things around and about Fourth Street
Jun. 22nd, 2009 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamara1. 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.
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
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 01:59 am (UTC)Hey, I like big long thinky discussions about awesome things! (It was threatening to become long and confusing, but then I thought of a more concise way to say it.)
The Internet is a powerful force for book-finding, but it can be easy to only stay within one's direct community for book recommendations, and panels at cons are good ways to get outside of that, or to the books that no one talks about because everyone assumes everyone's read them, I've found.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 03:28 am (UTC)Yeah, I didn't phrase that well, did I? Well, I hadn't really thought it through. :)
I was more thinking (and this is pure speculation, having never been to a genre con) that part of the difference in our experiences may be that the people putting the panels together at your cons consider YA lit to be on the periphery of what fits in that particular con, while the cons I've been to have been about books (and other information holding stuff) in general, and so YA lit isn't really considered as non-mainstream.
The Festival has an entire stage for cooking demonstrations done by TV cooks that have published recipe books, fer crissakes. What idiot is going to question if YA lit is really worthy of discussion after putting that together?
Also, the YA librarians are the kewl kidz on teh block, if that idea can even be applied to librarians, so no self-respecting library con is going to diss YA lit. Noisy teens themselves, maybe. Gaming, sadly yes. But teen lit? no way.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 04:16 am (UTC)For another thing, if it's a genre con, it's always awkwardly "... in YA SF/F", instead of just "in YA". And some of the interesting things about the YA genre only emerge when you look at it as a complete genre, not just the SF and fantasy parts of it.
... admittedly, usually it ends up being about all YA, but the speciality of most of the panelists is usually SF or fantasy, so the all-YA part suffers.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 12:28 am (UTC)(Unfortunately, I think the concerns of the YA track are not at the forefront of many SFF con planners' minds. But they should still think about those things.)