Some of you might have come across this inflammatory article:
Against YA in Slate e-zine.
What do you think?
/Tiny rant begins/
As a grown woman - with a degree in English Literature - who is on a YA reading streak and who finds that there are bunches upon bunches of great stories happening in YA books*, and as someone who tutors children to help them improve their English, I find that writer's opinion absolute anathema because a great story is a great story, no matter what age the story is purportedly written for. I'd rather read some beautifully written and engagingly plotted YA instead of some overrated literary stuff or badly written potboilers for adults.
/Tiny rant ends/
*
I'm not going to call it a "genre", neither am I going to call the article "genre shaming" as some do because YA spans a wide range of genres and is more like a age-appropriate rating akin to G or PG-13 for movies.
I began the article... but could only stomach the first two paragraphs. Sorry, but this is a load of bilge. Any damned type of fiction is fine for either "young adults" or adults to read, as long as it doesn't contain material which is "inappropriate" to a very young age (e.g., pornographic or erotic content; extreme violence, etc.). If something is a good story, written well, then there is absolutely no reason why an adult should feel in the least embarrassed or ashamed for reading and enjoying it. Tolkien pointed out the fallacies in this sort of thing decades ago, in his essay "On Fairy-Stories"; and it holds true for all other genres of writing (fiction or non) as well.
As for John Green's book... a young woman of my acquaintance, with whom I've had many a great conversation about literary matters, has just loaned me her copy. I've only got into the first chapter, but my impression is simply... well, I've tried various currently "hot" writers, best-sellers, etc., and generally not been all that impressed. But, even within the opening chapter of this one, I've been very impressed with John Green's abilities on a number of levels. Not only has he done something which a relatively few male writers have done (presenting admirably, with no sentimentality and in a quite realistic fashion, a living, breathing exemplar of a mid-to-late teen female character), but his prose is extremely good, walking a fine line between the humorous and tragic, combining the "light" tone of someone far too used to dealing with the fact of dying and therefore prone to express themselves with that humorous distance, yet with all the underlying pain coming through loud and clear, but without either ceremony or self-pity, and at the same time managing to frequently verge on the poetic in imagery and phrasing... not the flowery poetic, but the genuine heart of poetry, which is the expression in beautiful but simple language of the conflicts of the human spirit and its reaction to the world around it.
A good example of this balance I speak of is her brief comment about a boy she has met in her "therapy group" (she herself is terminal) and who intrigues her, who has lost a limb: "He walked past me, his shoulders filling out his green knit polo shirt, his back straight, his steps lilting just slightly to the right as he walked steady and confident on what I had determined was a prosthetic leg. Osteosarcoma sometimes takes a limb to check you out. Then, if it likes you, it takes the rest."
Quiet, no sensationalism, no sentimentality. Just that edge of semi-self-deprecating humor, and the gut blow of exactly what we're talking about here, and how casually these kids have become in accepting it.
I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks someone should feel any shame or guilt or embarrassment about reading something written with the skill this man exhibits, are themselves exhibiting a type of bigotry and arrogance any intelligent reader should be ashamed to make public....
