Reading Young Adult Fiction, Part Deux

A great quote from C.S. Lewis about labeling fiction as "adult" or "young adult":

"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development.

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

H/t The Dish

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Reading Young Adult Fiction

The Distinction Between Literary and Other Fiction

I was talking with Todd some time ago (and again more recently) about the author Stephen King.  I had, at the time, made a dumbheaded remark about how I would never read Stephen King because he was too popular (read: pop) and therefore not literary enough for my tastes (ohhhh so high brow).  Todd, rightfully so, let me have it at the time, saying regardless of my perception, I was missing out on some great writing.  And, truthfully speaking, it was for nothing other than King’s popularity (mass appeal) that I banished him from my own personal canon. 

Books are much different from “pop music”.  Reading a book (especially a King novel, given their average girth) takes an investment that cannot be equated to a 3 minute long auditory sampling one would give to a song.  Dismissing popular culture comes easy to me because of my musical tastes and my lack of interest in most popular music.  But the music method of judging a book by its author(‘s popularity) isn’t defendable.

I haven’t read much Stephen King yet, so I really cannot say whether I like his books or not.  But in rethinking this whole approach to books, I realize that, because books cannot be quickly assessed without a significant investment, popularity isn’t a good way to determine what has literary merit and what does not.  For example, some of my favorite modern day authors are some of the most popular and best-selling writers out there (e.g. Mitchell, Marukami).  Even more poignant in the “stands the test of time” aspect is the fact that most of the writers I cherish who are from another time in history were quite popular in their day (e.g. Dostoyevsky, Hesse, Huxley).

I would say, too, that with age comes the ability to appreciate works of fiction for what they have to offer, rather than to hold them up to some ideal of what I consider to be a great work of literary art.  I’m not ashamed to say I like Bukowski because the enjoyment I get from a Bukowski novel is surely as impactful to my life as the great existential thoughts Hesse has triggered, even if only in practical/applicable terms. 

That said I do need to get some value out of a novel to consider it worth my investment.  And this makes it very hard for me to start a book by an unknown author.  So I’m curious…  what do YOU think makes a book valuable as a reader?  How do YOU pick new authors to read?

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Stockholm Syndrome

Relating to Fiction

Some interesting thoughts on relating to fiction from J.L. Wall:

Fiction doesn’t present the unreal; it presents the possibly real, something balancing precariously between the real and the non. (This holds, it should be said, for fantasy, science fiction, and other “genres” as well as in realistic or literary fiction; they just go about it, as is the case in variation between individual works, in different ways.) We empathize with fictional beings not despite their unreality, but because of their possible reality.

I've always been curious why some people become more attached to the characters that they read about (or watch on TV) than they do the people in their everyday lives. My intuition tells me that because they're interacting with these idealized figures in a controlled environment (i.e., they can't actually talk to them, and thus the spell that the writer is casting is never broken), these characters speak more to a person's ideal than real people, with whom you have to deal with the inevitable dissapointments of reality (making small talk, noticing skin blemishes and annoying personality traits, etc.)
What do you think?