll include a copy of
The Jewel-Hinged Jaw
...) There is simply no such thing as a universal "good story", and so using a term like "good stories" as a euphemism for "stuff I like" is not useful. Replace the term "good story" in the
Tin House post and much of it becomes less objectionable. Banal, but less objectionable. There are still contradictions and ignorances, but none of us could survive without contradictions and ignorances, so I'm not as upset about those.
I could go on. I don't have time or energy. (Ugh, that
James Wood quote later in the post! Who is this universal "the reader" and why should that person's narrow idea of what is worth falling in love with matter for anybody else? If I think a work of fiction has taught me how to read it, am I wrong if you think otherwise? Vice versa?)
Please -- friends, Romans, countrywomen -- send your best writing to
Tin House, regardless of whatever label happens to seem appropriate to it right now. It's a great magazine. The new issue even includes a poem by Stephen King. They publish all sorts of different stuff, and that eclecticism is part of what keeps me coming back to read it again and again. They publish what I think are often really good stories (and poems and essays and interviews and miscellanea...). But don't listen to what they say on their blog about "good stories". That's just crazytalk.
I’m plowing through the questions Katie asked, last week, methodically. Here are the two I’m going to answer today:
Which genres do you teach during the year?
Approximately how long do you spend in each genre and how many published pieces do you expect from them at the end of it?
Here’s a list of all of [...]
By:
Darcy Pattison,
on 2/5/2009
Blog:
Darcy Pattison's Revision Notes
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One main reason to attend a national conference is to meet editors, listen to how they describe their lists, and find out what they are looking for. Attendees are usually offered an opportunity to submit for a short period of time, even if the house policy is no unsolicited manuscripts.
Needs Books that Inspire this Response
If you have a book that makes others say, “You’ve got to read this book!”, then Jennifer Rees, Editor at Scholastic Press wants to see it. More than other editors, she comes at this enterprise as an enthusiastic reader who only wants to connect your story with many more readers. Smart, articulate and savvy describes her presentation.
Genre almost doesn’t matter to Rees, as long as the story is making a connection with the reader; for those stories, Rees wants to make an editorial connection with the author and help him/her grow.
She grew up on a Pittsburg farm, has an English degree, and worked for several years at an independent book store where she literally hand-sold books with the comment, “You’ve got to read this book!” Her five-year-old son finally realized that she helps make books and told her, “That’s cool! But not as cool as Batman!”
Scholastic’s Submission Policy: Agented submissions only.
Because she pays little attention to genre, instead, she provided this list of what she’s looking for:
- Distinctive voice
- Memorable, real, believable characters. She wants to know them inside and out.
- Something that aims to set its own trends. (She sees far too many Harry Potter and Twilight ripoffs.)
- Story that keeps her guessing — in a good way.
- Story out of the Box — surprise, storyline, blended genres, etc.
- Risky writing. Write the story that keeps you awake at night.
- Lyrical writing. Make it sing. NOT flowery, but something you can’t put down.
- Professional package. She suggests you workshop your cover and query letters, too.
- Writers who know the market.
- Manuscripts that are a good match for her and for Scholastic — no blind submissions.
- Satisfy your inner child and it will satisfy her inner child. Write a love letter to yourself as a child.
Tips from Jennifer Rees
- Query letters. These should read like flap copy or an elevator pitch. They should make her excited to read the entire manuscript.
- Stand alone v. series. Pitch a stand alone book, not a series. If the first does well, you can talk series.
- Hates email queries.
- Poetry should be disguised as a picture book.
- Rees defines “edgy” as “fiction with attitude.”
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(it is a fair bet that most of these stories have a bad guy and a good guy, and a crime and a gun)
Not to belabor the point… as I’m ready to move on. But a few people commented, and a few people emailed, and complained that they don’t feel “genre” is formulaic.
And while I essentially agree with them that my definition came across as simplified and overly negative, (because, basically, I’m a snob) I’m going to fight for my assertion of genre as formulaic. Of formula as the defining characteristic of what might be called “genre” writing.
As opposed to readership.
I think formula=genre works pretty well as a definition. But I want to explain a little what I mean by “formula”. I don’t really mean that no good writing is formulaic. I don’t mean that all genre writing is bad. Or that a formula means the writing can’t also be creative and new. I just mean that books from a like “genre” will share elements of plot, craft, set-up, resolution, etc. That’s what I mean by formula.
That books in a particular genre share some kind of lowest common denominator in their actual storyline. The Once and Future King and Pat the Bunny do not share an LCD I can think of.
There are romances that will be categorized as such, but also be shelved with “literary” books. Same for fantasy, detective fiction, etc. But some of the conventions are still there.
All romance novels are not the same, but you can pretty much bet that genre/romance will have someone who starts out alone and ends up with a lover. Or someone who starts out with the wrong lover, and finds true love. Most will also have some kissing, and the love will, at turns, appear to be thwarted. Do you know of a “genre” romance novel with NO romance?
All detective fiction is not the same, but most detective novels begin with a crime of some sort, an unsolved situation. And by book’s end, a clever (though complicated or flawed) character will have figured out the answer. Whether it’s an old pulp magazine, or The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, on some level, it makes use of a series of plot conventions. Readers have some idea of what they’re getting.
That’s all I really meant.
And think about this– the less a book is plot-driven, the less the formula will make the book identical to other books. I think when a book jumps from “genre” classifications into “literary” classifications, what is happening is that the author is leaving some of the plot/genre conventions intact, but focusing less on plot and more on other elements of craft.
I find myself thinking about fantasy, and that fantasy is perhaps, by definition, less of a genre. I recently read Merlin’s Dragon, and while I didn’t like it much, it’s NOT a book I’d call genre at all. It has, like, no human characters. It’s just about a little dragon creature looking for animals like himself. Weird.
If that’s fantasy, than I have no clue what the fantasy conventions are. Dragons? That’s dumb.
But I’ve read my share of mysteries, and my share of romances, and I’m sorry, y’all… they do, by and large, follow a recipe.
A grand time was had by all at Readercon this year, and it was a great thrill for me to get to see one of my oldest friends in the writing world, James Patrick Kelly, as guest of honor -- honored so well and appropriately.
The two panels I was on seemed to go well, though I arrived at the con only half an hour before I was on the "Triumphing Over Competence" panel and hadn't quite adjusted yet, so my contributions were few. Adam Golaski did a fine job of moderating, but it was a tough topic to focus in on in a way that would lead to real insights. Saturday's "The Career of James Patrick Kelly" panel felt much more successful to me, and one of its strengths was the diversity in the backgrounds of the panelists -- we had all discovered Jim's writings (and Jim himself) at different times and in different ways. Of course, afterward I thought of many things I should have said instead of what I did, in fact say, but I probably talked too much anyway, so it's good I didn't think of them. Mostly, they would have been elaborations on my (nascent) ideas about Jim as a regional writer, particularly with relationship to Burn, a story that nicely meshes two of the primary types of stories Jim writes: tales rooted in a sense of place (with that place often redolent of northern New England) and tales that are set way out in the universe. In some ways, the earlier novel Look Into the Sun brought the universe to New Hampshire, while Burn brings New Hampshire out into the universe.
I didn't attend too many panels, because after seeing a few, I began to get immensely frustrated with people who didn't know when to shut up. Panels are almost always unbalanced, since it's difficult for everybody to speak for equal amounts of time, but it wasn't unbalance that bothered me -- it was hijacking. In one case, it involved an insufferable moderator who thought the entire point of being moderator was to pose questions to himself.
The conversation between Jonathan Lethem and Gordon van Gelder, though, was well worth attending. The goal of the discussion was to explore the similarities and differences between the worlds of (for lack of better terms) genre fiction and literary fiction by using the two men's careers and experiences as lenses, since, as van Gelder pointed out, they began at similar spots and ended up at very different places, with Gordon starting out as a book editor and then becoming editor of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Lethem beginning with stories in Aboriginal SF and Asimov's and F&SF, then becoming, well, Jonathan Lethem. I didn't have a notebook with me, so didn't take notes (Scott Edelman did take a few), but what stuck with me were such moments as Gordon wondering if there are ways to talk about the differences between types of writing without feeling the need to valorize one type over the other and Lethem saying that what has changed in his writing as it has developed is not his interest in questioning and subverting core genre values, which has been there from the beginning, but rather his ability to let his fiction absorb a genre exoskeleton rather than wear it. The genre-as-exoskeleton image was one he played with for a bit, saying that his earlier work wore the exoskeleton and let the body underneath it be something else, while now he feels like he doesn't need to wear it anymore, that there is a more organic or internalized sense of the fantastic (or mysterious) in his work. He said people sometimes see him as moving away from genre fiction and Michael Chabon as moving toward it, while he doesn't feel that way at all -- he still feels like the influences on his work are the same, and the genre writers who interest him remain the ones who complexify and question the traditions they inherit -- he could not, he said, write a sword-and-sorcery novel, as Chabon recently did, and he noted that Chabon has long been a much bigger fanboy than he, Lethem, ever was -- Chabon wrote (unpublished) science fiction novels before he wrote Mysteries of Pittsburgh
, Lethem noted. What I liked about these distinctions was that they countered the simple narrative of moving toward or away from the SF field, and instead suggested that a writer's relationship to the texts and social environment of SF can be a complex one, and the results in the writer's work (and life) can be unpredictable.
One of the ideas that could have used a bit more time for exploration and explanation was the idea of the difference between the worlds of genre fiction and literary fiction being substantially one of class, with class anxiety explaining some of the tendency toward belittling different types of writing that Gordon brought up. Lethem also pointed out that people deeply committed to one type or writing rather than another often have tremendous misconceptions about the world of the other type of writing, and this idea, too, deserves a lot more exploration. I sometimes wish we could have the writing equivalent of a take-your-child-to-work day -- we could initiate Take a Litfic Writer to a Science Fiction Convention Day and Take a Science Fiction Writer to Bread Loaf Day (heck, Asimov went to Bread Loaf a couple times).
I refrained from buying too many books in the bookroom, though I did pick up JPK's new collection, The Wreck of the Godspeed
and David Schwartz's novella The Sun Inside.
Ultimately, and as always, the best thing about the con was getting to see folks I seldom see, or, in some cases, have only met via email before -- it was great finally to get to meet Christopher Rowe (whose reading from a novel-in-progress is among the best readings I've ever been to), John Kessel, and Brian Slattery, and to at least wave to all sorts of people who I wish lived within easy walking distance of my house. But if they did, I would not need to go to Readercon, and the joy of renewed acquaintances would be lost.
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I've only read one novel in verse and really enjoyed it. So now I'm excited to read yours.
There are some novels in verse that I adore, and some that...well, I don't dislike so much as feel ambivalent toward--like in any genre!
The only reason verse novels sometimes frustrate me is if their story and characters don't merit telling it in that style; it sometimes feels as if the author is cheating by attaching a gimmick to his/her book that it doesn't need. When the use is justified--and I love how your reviewer explained the obvious justification in your book!--then I am a firm fan, advocate...basically a won't-stop-talking-about-how-much-I-love-this-book person. :)
I have only read a few novels in verse and from those experiences it's not something I would pick up. I love the details in traditional novels that paint the picture. I want to know what the character looks like, sounds like and feel like I can play the book in my head like a movie. I have found that listening to a verse on audio works for me. For example I tried to read Crank, but it wasn't working for me so I listened to it on audio and loved it. I think if there is a verse novel that really draws my attention I would listen to it on audio.
These are really great comments, all.
Like Faith, I agree that just like any genre, there will be books that you like and books that you won't. Cari, I'm with you! I think the best way to experience poetry is to see, hear, and say it. As I used to tell my students, poetry is meant to be seen and heard. Listening to verse novels (or reading them aloud) is a great way to fully experience the story and the form.
Natalie, thank you. I'm excited for you to read it, too!
I've never read modern fiction in verse, but I find it interesting that nowadays it turns some readers off, when verse used to be the almost-exclusive format for storytelling. Since ancient times, when there was a story people wanted to remember, it was put in song, hence the phrase we still use: "unsung heroes." The idea of prose stories is only a few hundred years old, which sounds pretty old, but isn't in terms of human history. I'm interested to see how you handle modern expectations of description and dialog in what's really a very ancient tradition.
I've only read OUT OF THE DUST by Karen Hesse. Though I though it was wonderful, I haven't sought out any other novels in verse. But I'm excited for MAY B!
You already know I adore verse novels. Well, of course, not all verse novels (there was one I started and had to stop reading halfway through because it was driving me crazy), but some of my favorite books are verse novels, including MAY B. And I'm not just saying that for brownie points. :)
Happy Thanksgiving!
I've never read a verse novel, but, if there's a good reason for it, as it seems from that comment there might be, I'd certainly try one.