"Edgy" books for teens - an apologia

I read and appreciated Gail Giles' defense of the darkness in YA literature.

I often think of edginess as an inducement to read, because I'm writing and editing for non-habitual readers. I imagine the 12-year-old reading at a second-grade level feeling frustrated and bored at the same time by the puppies-and-teddy-bears book she can't quite decipher, when her classmates are reading The Hunger Games. 

Giles' approach and reasoning are different. She argues that teens are ill-equipped to understand the consequences to the antisocial impulses they have, and that literature offers them a safe way to explore those impulses, and those consequences. This is the antithesis of the parental clench reaction to anything adult-y, and I find it refreshing.

Please read it (follow the link above or here), and let me know where you stand.

"splat?"

Susanne Lakin writes in her blog Live Write Thrive about the demise of the publishing industry, long live the publishing industry.

I like her take, that words will survive the transition to digital platforms, and moreover that writers will get more direct benefits. 

And this from someone in the publishing industry!

I even think there's good news in there for publishers, however hard the short run adaptation will be.

Because my segment of the industry is school publishing, I have to think of school budgets when I think of changes in our industry. All of the parents at work bemoan the impoverishment of our local schools. We frankly don't see the iPads and smart-screens taking over just yet. Our customers are scraping together change from the couch cushions to buy our products. (Great business model, right? Sell to special ed and resource teachers...)

So, where are all these digital readers? When to publishers need to make the leap?

I think it will a be slow and halting leap, with lots of school publishers falling short of the target, but all market shake-ups are like that. How many "for sale" signs have you seen on real estate offices in the past three years?

Lakin's argument that we need to embrace the change is well taken. My arms (and eyes) are open. Now who's voting to raise their property taxes to buy tablet computers for the LD classes?

Don't all jump at once...

Why there's a James Patterson section at the bookstore

I recently finished reading the first Maximum Ride novel, The Angel Experiment, to my kids. It had annoying stylistic issues, uneven plot structure, and way too many chapters. One hundred forty something? Seriously?

Still, I can see why, when I was shopping for the sequel (at some awful chain store - sorry, Mike!), I found among sections titled "Mystery" and "Young Adult Fiction," one called "James Patterson."

I was wondering about this from a writer's perspective, as well as a reader's. Please excuse the pomposity of what follows. I am opining, and asking for you to read. It is a pompous exercise by nature, and unlike Newt Gingrich, I will own up to my pomposity.

How does a story attract readers and hold them? One attraction is familiarity, which allows for empathy. We like Huck Finn's impish disdain for authority not because it is good, but because we feel the same sometimes, even into adulthood, yearning to kick off our shoes and run away to the river.

Another attraction is exoticism. The strange world of Gethen Ursula LeGuin reveals in The Left Hand of Darkness, beginning with the celebration of the completion of a public works project in the Karhide capital, not only introduces us to the cautious, patient protagonist Genly Ai, but also to the cold, damp, and fusty civilization that evolved there.

There is also the appeal of coming to know someone new, to make a new friend (or a new self) through reading fiction. For me, one of the best was the self-righteous and lethally impulsive Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. He is nettled and worried, alone and betrayed, wronged and reckless.


And here's why (aside from diligence, volume, and effective marketing) James Patterson's Maximum Ride succeeds: Patterson takes readers from ignorance of the world and people he created, through knowledge of Max, her family, and their world, into empathy. (Pompous enough yet?)

• at the stage of ignorance, readers have familiarity and empathy with their own stories
• at the stage of knowledge, readers acquire familiarity with the protagonist, and are developing empathy
• at the stage of empathy, readers begin to feel what the protagonist will do next, and to care about the outcome

I've been thinking about making readers care about protagonists a lot. Patterson, to me, clearly has this down. Not only is Max almost instantly empathetic (there's a quick step in Angel Experiment from a tiny bit of knowledge to strong empathy), but the supporting characters are all deeply likeable, though my favorite is Nudge.

I'm a lot like Nudge in some respects, so I think the difference between my identification with her and with the other characters is based on that, whereas with Max, it's more about the convincing empathy of the situation. It's Max's situation in the world Patterson creates, more than Nudge's or even Angel's, that generates empathy.

How does someone like George R. R. Martin do this with a dozen (I've honestly lost count) characters? I'm on the third (have I lost count of that, too?) book of the Song of Ice and Fire septology (wouldn't that be appropriate?), and I am absolutely stunned at how much I yearn for the next bit of news about each of the characters. I'm even hungry for news from Theon Greyjoy!

The reason, or a good chunk of it, for this eagerness, is that each lead character has strengths I wish I had, and weaknesses I feel a need to avoid. Jon Snow is resourceful, but impulsive; Jaime Lannister is a champion, but unfettered by ethics or sympathy; Catelyn Tully Stark is proud and kind, but badly governed by those good emotions; Daenerys Targaryen is resilient and a strategic thinker, but in well over her head, and my favorite, Arya Stark, has the heart of a hero, but the body of a not-quite-ten-year-old girl. (Okay, that's not my problem exactly, but physical weakness is kind of a universal fear.)

And with each character-centered chapter, a part of the story is told, and knowledge is gained, but the characters' strengths and weaknesses make them more empathetic. And then Martin cuts us off from the newsfeed, the supply of knowledge. And we're stuck, waiting for more.

So why is there a Patterson section at B&N, and not a Martin section? Patterson tells single-narrative stories in great proliferation, allowing less polish, and inventing less of the world. He has less knowledge to convey (though he has plenty in his world), and fewer characters to bring to life, than Martin does.

I wonder if any of this will be useful in writing.

List or satire: who can tell?

I used to love reading the Harper's Index. I actually read the whole magazine, cover to cover, when I subscribed. (Come to think of it, I might subscribe again. That was pretty good reading.)

The reasons I liked the Index were the latent humor of juxtaposition, the generally progressive message the list of data conveyed, and the heady feeling that there was humor out there, just waiting to be dug up, in newspaper clippings and economic statistics and other modern political detritus.

It's that sort of confusion and humorous serendipity, the feeling that we may be looking at information, or natural events, or something intended to be serious, or we may be looking at a satire of it, and we can't tell at first. 

That's why I wanted to share this list of Republican actions - as Speaker Boehner promised leading up to the 2010 legislative election - to focus on job creation.

My favorite:

(110) 11-18-2011: The House is once again considering the "Balanced Budget Amendment", which sounds almost reasonable until you learn it could cost millions of jobs. Oy vey.

Actually, I just picked that one quickly. I couldn't really decide on a favorite. However, I like having a list of Congress' GOP majority's actions resolutely failing to create, and mostly even failing to address, jobs.

This isn't totally subtle, but it is a list, and it is satire. I think.

Eastern Bantu Prefixes and Stupid Americans

I really meant to write about more than just the books I've finished, and not gotten too busy to write about. (I recently read Rick Riordan's Son of Neptune, the very enjoyable seventh Percy Jackson novel, but nothing irreversible happens in it, and not much is revealed in it, except for two new, kinda fun characters, so I didn't really have any reaction.)

So, in that vein, here's a reaction to something I read while doing image spec research at work. I was looking for a 14 year-old hapa boy (my older son is only 11 but would otherwise suit the character), and found that model-turned-TV-producer (I think) Tyra Banks masterminded a segment of a modeling show (I don't watch TV, and if I did, I don't think I would watch something called "America's Top Model" - I'm not even completely sure that's what her show is called) in which models adopted mixed racial/cultural identities to fit the Hawaiian hapa identity. Only, as one blogger (lost to the mist of ten minutes ago) noted, these were not ethnicities represented in any number on Hawaii. That's stupid, part one.

Stupid, part two is that it all pretty much looks like blackface filtered through a century and a half of increased familiarity with racial and cultural differences and enough political and social sophistication to know that depicting the first not-lily-white president with a bone through his nose is over the top. (Calling him un-American is still OK, though, apparently.) These depictions are very Orientalized (refer to Edward Said, Orientalism) - depictions of people as emblems of cultural and racial difference, posed in costume and makeup to be their identities.

Stupid, part three is the prefixes. One of the models adopted the hapa identity the show called "batswana/polynesian."

Polynesian peoples do have some differences among them, obviously. I felt silly going to the Polynesian Cultural Center in Oahu over a decade ago for one of their performance/luau evenings. It was fun in a Disneyesque way, but with more poi. The creepy part to me was the way the different cultures were represented as variations on grass-skirts, dancing-and-drums, etc. It was unenlightening at best. Still, there is a word "polynesian," built from Greek roots "poly" (many) and "nesos" (islands).

"BaTswana," however, means "Tswana people." One Tswana person is "moTswana." The prefix gives the number and the noun class, a concept shared by Bantu languages, and not Indo-European ones. The simplest way to avoid stupidity when using a Bantu word in a non-Bantu language context is to strip it of the prefix. That would make the imaginary multiethnic label "tswana/polynesian." This is not that hard to find out. The show aired in 2009, according to the websites I read about it. I think there was wikipedia then. Right?

Which is, of course, stupid part four. Going on TV without spending ten minutes on research.

Woe is... George R. R. Martin's Guilt-Ridden Cast of Thousands

George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series starts with betrayal, execution, and a subtly magical bond between animals and people. After A Game of Thrones and most of A Clash of Kings, I have to conclude that it will not let up. We join the tale when the strands are well enfolded, lines of allegiance and affinity blurred and shifting. I read the story and thrill in the narrative, and despair for humanity.

It is a very human tale, setting and animal intelligence notwithstanding. Sure, there are dragons, but unlike in Martin’s partial namesake and obvious forebear Tolkien’s great works, the motives of people, regardless of access to magical power, are the chief cause of misery.

And Martin shapes that misery like a glassblower, with hammer, tongs, and breath. He twists a character’s fond hopes into wanton disregard for consequences, another’s protective instincts into acts that must be hidden from view at the cost of war and kingdom. There are no guiltless characters. Even the most blameless are wracked by guilt for smaller injuries, perceived and real, to relatives, friends, and allies living and dead.

This would all be terribly gloomy and uninteresting if the characters did not seem so terrifically human. They are not made human by being equally bad and good, or by appealing equally to the moral compass of any group of readers. They are made human by doing good and bad things for real reasons. Prince Joffrey is an insufferable prick, for example, and hugely more important in his own eyes even than his greatest manipulators’, but the way he became that is hinted at from his introduction. Nowhere is his bad behavior blamed on his parents’ frosty marriage or the laxness of guidance for a firstborn prince, but we know the type.

The good characters, too, are bad. Some make foolish choices (Jon Snow at the Skirling Pass in A Clash of Kings, for instance. Yet they make foolish choices for intelligible reasons. I despair of Sansa Stark becoming a whole person before she is destroyed, yet Martin seems to be developing a depth there, perhaps only later to kill her off or make her a pawn in an evil scheme. (Another evil scheme, I mean.)

The Lannisters are almost wholly awful, but fascinating to watch. The narrative is full without much of the father Tywin, but he looms menacingly throughout the second book in the series, promising at any moment to burst on the scene – and burn it to the ground. The daughter Cersei never seems to begin to promise a hint of humanity without redoubling her utter awfulness on the rebound. Her twin brother is less subtly awful, yet fascinating to watch. I think other readers may like me keep hoping he gets some comeuppance that sticks.

The other Lannister brother is the most interesting by far of them. Along with the Stark bastard Jon Snow and his trueborn sister Arya, he moves the story through switchbacks and over precipices. The way the three of them literally traverse space in the narrative seems brighter and sharper as well. Many characters end up somewhere distant, but it seems Jon, Arya, and Tyrion have the most interesting journeys.

Martin is a master not only of plot twists involving a cast of thousands, but also of descriptions of place. I was looking at a service stairway in a Chicago subway on my way back from a business trip today, and realized that it was grey, grimy and worn, probably cool and dry to the touch. I realized that my own places – the places I’ve written about in drafts and stuttering starts – lack the fullness of detail that allows readers to imagine themselves doing what the character is doing.

It may be this or it may be the contingent and frail morals of the characters, and it is more likely both, that brings the impossible stories to life.

This is a more significant accomplishment in the case of the part of the story that takes place off the map supplied in the front of the first two books. I can’t decide why I think Martin provides a map, in some detail, of the small continent of Westeros, while having a significant chunk of the story take place across the Narrow Sea, as it’s called in the narrative (but not labeled on the map).

Perhaps it’s because readers are to think of the events and people there as more exotic, but that seems shallow when compared to Martin’s other devices.

It may be that Martin’s map reflects the view of many of his characters, that over-the-seas is unknown, and denies us a view of it as terra cognita. It may also be related to the prevailing view of magic.

This is one of the issues that, to me, bedevils fantasy. Because magic is so widely considered a childlike interest in our culture (at least, magic not cloaked in widely accepted religious faiths), can a fantasy writer appeal to mature audiences with stories about dragons and spells and wizards and potions?

I think the answer lies somewhere near the observation that all of these magical story elements and more exist in the Song of Ice and Fire series. However, many characters major and minor disbelieve, or are skeptical, or come to question their faiths, despite the evidence in the books of such magics. It is a world in which, to borrow phrases and concepts from Janet Rowling, the wizarding community and muggles live side-by-side, aware of each other, and often sliding across the boundaries.

I have a few more chapters left, and then I have to make a fateful decision. Do I continue to race through the available volumes in the series, ensuring that I’ll finish reading years before Martin can come out with another epic volume of this epic, or do I break the spell and read the next book in the pile? This is a hard one.

Midnight for Charlie Bone, by Jenny Nimmo

This was kind of a wild guess, and it worked out. And yet...

I can't recall how I wound up with this - a gift, maybe? I didn't like the title, or the cover, and the beginning of the book didn't move me, but I needed something to read that both the boys (3 1/2 years apart) would enjoy me reading to them at bedtime. It hit the spot.

From my perspective, however, the story felt thin. It's hard to not compare two books about a timid, adolescent English boy with magical gifts escaping his unhappy home situation by entering a dangerous and fascinating magical academy. Unfortunately for Jenny Nimmo, Janet Rowling is a terrific writer, and Harry Potter casts a long shadow.

I don't think Nimmo meant to derive from Rowling's books, and there are certainly no wands or explosions, but Charlie is missing one parent, in mysterious circumstances, has unmanageable hair, and quickly makes two friends and one dreadful enemy at the magical academy.

What actually bothered me about the book was that it felt washed out, paler, thinner. It was like being in the shower when the hot water starts to run out. It's not cold, exactly, but you remember how warm it was just before.

None of the conflicts grabbed me viscerally. I felt bad for Charlie, but in a passing way. And when his uncle Paton (the most interesting character in the book) begins to exert himself, it was never heroic, or startling, just kind of a relief, that someone in the story seemed to care.

I think another unfairness in my impression is that I read the book out loud. It's a slightly different experience, and some books fare better than others. Jeanne Birdsall's Penderwick books feature very small events writ large in the characters' consciousness. In Nimmo's first Charlie Bone book, somewhat the opposite seems to have happened. Portentous events slip by, unappreciated.

As a wannabe writer, I pay attention to this, which may be why, as a reader, it makes this much difference to me. The kids certainly liked the story, and are looking forward to the next installment.

My older son just woke up and confirmed that he loved the book, and it wasn't boring for a second. So there.