To win an advance copy of The Story of Owen by E.K. Johnston plus any other Carolrhoda Lab title of your choosing, please do the following:

1. Follow @ek_johnston on Twitter.

2. Comment below or tweet about a book where everyone’s conveniently forgotten the important role played by dragons: “Nobody remembers the dragons in [name of book] because [pithy reason]. #heretherebedragons”

For example: “Nobody remembers the dragons in Dune because everybody wants to be a Freeman riding a sandworm not a Harkonnen on a dragon. #heretherebedragons.”

If you’re confused, go here. It might help.

We’ll pick our favorites on Monday morning.

It gives me great hope to know that while too many adults are clutching their pearls and worrying about the hypothetical innocence of hypothetical and painfully simplistic children, actual kids are doing complicated and  interesting things like this.

I don’t publish books for teenagers, but I’m honored when they read the books I publish.

(Hat tip to Steve Brezenoff for the video.)

Once upon a time, people who challenged books actually had to read. More than half a century ago, in order to be offended by Leopold Bloom sitting on his privy, one first had to read the fifth chapter of Ulysses, which (spoiler alert) does not feature a sentence remotely like “Leopold Bloom took a shit” though it does feature several paragraphs a thousand times more evocative of Leopold Bloom taking a shit. And if you got to the part with sex and managed to be offended, you were philistine but an unquestionably literate one.

No more.  

Now academics count swear words and calculate rates of profanity per hour. Now the metaphoric triumph of hope over  cruelty is deemed obscene because of words utterly divorced from their syntax to say nothing of their context. This is a worldview that does not acknowledge the existence of sentences, much less of thoughts. This is a worldview that sees isolated words as volatile pseudo-magical catalysts for reptile-brain behavior.

This is the post-literate world of book challengers (a world that’s too geographically close to my own for comfort), and that shit can go straight to fucking hell.

One of the things that makes YA fiction so intensely interesting to me is the problem of memory. Something about adolescence is uniquely illusive and distorting to our powers of recall. Overcoming that distortion and slipperiness is, I think, one of the  most daunting challenges of any fiction about teenage experience that’s even remotely autobiographical.

I find this story from the most recent This American Life to be a perfect example of the phenomenon. Often, the stories we tell in adulthood about what was meaningful in adolescence are a wishful line of best fit between childhood and adulthood. Young- adult fiction, it seems to me, should concern itself with the present-moment scatter of data points rather than the hindsight trend line.

One of the things that makes YA fiction so intensely interesting to me is the problem of memory. Something about adolescence is uniquely illusive and distorting to our powers of recall. Overcoming that distortion and slipperiness is, I think, one of the  most daunting challenges of any fiction about teenage experience that’s even remotely autobiographical.

I find this story from the most recent This American Life to be a perfect example of the phenomenon. Often, the stories we tell in adulthood about what was meaningful in adolescence are a wishful line of best fit between childhood and adulthood. Young- adult fiction, it seems to me, should concern itself with the present-moment scatter of data points rather than the hindsight trend line.

I have nothing to add to the chorus of scorn, contempt, and slight regard that’s risen up against a notorious bit of parental concern-trolling. Many authors, publishing pros, and librarians of my acquaintance have been eloquent and amusing on the subject already.

There is one sentence in the post, though, that sticks with me (stuck with Ms. Hall too, I guess. The italics are her own) as an echo of something bigger and older:

“[M]en of integrity don’t linger over pictures of scantily clad high-school girls.”

This is a real thing, this moral logic. It’s a real old thing too, of course. And, more often than not, it asserts itself in adolescence. Here, let James Joyce write you a portrait:

As he crossed the square, walking homeward, the light laughter of a girl reached his burning ear. The frail gay sound smote his heart more strongly than a trumpet blast, and, not daring to lift his eyes, he turned aside and gazed, as he walked, into the shadow of the tangled shrubs. Shame rose from his smitten heart and flooded his whole being. The image of Emma appeared before him, and under her eyes the flood of shame rushed forth anew from his heart. If she knew to what his mind had subjected her or how his brute-like lust had torn and trampled upon her innocence! Was that boyish love? Was that chivalry? Was that poetry? The sordid details of his orgies stank under his very nostrils.

If there is a silver lining to the nonsensical and damaging moral logic of Hall’s post, you may find it in the perfection of Joyce’s portrait of young Stephen Dedalus (it only took a girl’s laugh to lay waste to his integrity).

So, what’s the “Dear writers” in all this (because the open letter is now the official medium of those who have concerns)? If I may borrow a phrase from Ms. Hall’s moral universe: “Hate the sin, but don’t forget to love—that is, to write about in a curious and clear-eyed way—the sinner.” Let Jezebel and Twitter continue to tear the post to shreds in the court of public opinion. Meanwhile, please, for the love of YA literature, make sure you’re pillaging every single thing you can from this superb evidence of an evolutionary step in the teenage condition. Don’t let scorn be the last word. This blog post is a gift.  

I have nothing to add to the chorus of scorn, contempt, and slight regard that’s risen up against a notorious bit of parental concern-trolling. Many authors, publishing pros, and librarians of my acquaintance have been eloquent and amusing on the subject already.

There is one sentence in the post, though, that sticks with me (stuck with Ms. Hall too, I guess. The italics are her own) as an echo of something bigger and older:

“[M]en of integrity don’t linger over pictures of scantily clad high-school girls.”

This is a real thing, this moral logic. It’s a real old thing too, of course. And, more often than not, it asserts itself in adolescence. Here, let James Joyce write you a portrait:

As he crossed the square, walking homeward, the light laughter of a girl reached his burning ear. The frail gay sound smote his heart more strongly than a trumpet blast, and, not daring to lift his eyes, he turned aside and gazed, as he walked, into the shadow of the tangled shrubs. Shame rose from his smitten heart and flooded his whole being. The image of Emma appeared before him, and under her eyes the flood of shame rushed forth anew from his heart. If she knew to what his mind had subjected her or how his brute-like lust had torn and trampled upon her innocence! Was that boyish love? Was that chivalry? Was that poetry? The sordid details of his orgies stank under his very nostrils.

If there is a silver lining to the nonsensical and damaging moral logic of Hall’s post, you may find it in the perfection of Joyce’s portrait of young Stephen Dedalus (it only took a girl’s laugh to lay waste to his integrity).

So, what’s the “Dear writers” in all this (because the open letter is now the official medium of those who have concerns)? If I may borrow a phrase from Ms. Hall’s moral universe: “Hate the sin, but don’t forget to love—that is, to write about in a curious and clear-eyed way—the sinner.” Let Jezebel and Twitter continue to tear the post to shreds in the court of public opinion. Meanwhile, please, for the love of YA literature, make sure you’re pillaging every single thing you can from this superb evidence of an evolutionary step in the teenage condition. Don’t let scorn be the last word. This blog post is a gift.  

(With apologies to Stephen Dedalus)

(I feel like I have to write something in this space, lest the universe explode.)

Miley Cyrus may be the best example going at the moment of a child who became public property (and if you don’t believe people are still possessive of her, why on earth do they feel compelled to explain what she does to their teen and tween daughters in terms of their daughters’ self-esteem and self-image?), but she is certainly not the first. She may, however, be doing an exceptionally good job of taking her self back. Are you going to tell her it’s not “her party”?

Teenage celebrity is part of what I believe makes the cultural phenomenon of teenageness so deeply fascinating. It’s why Sarah Aronson’s Believe was a manuscript I knew wanted to publish after I’d read five pages.

"I was fascinated by this thoughtful, twisty, and convincing story about faith in the media age. Halfway through, I felt so deeply for Janine that I found myself looking at my own hands and wondering what I'd do if I were her."

—Nancy Werlin, New York Times
bestselling author of Impossible and The Rules of Survival

(With apologies to Stephen Dedalus)

(I feel like I have to write something in this space, lest the universe explode.)

Miley Cyrus may be the best example going at the moment of a child who became public property (and if you don’t believe people are still possessive of her, why on earth do they feel compelled to explain what she does to their teen and tween daughters in terms of their daughters’ self-esteem and self-image?), but she is certainly not the first. She may, however, be doing an exceptionally good job of taking her self back. Are you going to tell her it’s not “her party”?

Teenage celebrity is part of what I believe makes the cultural phenomenon of teenageness so deeply fascinating. It’s why Sarah Aronson’s Believe was a manuscript I knew wanted to publish after I’d read five pages.

"I was fascinated by this thoughtful, twisty, and convincing story about faith in the media age. Halfway through, I felt so deeply for Janine that I found myself looking at my own hands and wondering what I'd do if I were her."

—Nancy Werlin, New York Times
bestselling author of Impossible and The Rules of Survival

“an agent told me that publishers are no longer looking for paranormal or dystopian, but now want contemporary realism. True?”

I’ve heard a few responses on Twitter and Facebook since the PW piece that made me want to revisit something I wrote earlier on subgenres in YA. It’s from 2010, but I don’t think my feelings have changed much. Here’s the piece: “The Rise of the Subs.”

In the PW profile, the interviewer asked me for my thoughts on two much-discussed YA “subgenres” (my term): paranormal and dystopian.

“What does make sense to Karre is the evergreen popularity of dystopian and paranormal YA fiction. Such stories, he argues, provide a prism through which to explore the realities of being a teenager.”

This is absolutely how I see these two subgenres—how I see any subgenre that’s consistently functional in YA. What I don’t intend in my answer is a comment on the market’s taste for these things in any given moment. Do I even need to say that the market doesn’t give a shit what I think about how YA works as art or rhetoric? Yes, paranormal and dystopian will always hold a certain natural attraction for  authors who make teenagers their subjects because, I believe, the set pieces, commonplaces, and building blocks of these subgenres resonate so very well with adolescent experience. This does not mean that the business of publishing won’t create peaks and valleys in the market popularity of these subgenres. Dystopian is evergreen in YA—you can find landmark examples across the decades. This doesn’t mean, though, that in any given year, every third dystopian manuscript on submission will sell in a five-publisher auction for six-figures. The market for manuscripts is a speculative economic market—with all the attendant inefficiencies, irrationalities,  and blind spots—not a literary salon.

Finally, I’d forgotten that I quoted Elaine Marie Alphin* in my post about subgenres, and I was so glad to re-read her thoughts. I don’t think I have anything to match this in terms of perceptiveness and wisdom:

[…] genres can benefit writers unexpectedly. But I think genres can also do writers a disservice sometimes. I've recently finished a novel about the need to protect words and books from being twisted and misrepresented. It takes place in our world, perhaps a few years in the future, and I thought of it as sort of a foray into science fiction, or speculative fiction (a term I prefer). But with the current interest in dystopian literature, it's being called dystopian. And editors have rather specific ideas about what they want to see as dystopian. So when they read my manuscript, thinking dystopian, they have problems with it not fitting neatly into the dystopian template they have in their mind.

This is good insight for writers, but as an editor, I will take it as a mandate from an author I respect and admire.

*As some of you may know, Elaine suffered a serious stroke two years ago, and though she survived, she has not yet recovered the ability to communicate verbally. I worked on one book with Elaine, and had many illuminating conversations with her. Re-discovering her post is one of many available reminders that she was a wise writer and her voice is much missed.

“an agent told me that publishers are no longer looking for paranormal or dystopian, but now want contemporary realism. True?”

I’ve heard a few responses on Twitter and Facebook since the PW piece that made me want to revisit something I wrote earlier on subgenres in YA. It’s from 2010, but I don’t think my feelings have changed much. Here’s the piece: “The Rise of the Subs.”

In the PW profile, the interviewer asked me for my thoughts on two much-discussed YA “subgenres” (my term): paranormal and dystopian.

“What does make sense to Karre is the evergreen popularity of dystopian and paranormal YA fiction. Such stories, he argues, provide a prism through which to explore the realities of being a teenager.”

This is absolutely how I see these two subgenres—how I see any subgenre that’s consistently functional in YA. What I don’t intend in my answer is a comment on the market’s taste for these things in any given moment. Do I even need to say that the market doesn’t give a shit what I think about how YA works as art or rhetoric? Yes, paranormal and dystopian will always hold a certain natural attraction for  authors who make teenagers their subjects because, I believe, the set pieces, commonplaces, and building blocks of these subgenres resonate so very well with adolescent experience. This does not mean that the business of publishing won’t create peaks and valleys in the market popularity of these subgenres. Dystopian is evergreen in YA—you can find landmark examples across the decades. This doesn’t mean, though, that in any given year, every third dystopian manuscript on submission will sell in a five-publisher auction for six-figures. The market for manuscripts is a speculative economic market—with all the attendant inefficiencies, irrationalities,  and blind spots—not a literary salon.

Finally, I’d forgotten that I quoted Elaine Marie Alphin* in my post about subgenres, and I was so glad to re-read her thoughts. I don’t think I have anything to match this in terms of perceptiveness and wisdom:

[…] genres can benefit writers unexpectedly. But I think genres can also do writers a disservice sometimes. I've recently finished a novel about the need to protect words and books from being twisted and misrepresented. It takes place in our world, perhaps a few years in the future, and I thought of it as sort of a foray into science fiction, or speculative fiction (a term I prefer). But with the current interest in dystopian literature, it's being called dystopian. And editors have rather specific ideas about what they want to see as dystopian. So when they read my manuscript, thinking dystopian, they have problems with it not fitting neatly into the dystopian template they have in their mind.

This is good insight for writers, but as an editor, I will take it as a mandate from an author I respect and admire.

*As some of you may know, Elaine suffered a serious stroke two years ago, and though she survived, she has not yet recovered the ability to communicate verbally. I worked on one book with Elaine, and had many illuminating conversations with her. Re-discovering her post is one of many available reminders that she was a wise writer and her voice is much missed.

PW was very generous to ask me for my opinions, and that was a lot of fun. I do, however, want to add one thing to the record (and this is certainly not an oversight on Claire’s part): I think having strong opinions about why and how you do the books you do is very important to good editorial practice. It’s the main thing that separates a mostly objective practice like proofreading or copyediting from the vastly more subjective and variable practice of acquisitions and developmental editing. An editor should believe strongly in something.

But the purpose of those opinions is to serve as starting points for a conversation with the author. Philosophies are guidelines not laws. It’s true that I’m not interested in the present YA orthodoxy (YA is books for teenagers), but by the same token, I’m not interested in seeing my philosophy become the new orthodoxy. Let’s celebrate heterodoxy and apostasy. I want testing, dispute, and contradiction. In my work, I’m most interested in the friction between ideas and how that friction can bring new heat to a manuscript.

My opinions are not my authors’. When I edit, I hope to advance my opinions and to be pushed back, forward, up, down, or sideways by the author—and arrive somewhere interesting as a result. 

PW was very generous to ask me for my opinions, and that was a lot of fun. I do, however, want to add one thing to the record (and this is certainly not an oversight on Claire’s part): I think having strong opinions about why and how you do the books you do is very important to good editorial practice. It’s the main thing that separates a mostly objective practice like proofreading or copyediting from the vastly more subjective and variable practice of acquisitions and developmental editing. An editor should believe strongly in something.

But the purpose of those opinions is to serve as starting points for a conversation with the author. Philosophies are guidelines not laws. It’s true that I’m not interested in the present YA orthodoxy (YA is books for teenagers), but by the same token, I’m not interested in seeing my philosophy become the new orthodoxy. Let’s celebrate heterodoxy and apostasy. I want testing, dispute, and contradiction. In my work, I’m most interested in the friction between ideas and how that friction can bring new heat to a manuscript.

My opinions are not my authors’. When I edit, I hope to advance my opinions and to be pushed back, forward, up, down, or sideways by the author—and arrive somewhere interesting as a result. 

I can’t quite explain how this works, but there comes a point in a lot of books I work on where poetry asserts itself on the author or me or both of us at once. I don’t know exactly when it happens or what causes what, but I know a book is in good shape when I’m trying to justify three pages of epigraphs to myself (I’ve never yet let it go quite that far).

Some recent examples:

• The Freak Observer: “Stars at Tallapoosa” by Wallace Stevens
• Catch & Release: “The Song of Wandering Aengus” by W. B. Yeats
• A Wounded Name: “The Hosting of the Sidhe” by W. B. Yeats.
• Anything by Wallace Stevens in any conversation of five minutes or more with Andrew Smith. (See his “Green Screen” in Losing It.)
• No Crystal Stair: “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes.

And I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.

One marvelous example is top of mind this morning (because of some good news), and that’s Sex & Violence by Carrie Mesrobian. We did cram two poems onto the epigraph page. The first is a bit of Larkin’s masterpiece “This Be the Verse,” which is joyous little ditty everyone should memorize. But much more amazing in its resonance is a poem Carrie had associated with the book from early days, a poem called “The Lake” by Michael Hettich. It’s a magnificent piece, and it does a subtle dance with Carrie’s book  that pleases me every time I think of it. You can read it all in the front of Sex & Violence or in The Sun Magazine.

I can’t quite explain how this works, but there comes a point in a lot of books I work on where poetry asserts itself on the author or me or both of us at once. I don’t know exactly when it happens or what causes what, but I know a book is in good shape when I’m trying to justify three pages of epigraphs to myself (I’ve never yet let it go quite that far).

Some recent examples:

• The Freak Observer: “Stars at Tallapoosa” by Wallace Stevens
• Catch & Release: “The Song of Wandering Aengus” by W. B. Yeats
• A Wounded Name: “The Hosting of the Sidhe” by W. B. Yeats.
• Anything by Wallace Stevens in any conversation of five minutes or more with Andrew Smith. (See his “Green Screen” in Losing It.)
• No Crystal Stair: “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes.

And I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.

One marvelous example is top of mind this morning (because of some good news), and that’s Sex & Violence by Carrie Mesrobian. We did cram two poems onto the epigraph page. The first is a bit of Larkin’s masterpiece “This Be the Verse,” which is joyous little ditty everyone should memorize. But much more amazing in its resonance is a poem Carrie had associated with the book from early days, a poem called “The Lake” by Michael Hettich. It’s a magnificent piece, and it does a subtle dance with Carrie’s book  that pleases me every time I think of it. You can read it all in the front of Sex & Violence or in The Sun Magazine.

How about a bit of utopianism for Monday morning? Maybe with skateboarding?

Here’s the deal. If you spend an hour with this 11-video oral history of skateboarding photography by photographer Andrew Norton, the minimum benefit you’ll derive is an hour spent with some extremely elegant and captivating photographs, described by their creators. And if you grew up in the 80s and 90s, you’ll probably see something you once had taped to a locker or a Trapper Keeper. That’s worth an hour right there, even if you didn’t ever skate.

If you’re in the YA racket, though, I think this series offers even more: a vision of how to make art (and money—all of these guys are making a living) that appeals predominantly to young people—particularly teenagers—without being explicitly concerned with what those young people want, what’s right/appropriate/appealing “for” them, etc.

These artists are literally and figuratively subject focused. They’re trying to great work with the creative material at hand, and even though that material is incredibly fluid and dynamic, the quality of the work over the thirty-plus years covered in these videos is uniformly high. What a concept.

Watch these videos with this analogy held loosely in your mind: Skateboard photographer is to skateboarder as author is to character. 

(Photo of Chris Senn links to an ESPN piece on photographer Bryce Kaknights.)

How about a bit of utopianism for Monday morning? Maybe with skateboarding?

Here’s the deal. If you spend an hour with this 11-video oral history of skateboarding photography by photographer Andrew Norton, the minimum benefit you’ll derive is an hour spent with some extremely elegant and captivating photographs, described by their creators. And if you grew up in the 80s and 90s, you’ll probably see something you once had taped to a locker or a Trapper Keeper. That’s worth an hour right there, even if you didn’t ever skate.

If you’re in the YA racket, though, I think this series offers even more: a vision of how to make art (and money—all of these guys are making a living) that appeals predominantly to young people—particularly teenagers—without being explicitly concerned with what those young people want, what’s right/appropriate/appealing “for” them, etc.

These artists are literally and figuratively subject focused. They’re trying to great work with the creative material at hand, and even though that material is incredibly fluid and dynamic, the quality of the work over the thirty-plus years covered in these videos is uniformly high. What a concept.

Watch these videos with this analogy held loosely in your mind: Skateboard photographer is to skateboarder as author is to character. 

(Photo of Chris Senn links to an ESPN piece on photographer Bryce Kaknights.)

Paper proofs are becoming less common, and many authors can expect to see all their proofs in PDF. This is a good thing for a whole host of reasons, but PDFs remain a somewhat mysterious thing for many outside of the graphic design and layout fields.  I’m going to to try to demystify a few PDF features in hopes of making proof changes easier for all concerned.

First things first, let’s use Acrobat Reader so we’re all on the same page. If you’re using a PDF markup application like PDF Pen or you’re rocking proper Acrobat, then this post isn’t for you. You’re already ahead of the curve. However, if you’re on a Mac and you’re relying on Preview, the following will be more helpful if you install Reader too. (It’s free.) If you’re on a PC, you’re probably using Reader, but if you’re defaulting to some other third-party free PDF software, you might want to switch to Reader for purposes of this demo.

A couple things to note: Reader is not a great tool. Marking PDFs with Reader is not nearly as easy as, say, making changes in a Word doc. Selection always feels a little imprecise and adding things like paragraph breaks and style changes require precise comments—you can’t just insert them. But if you use all the tool’s capabilities, you can make life easier.

Second, all of this assumes the person who prepared the PDF has enabled all the comment and annotation features. We say “comment-enabled PDF” around here, and that’s basically the default setting for PDFs we create. But other houses may do things differently. If you don’t have the full palette of annotation tools when you hit Comment in Reader, you might want to ask your editor or the designer to make you a comment-enabled PDF.

Ok, on with the show.

(Note, I did this on a PC with Windows 7, but it’s not too different on a Mac.)

Paper proofs are becoming less common, and many authors can expect to see all their proofs in PDF. This is a good thing for a whole host of reasons, but PDFs remain a somewhat mysterious thing for many outside of the graphic design and layout fields.  I’m going to to try to demystify a few PDF features in hopes of making proof changes easier for all concerned.

First things first, let’s use Acrobat Reader so we’re all on the same page. If you’re using a PDF markup application like PDF Pen or you’re rocking proper Acrobat, then this post isn’t for you. You’re already ahead of the curve. However, if you’re on a Mac and you’re relying on Preview, the following will be more helpful if you install Reader too. (It’s free.) If you’re on a PC, you’re probably using Reader, but if you’re defaulting to some other third-party free PDF software, you might want to switch to Reader for purposes of this demo.

A couple things to note: Reader is not a great tool. Marking PDFs with Reader is not nearly as easy as, say, making changes in a Word doc. Selection always feels a little imprecise and adding things like paragraph breaks and style changes require precise comments—you can’t just insert them. But if you use all the tool’s capabilities, you can make life easier.

Second, all of this assumes the person who prepared the PDF has enabled all the comment and annotation features. We say “comment-enabled PDF” around here, and that’s basically the default setting for PDFs we create. But other houses may do things differently. If you don’t have the full palette of annotation tools when you hit Comment in Reader, you might want to ask your editor or the designer to make you a comment-enabled PDF.

Ok, on with the show.

(Note, I did this on a PC with Windows 7, but it’s not too different on a Mac.)

Thought experiment: if sagging pants on young people—particularly young black people—signal degrees of availability for prison-style homosexual sex (yep, I'm looking at you, Don Lemon and Bill O'Reilly), what else do clothes signal about their wearers?

Do button down collars on dress shirts signal you're not in fact headed to the office, but to a polo match (the buttons on those collars come from real polo shirts from the turn of the 19th century, on which the buttons were meant to keep the collar points from flying in a rider's face)?

The selvedge strip on sees any $350 pair of Japanese-made jeans once was the hallmark of the ultra-affordable clothing of the working class (leaving the selvedge on denim was a way to use the whole bolt of fabric and save money). What in the world does it mean when you roll your jeans to show it off?

Or what about the legendary IBM salesperson who was once sent to buy real shoes after breaking the rules by showing up to work in Gucci loafers (“bedroom slippers,” his boss called them)? That’s a story we now repeatedly laugh off as a sign of natural change in cultural norms around dress. (And now the billionaire mayor of New York brags about only wearing black loafers.)

Why, then, are the clothes and sartorial sensibilities of youth culture (especially black youth culture) the only ones pundits are at pains to repeatedly insist still "mean" exactly what they meant when they began? Why do the rules apply rigidly to them?

Forgive me if I can't take seriously someone (Don Lemon, again; above left) who argues "if you're sagging, your self esteem is sagging" while wearing an outfit that, at as it was originally worn, meant "I'm on vacation at our place on the Cape. Care to meet me for martinis before dinner, Old Boy?" (The man is wearing suede bucks,  green socks, and a pink shirt!) Why is he allowed to sever that outfit from its very specific original context and its original "rules" and repurpose it for his own use, but a kid who wears his pants low must unknowingly be buying in to whatever his outfit might have meant in another time and place altogether unrelated to him?

Of course the answer is Lemon’s argument is not serious. It’s nonsense. It’s nonsensical when he makes it. It’s nonsensical as a Facebook meme.

I think Jay Smooth does a good job of rebutting Lemon’s argument in terms of race. Watch it here.

But there’s also a question of youth culture and dress that I find fascinating in all this, particularly as it relates to the unfettered exploration of teenageness that should be a goal of all of us in YA. Do I even need to argue how important teenagers severing clothes from their contexts and their rules is to the wider world? Isn’t it obvious how much cultural influence teens and their dressing transgressions have in that regard?

If you’re wearing a plain T-shirt  to work and calling it “casual Friday” rather than “showing up in your underwear,” thank youth culture.

And is this severance occasionally scary and disturbing for adults? Yep. And do the clothes often seem ridiculous and impractical and a bit like costumes? Of course. They’re supposed to. And it always has been this way as long as there have been teenagers. As they say, it’s not a bug; it’s a feature.

Not surprisingly, the American Ur-Teenager has something very important to say on the matter of severing clothes from context:

“I put on this hat that I’d bought in New York that morning. It was this red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out of the subway, just after I noticed I'd lost all the goddam foils. It only cost me a buck. The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around to the back—very corny, I'll admit, but I liked it that way. I looked good in it that way.”

Simple as that.

I understand that getting rattled by the sartorial choices of teenagers is as much a part of being old as rattling adults is of being young. One hopes, though, as an old person, to occasionally step back and appreciate the spectacle. One hopes not to reveal a sadly withered imagination. And one sincerely, pleadingly hopes not to delude one's self into believing that the problems of race in America hinge in any part on the height of any young man's pants. That is indeed a pathetic, deeply phony state.

Thought experiment: if sagging pants on young people—particularly young black people—signal degrees of availability for prison-style homosexual sex (yep, I'm looking at you, Don Lemon and Bill O'Reilly), what else do clothes signal about their wearers?

Do button down collars on dress shirts signal you're not in fact headed to the office, but to a polo match (the buttons on those collars come from real polo shirts from the turn of the 19th century, on which the buttons were meant to keep the collar points from flying in a rider's face)?

The selvedge strip one sees on any $350 pair of Japanese-made jeans once was the hallmark of the ultra-affordable clothing of the working class (leaving the selvedge on denim was a way to use the whole bolt of fabric and save money). What in the world does it mean when you roll your jeans to show it off?

Or what about the legendary IBM salesperson who was once sent to buy real shoes after breaking the rules by showing up to work in Gucci loafers (“bedroom slippers,” his boss called them)? That’s a story we now repeatedly laugh off as a sign of natural change in cultural norms around dress. (And now the billionaire mayor of New York brags about only wearing black loafers.)

Why, then, are the clothes and sartorial sensibilities of youth culture (especially black youth culture) the only ones pundits are at pains to repeatedly insist still "mean" exactly what they meant when they began? Why do the rules apply rigidly to them?

Forgive me if I can't take seriously someone (Don Lemon, again; above left) who argues "if you're sagging, your self esteem is sagging" while wearing an outfit that, as it was originally worn, meant, "I'm on vacation at our place on the Cape. Care to meet me for martinis before dinner, Old Boy?" (The man is wearing suede bucks,  green socks, and a pink shirt!) Why is he allowed to sever that outfit from its very specific original context and its original "rules" and repurpose it for his own use, but a kid who wears his pants low must unknowingly be buying in to whatever his outfit might have meant in another time and place altogether unrelated to him?

Of course the answer is Lemon’s argument is not serious. It’s nonsense. It’s nonsensical when he makes it. It’s nonsensical as a Facebook meme.

I think Jay Smooth does a good job of rebutting Lemon’s argument in terms of race. Watch it here.

But there’s also a question of youth culture and dress that I find fascinating in all this, particularly as it relates to the unfettered exploration of teenageness that should be a goal of all of us in YA. Do I even need to argue how important teenagers severing clothes from their contexts and their rules is to the wider world? Isn’t it obvious how much cultural influence teens and their dressing transgressions have in that regard?

If you’re wearing a plain T-shirt  to work and calling it “casual Friday” rather than “showing up in your underwear,” thank youth culture.

And is this severance occasionally scary and disturbing for adults? Yep. And do the clothes often seem ridiculous and impractical and a bit like costumes? Of course. They’re supposed to. And it always has been this way as long as there have been teenagers. As they say, it’s not a bug; it’s a feature.

Not surprisingly, the American Ur-Teenager has something very important to say on the matter of severing clothes from context:

“I put on this hat that I’d bought in New York that morning. It was this red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out of the subway, just after I noticed I'd lost all the goddam foils. It only cost me a buck. The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around to the back—very corny, I'll admit, but I liked it that way. I looked good in it that way.”

Simple as that.

I understand that getting rattled by the sartorial choices of teenagers is as much a part of being old as rattling adults is of being young. One hopes, though, as an old person, to occasionally step back and appreciate the spectacle. One hopes not to reveal a sadly withered imagination. And one sincerely, pleadingly hopes not to delude one's self into believing that the problems of race in America hinge in any part on the height of any young man's pants. That is indeed a pathetic, deeply phony state.

… John Starks dunked emphatically over Michael Jordan in a playoff game.

Somewhat more recently, he was seen reading Hoop Genius by John Coy, illustrated by Joe Morse, to children on Long Island.

It’s unclear which was the bigger moment in his life, but I’ve got my theory.