by Roger Sutton
In its beginnings, young adult literature was a subset of children’s literature, YA books being published by the same publishing divisions as children’s books were. But while you could find a children’s book on just about any subject, YA limited itself to realistic (more or less) treatments of contemporary teen life. Through the 1980s, the genre was overwhelmingly populated by short novels set in the present, often with a first-person teen narrator (who was most often white), about some aspect of teen life. The canvases and casts of characters were small, and the plots generally followed a formula: a teen has a problem of a personal nature, has some melodrama, learns (along with readers) about the problem’s parameters, and overcomes it. Happy endings were the rule, one most famously broken by Robert Cormier, who, in novels such as The Chocolate War and I Am the Cheese let the bad guys win. There were some expert practitioners, such as M. E. Kerr (Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!; Gentlehands) and Richard Peck (Are You in the House Alone?; Remembering the Good Times), who brought distinctive voices and humor to the genre, but it was a fairly narrow field. But YA books were only ever meant to be one aspect of teenage reading. Along with problem novels and teen romance paperbacks, teens were reading such popular adult authors as Stephen King, V. C. Andrews, and Mary Higgins Clark. Teenagers provided the backbone of science fiction and fantasy publishing, and almost all of their nonfiction interests were served by books for adults. “YA literature” has never been synonymous with “what teenagers read.”
Problem novels have remained popular while they gained in sophistication. In Laurie Halse Anderson’s 1999 Speak, high-school freshman Melinda isn’t talking, barely managing monosyllabic responses in class and at home, silently enduring the taunts of classmates for her having called the cops to a party the previous summer. Her inner narration, though, is powerfully acidic as she epigrammatically catalogs the meannesses, both petty and deep, of high-school life: “Nothing good ever happens at lunch. The cafeteria is a giant sound stage where they film daily segments of Teenage Humiliation Rituals. And it smells gross.” Eventually, we learn that Melinda was raped by an older boy, Andy, at that party, and the book ends with Melinda holding a shard of glass to his neck while she reminds him of what she had said at the party: “I said no.” While the success of Speak inspired a flurry of teen novels about elective muteness, those rather missed what made Anderson’s book so magnetic. Speak is about a girl on her own with a terrifying secret. She is silent but watchful and smarter than just about everyone else in the story. You can see how this might be appealing. Silent and watchful and feeling smarter is part of what being a reader is all about. And Speak spoke to undedicated readers as well: the voice is smart and ironic but the style is crisp and immediate, and the fact that we don’t know for quite a while exactly why Melinda isn’t talking gives the book suspense.
It’s worth repeating that Speak and other “problem novels” aren’t meant to be read as problem solvers: in real life, a girl in Melinda’s situation doesn’t need a book; she needs help. Books help, yes; reading helps, but it’s not a case of connecting the dots. If you were a girl in Melinda’s situation, the last thing you might want is a book that comes that close. But if you’re a girl who feels different, misunderstood, maybe isolated (that is, if you feel like a reader), then this book could speak to you.
A counterpoint to Speak for boys could be Walter Dean Myers’s Monster, published the same year. In the beginning of the book, Steve is jailed and awaiting trial for his alleged participation in a Harlem drugstore holdup that left the proprietor dead. No one is accusing Steve of the shooting or even of being in the store at the time; he’s instead charged with casing the joint to make sure no customers would be there to witness the robbery. In court, Steve insists he wasn’t even in the store that day, much less a co-conspirator, but . . . let’s just say that Myers applies the standard of reasonable doubt to a whole lot of things in this novel, trusting his readers to find the truth. The first recipient of the Printz Award, Monster manages to be that rare thing, both reader-friendly and risk-taking. Structured as a screenplay for a movie written, directed, and “starring sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon as the Boy on Trial for Murder!” the book looks easy and fun to read, comprised mostly of dialogue and directions for settings and camera shots, with occasional grainy screen caps and handwritten excerpts from Steve’s journal. At the same time, though, Myers is insistently reminding us that everything we’re learning is from Steve’s POV. It’s a remarkably strategic use of first-person perspective in a genre where narrators can almost always be taken at their word. As is usual in YA literature, we’re encouraged to identify with the protagonist, but the close questioning of his public defender and the prosecutor and the testimony of the robbers nibbles at our empathy, putting us in the interesting situation of identifying with the perhaps-guilty, not a frequent position for young adult readers, as readers, to be in. They can handle it.
From the 1990s, though, and perhaps precipitated by an increase in the numbers of teens, YA publishing broadened. The books got longer, and fantasy and science fiction, horror fiction, historical fiction, verse novels, and nonfiction joined traditional contemporary realism. There is more humor, too, mostly chick-lit romance comedy of the Bridget Jones’s Diary ilk. Perhaps most significantly, the YA books of today more often assume a high-school readership rather than the younger teens who once provided the largest audience for problem novels and Sweet Dreams romances: the “Gr. 7 and up, Age 12 and up” designation became “Gr. 9 and up, Age 14 and up.” This is not necessarily because they are racier but because they are becoming more complex and in some cases indistinguishable from serious adult fiction.
The wild success of Bridget Jones’s Diary not only inspired a whole genre of adult chick lit; it spawned junior versions as well, like Louise Rennison’s popular, likable books about Georgia Nicolson. Ye Shall Know Them By Their Pink Covers! In turn, these lightly romantic comedies were inevitably joined by some faster big sisters. Series like Gossip Girl feature fairly hard-core “mean girls,” boozing, and sex. While paperback junk has always been part of the teenage reading menu, Gossip Girl and the like don’t make even the feeblest of gestures toward being “good for you.” They provide a kind of Go Ask Alice vicarious thrill, but that of hot boys and glamorous clothes rather than drugs and running away.
When does a young adult book become an adult book? Whether there is a genuine distinction between books for children and books for adults, and what that distinction might be, are questions at the heart of children’s literature scholarship. Writing in 1974, British critic John Rowe Townsend, acknowledging its difficulty, essentially threw up his hands at the question, saying “a children’s book is one that appears on a publisher’s children’s list.” But young adult books won’t let us off that easily. Some books, for example, are adult books in one country and YA books here, or the other way round — The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is an adult book here, but in the UK it was published as both young adult and adult — likewise for The Spell Book of Listen Taylor by Jaclyn Moriarty, published as an adult book in Australia but then re-edited for YA here. These publishing vagaries are generally dictated by marketing departments and differing national conceptions of “teen reading,” but readers need not pay attention. High-school readers should and will choose their books from all over the place. They read best sellers: teens in no small part were responsible for the blockbuster success of Flowers in the Attic and A Child Called “It.” The teen audience is crucial to sales of science fiction, fantasy, and graphic novels.
Adolescence is also a time for first efforts in ambitious reading, like the Russian classics, or big-theory (and big-ass) books like Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged or Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. Despite their appeal for generations of teen readers, such books contradict received wisdom on What Teens Like. They do not star teen characters, they are not about the problems of everyday life, and they often employ an array of narrative strategies beyond the first person. But the
same teen who is tackling big-theme, large-cast books may at the same time be reading Gossip Girl or even, at the end of a very tough day, Harry the Dirty Dog. The point of being a skilled reader is not to read increasingly difficult books, it’s to allow you scope: the pianist who has mastered the Piano Sonata in D by Mozart doesn’t forswear his earlier Sonata in C simply because it’s easier to play.
Books don’t know who reads them, but books for adults assume the reader is their equal. And it follows that, as readers, you and your teenage children are equals, too. (If not competition — my mother and I spent a week stealing Sidney Sheldon’s The Other Side of Midnight back and forth from each other.) Feel free to share, but leave your kid plenty of room and privacy. The current vogue for book clubs might lead one to think that the primary goal of reading is to have something to talk about with your friends. While books do provide a durable kind of social glue, you might find that your child is not especially interested in sticking to you. He or she will probably be more interested in the pursuit or discovery of like-minded souls, both within the pages of books and in like-minded fellows who see the brilliance of, for example, Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett or Francesca Lia Block. Should your child invite you in, by all means accept, but don’t make the first move. Let your kid lead. Books require — and provide — privacy and independence.
William Shakespeare asked, “To be, or not to be?” The Clash sang, “Should I stay or should I go?” Same conflict, different cadence. Charles Darwin posited the survival of the fittest. Snoop Dogg touts the dominance of the illest. Same attitude, different argot.
Brows come in high- and low-. Unfortunately for artist Frida Kahlo, actor Josh Hartnett, and Bert the Muppet, they also come in uni-. But unlike unibrows on faces, unibrow literature — the union of academy and street into a work that enlightens and entertains — is a thing of beauty. It has the power to bring into the literary fold young adults who are not merely reluctant readers but those who are downright averse to the written word.
As a young adult novelist, I aim for the tale and the telling that together will convey, in the cultural vernacular of the reader, my intellectual values. The transmission of moral values I leave to the literati preachers. My books house teen mothers, high-school dropouts, shoplifting homeboys, preppy drug dealers, and girl arsonists. A few characters are gay; others are straight. Most strive to achieve a positive goal; some seek little more than their idle, pointless status quo. But it is not only the down-and-(nearly-)out who are represented. The cast also includes paralegals, college kids, teenage entrepreneurs, computer-savvy project girls, and budding artists.
I have been asked why the books I write don’t paint a clear, bright line of judgment with regard to situations I depict, such as teenage pregnancy, vandalism, or fistfights. One person asked me simply why I didn’t “get on a soapbox.” Well, soapboxes are for soap, and soap is for washing clean. Books give off light, and light reveals the dirty, the clean, and the in-between. It is more important to me that young people read than that they behave well. Put more provocatively, closed legs are good, but an open mind is better.
I am not drawn to the pulpit — it is the podium that inspires me. And from my podium I write up, not down, to readers. I write about, although obviously not exclusively for, black teenagers. And contrary to what appears to be conventional wisdom, I see no problem evoking both T. S. Eliot and Missy Elliott, lacrosse and basketball, buggin’ out and Sturm und Drang, pumpkin soup and BBQ spareribs, and generally whipping up a rich unibrow mix of do-rags, private schools, collard greens, blazers, hoodies, Bill Clinton, rap music, Basquiat, ya mama jokes, Harlem redstones, violin adagios, housing projects, three-story Colonials, baggy jeans, Dostoyevsky, graffiti, and flaming calla lilies.
My novel Brother Hood opens with Nathaniel, a black teenage boy, on a train reading Crime and Punishment — prompting a major publishing figure to suggest that I stop “showing off.” Now, I admit to having something close to a fetish for Fyodor. I have read Crime and Punishment at least three times and his short story “The Double” half a dozen times. So naturally I want others to discover Dostoyevsky’s powerful and engrossing tales. What should Nathaniel have been reading on that train ride home to Harlem? The latest sex, drugs, and gangbanger literature aimed at black teenagers? VIBE magazine? Why not expose kids to the classics along with more contemporary writing? After all, these works have endured through the centuries for a reason — they capture the human experience at its essence and thus withstand time and transcend race.
I receive numerous e-mails from young people. Many are self-described nonreaders who discovered a taste for literature through my books. They identify with and can understand certain language and vocabulary, which reflects how they or their friends talk. They like the humor, which leaves them, as one girl put it, “on tha flo” laughing. They identify with my taste in music and movies (“Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood is my favorite movie, too!”).
My fantasy is that some of those readers will be so delighted that they will follow with brimming curiosity the trails of crumbs I’ve dropped all along their path, right alongside the Ebonics wisecracks and rap lyrics. They will read Crime and Punishment because Nathaniel in Brother Hood made it sound thrilling. They will get a dictionary and look up doppelgänger, enigma, succubus, and xenophobia, words that filled my character Raven Jefferson’s head in Spellbound. Like Chill Wind’s Aisha Ingram, they will marvel at the fact that anyone would sell Manhattan for twenty-four dollars’ worth of trinkets. I hope that everyone will learn the French words that pop up throughout my books and will be so intrigued by my shameless and constant promotion of Paris as the place to be that reader after reader will come and knock at my door. Inside, we’ll dance to Snoop’s latest and, over dinner, discuss Hamlet.
How long will I live? asks Snoop in “Murder Was the Case (Death After Visualizing Eternity).” Shakespeare gives the rapper an “hour upon the stage” to strut and fret. Their respective musings on mortality resonate and flow together like a Sunday sermon’s call and response. It is by offering both that young adult literature will enrich readers.
For years, when my publisher tried to call my books mysteries, I insisted that they’re thrillers. It’s a lowbrow term, connoting blood, guns, and nefarious activities. Basically, thrillers tend to be about nasty people doing bad, illegal, and/or unethical things, although usually there’s also a blameless individual around as protagonist who is endangered body and soul by these bad people and their immoral plans.
Louisa May Alcott wrote thrillers back before she turned into a respectable children’s author. It’s fascinating to get a glimpse of the joy Alcott took in penning tales of seductresses, drug addicts, and murderers. Similarly, readers of thrillers are looking for the vicarious, well, thrill of consorting with people who are no better than they should be, people who are doing things that shock us, make us afraid, and, if we are honest, excite us. Thrillers are a guilty-pleasure type of reading. Mysteries are almost respectable, but thrillers? No.
So it’s certainly tempting to get defensive and declare that a good thriller is constructed from the same ingredients that make any good book: close intellectual attention to the braid of character, plot, and theme; strong writing that uses a considered mix of dialogue, exposition, and action and a minimum of adverbs; etc., etc. But this would be an evasion. Suspense thrillers are indeed different beasts, and writing a good one is not the same as writing any good mainstream literary novel, even when the two share many qualities.
Traditionally, a thriller requires a heroic (or at least semi-heroic) main character and a villain. The two alternately chase and circle each other around some crime. In my novel The Killer’s Cousin, the crimes are concealed in the past. The hero, David Yaffe, is tormented and guilt-ridden. (The tormented hero is a popular American heroic variant: think Raymond Chandler.) So far, so standard. But in this, my first thriller, I got lucky in the characterization of the young villain,
Lily. Because Lily is a child, David can’t confront her physically, no matter how threatening she is. He’s trapped. And therefore, so are the readers of the novel, as they imagine themselves in his place. You cannot, after all, bludgeon an eleven-year-old girl to death. Not even in your imagination. No matter how much you might want to.
The creation of suspense is not simple, I realized. And it is not really about “what happens at the end.” You can’t rely on making the reader afraid by keeping the eventual safety of the main character in doubt, for example. Frankly, the modern reader knows it’s unlikely the hero will die or even sustain a major injury.
This realization caused me to make the reckless choice to give away the ending in my latest thriller. The Rules of Survival is about three children who are at the mercy of a woman who should never have been a mother in the first place. Right on page one, the oldest sibling, Matthew, explains that he is telling the story in retrospect. That all three kids are alive and doing fine. That everybody made it.
Having given away the ending, I was thrown on my resources as a writer to make the journey of the novel terrifying. This meant trying to make “what happens next” exciting and suspenseful, of course. But it also meant trying to find innovative ways to induce shared fear in the reader.
Contemplating the third draft, I had an idea. I rewrote the novel, abandoning the straightforward narrative I had used previously, and turned it into a long letter written by Matthew to his youngest sister. This means that there’s not only an “I” telling the story, but also a “you” listening to the story. And although the “you” is nominally five-year-old Emmy, it’s also you-the-reader — a fact that some readers will notice but that others will accept without considering how it operates on them.
