The Real Problem with Teen Lit
Mark the occasion -- I'm actually agreeing with Tim Rutten's assessment that a lot of today's teen lit is garbage.
He's right that it isn't the fact that the books are being turned into commodities through slick packaging -- that's been happening for decades, as any fan of Nancy Drew (as I was) can attest.
No, it's that too many publishers have, indeed, forgotten that "young readers, more than any others, want to be transported and shown not just other lives but whole worlds utterly different from their own," as Rutten notes. Instead, they get "a focus-group-driven literature of solipsism."
But I'd add one point: Even solipsistic books can be excellent if they speak to smething real and true in teen life. Instead, as I've learned through my recent experience reading teen chick novels, many of the books are vulgar, rotten to the core and profoundly unrealistic (the heroines of Cecily von Zienegasar's "Gossip Girls" series seem to do little besides party and engage in heavy flirting -- to use a euphemism -- and somehow win acceptance to Ivy League schools, notwithstanding a penchant for shoplifting and cheating on tests).
It's the literary equivalent of arsenic-spiked cotton candy: Although at first exposure it may seem like easy, entertaining reading, it leaves a bad aftertaste and is profoundly bad for the young girls reading it. If this is the stuff being purveyed to them, it's easy enough to understand why some teens may eschew reading.
He's right that it isn't the fact that the books are being turned into commodities through slick packaging -- that's been happening for decades, as any fan of Nancy Drew (as I was) can attest.
No, it's that too many publishers have, indeed, forgotten that "young readers, more than any others, want to be transported and shown not just other lives but whole worlds utterly different from their own," as Rutten notes. Instead, they get "a focus-group-driven literature of solipsism."
But I'd add one point: Even solipsistic books can be excellent if they speak to smething real and true in teen life. Instead, as I've learned through my recent experience reading teen chick novels, many of the books are vulgar, rotten to the core and profoundly unrealistic (the heroines of Cecily von Zienegasar's "Gossip Girls" series seem to do little besides party and engage in heavy flirting -- to use a euphemism -- and somehow win acceptance to Ivy League schools, notwithstanding a penchant for shoplifting and cheating on tests).
It's the literary equivalent of arsenic-spiked cotton candy: Although at first exposure it may seem like easy, entertaining reading, it leaves a bad aftertaste and is profoundly bad for the young girls reading it. If this is the stuff being purveyed to them, it's easy enough to understand why some teens may eschew reading.
posted by LadybugUSA at 4:21 PM
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