things around and about Fourth Street

[aamcnamara]

1. I would totally read Tom Bombadil fanfic.

2.
I have been to several cons now. At those cons, I have attended many panels about YA fiction. This is partially because I like YA fiction and partially because I feel more confident at YA panels; I've more often read more of the books being discussed, and as a teen I get the impression that my Opinions get more respect on YA panels, because I am a Real Live Teen. (Which is not to say that I haven't said things at other panels, but I get uncertain of myself in non-YA panels, because I know that everyone else has probably read much more of what's being discussed than I have.)

Panels like the one we had at Fourth Street this year are good in some ways and fail in others. The panel description asked why the bestsellers are nominally YA, why adults read YA. Which are valid questions, if not the questions that I think are interesting about YA. The thing is that at conventions, where 99.9% of those attending are adults, if the room is not full of people who read YA these days, the conversation does not go directly to "why do these things happen", it looks at it from a standpoint of "the last time I read YA or YA-type books was when I was a kid/teenager, what has changed since then to make these things happen?"

And, okay, there is merit in looking at the history of any genre. YA, though, strikes me as being one of the ones in which the history of the genre is largely orthogonal to talking about the genre as it is today. There are important books, sure; there are books that changed the way the genre looked, sure; but those books are not the ones that many teens read today. When talking about the way that SFF is today, we talk about the history of the genre--"The Last 20 Years in Fantasy" was another panel at Fourth Street--and when we talk about the great books of SFF, we start with Heinlein and Tolkien and work our way up.

There are probably people who, for example, consider S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders completely necessary for their development as a person, and who go back to reread it (just as there are people who feel that way about Heinlein). But while these people may exist, they are largely not teens any more. Same with Catcher in the Rye, or any other classic YA book.

And this voice is largely unimportant in the genre. YA is about the here and now. However you define it--"books that teens read", "a marketing category"--YA is about what teens are reading, present tense.

This may be changing. There are a lot of adults now who read YA books. (This is what the panel was about, yes, but from a different angle.) These adults, who perhaps read YA as a teen and have kept reading it, are the thing in YA that is most like the community around SFF. There are also communities of YA writers that have begun to spring up, on the Internet and offline. Maybe as these communities grow, we'll see books in dialogue with each other in YA the same way that books are in dialogue in SFF.

I am entirely uncertain if that is a good or a bad thing.

(Going back to conventions, panels like the one we had at Wiscon this year about gender roles in YA SFF tend to go better for me. There were book recommendations, discussion of how gender roles are being subverted in YA SFF these days and how they're being reinforced, and almost all of the books mentioned were recent books. It wasn't a picture of how the genre was; it was a picture of how the genre is.)

I would be interested to hear opinions on this one. From people of any age, who have any range of interest in YA.

3. I need to start reading a lot more nonfiction.

4. Today is my official Day to Relax and Not See People. And, you know, keep working on the novel. (And slush.)

5.

37759 / 80000

Comments

[janni.livejournal.com]

I find YA panels at cons a little frustrating, because it seems you need to spend half the panel trying to explain what YA is to an audience that hasn't been near the YA section of a bookstore or library in ages (it's not fiction for elementary school kids, it's also not fiction with the sex and violence and language removed ...) And often not just the audience--I've been to cons where the panelists don't know what YA is either.

And even outside of cons, every so often it seems another adult writer decides "oh, maybe I should write a YA book now," goes off to read a few, and comes back with "OMG how can we be exposing the children to Books Like This." (Because that YA books are for teens, and that teens are not children, is a huge part of the misunderstanding.) (Also that teens are intelligent and critical readers who won't be harmed be random content and in fact often question and argue with their reading more than adults do.)

Also, if I hear Heinlein invoked one more time, I'm going to scream. Because if you can't understand why Heinlein juveniles are not the way to introduce contemporary teens to SF, well, you need to go read more and spend time with teens more both.

The best YA panels I've been to/on have been the ones where there've both been teens in the audience, and the panelists have had sense enough to let them speak.

I think one could do worse than to have those teens on the panel, and to put the adults in the audience so they can listen a bit more.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Also (okay, so this is a bit of a soapbox for me), why is it so much of an issue for adult readers that YA books are bestsellers? Are good writing and high sales both supposed to be reserved for adults? Even as an adult, I want to say--come on, you have so much of the control and the power already--are you really begrudging the notion that some of the best (and best selling) books might be for teens?

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

But books for teens aren't as sophisticated or as morally uplifting as adult fiction! Clearly everyone should be reading Dan Brown instead.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

lol

You know, since the two interelated debates that seem to be ongoing among librarians and educators are:

1) Are books like The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing too sophisticated for teens?

(ed. note: what?!?!)

and

2) Are we alientating teen and younger readers by focusing too much on melodramatic/sophisticated novels about morality when deciding what to teach in the classroom and when giving out awards?

(ed. opinion: possibly some of them, as long as the emphasis is on the too much part of that sentence.)

The idea that teen fiction is not as morally uplifting as the average adult novel makes my head hurt.

I mean, the idea that teen fiction isn't as sophisticated as the average adult novel is annoying as well, but I can at least see where that false premise comes from. I have no idea where people got the idea that teen fiction isn't as moral as adult fiction.

(rolls eyes)

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about it mainly in respect to the response to teens liking things like Twilight.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

I know a decent number of extremely intelligent, well-educated young women and teen girls that adore Twilight (and I happened to like the first book very much, myself - back when I thought the series was going in a different direction - thank you very much) and the tone of the condescension aimed at Twilight fans (as opposed to, say Stephen King's analysis of the series itself) reminds me of very much of the general condescension that adult readers of romance novels get, and I don't think that's a coincidence.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's just that I'm not an adult, but I get the idea that adult readers of romance novels get more of the attitude of "oh, that person likes to read fluffy romance novels". Which is condescending, but not a moral judgment. Whereas teens liking Twilight are given more of "that teen likes fluffy romance books with bad morals". (Though it's probably just a result of which people I hang out with.)

(And then we get into older women who like Twilight, and it all gets very confusing.)

[janni.livejournal.com]

The romance writers I know seem really really sensitive to being condescended too and looked down on, because it happens so much--though maybe without quite as strong a moral thread in most cases.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Very true, all of this. "Here's the marketing definition of YA..." The cons where the panelists don't know what YA is sound painful.

I was looking for good current YA SF recently, and found not very much. Lots and lots of vaguely dystopic things, but not much SF. (Dystopia is good, but its own animal, neither fantasy nor science fiction, in my mind.) Though that still is not an excuse to invoke Heinlein, I agree.

The problem with teens being on panels is that often teens are not at those cons and therefore in those rooms to start with. I do not mind being the Token Teen very much, but it's still annoying. (And I'm not sure if the answer is Get More Teens to Cons, or what.)

[aliseadae]

I don't like being the Token Teen when people's view of me becomes /only/ that I am a teen.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's why I see so many more teens at, say, anime cons, where one doesn't have to be a token anything? (The one anime con I've been to so far, I immediately wanted to make every adult SF fan attend too, or at least every adult SF fan who ever whined that teens don't read SF any more!)

Very interesting thought, about dystopia being a thing apart from either SF or fantasy. I tend to think there's a lot of YA SF out there, but an awful lot of it is the dystopic stuff. (Which I enjoy too, but I'm pondering the idea it's at least somewhat a separate thing now ...)