Oh internet, I see you are being naughty again posting articles sure to infuriate those of us who read those horrible populist books. A few weeks back romance novels were slammed, this week it is the turn of Young Adult fiction and the adult readers of YA to be harassed. Evidently reading either romance or YA if you are an adult is equivalent to being caught eating a Twinkie on the sly. At the very least we populist readers should be embarrassed, at most reading this type of material will evidently cause some sort of horrible brain lesions incapacitating any intellectual spark we might have once had.
These arguments flare up periodically and they always amuse me as the people making these assumptions always assume, quite broadly, that someone who reads a Rick Riordan, or a Nora Roberts never ever picks up anything “literary” that the Aimee Benders; the Joyce Carol Oates; the Richard Powers; the Tobias Wolffs are never read by the same audience. They also assume that genre fiction (and I’ll use the term genre for YA for the time being even though YA isn’t a genre) has nothing of substance or literary merit. When one timidly points out an author such as Jane Austen could be considered a romance author there is a sort of dismissal, a sort of “well Austen isn’t literary in the way we are talking about”. When it is pointed out that Cormac McCarthy has written a novel of speculative fiction, or that Colin Whitehead has written a horror novel this too is immediately dismissed. They will tell you that McCarthy hasn’t written speculative fiction, he has just used a futuristic setting. Whitehead may have zombies (zombies!) in his book but it isn’t horror. At this point one can only walk away as the argument can never be won.
Personally, it annoys me that even genre lovers will use the argument the “but we do have some literary” works in our canon. Why can’t we enjoy our pleasurable books, why must we fell guilty that we aren’t reading heavy, serious works? After dealing with long commutes, boring jobs, aging parents, illness, problematic children we need escapist fiction and it's a lot cheaper than therapy. I'm not saying we shouldn't include some literary fiber in amongst all that lighter fare but don't insist that everything we read be highbrow.
Finally, the naysayers need to recognize that genre fiction can and does spark the imagination that can then lead to real life innovations. Reading a "frivolous" book can lead to complex explorations of social issues as readily as literary fiction (science fiction anyone) or may lead to explorations of topics that the reader might not have known about. I cannot count the number of times that I've read a light novel and then gone to the library to explore historical periods or biological concepts foreign to me, nor am I alone amongst my fellow genre readers in this respect. As for YA fiction, why not try and understand what teens are interested in or what might be going on in their world, why can they not read something that they might relate to, why must they read adult fiction? They will become adults soon enough and turn their backs on YA. Trust me, I know, I work on a college campus and most of the undergrads view YA as "too young" for them. Until they reach that stage though let them be and let those of us reading our frivolous fripperies be as well. It's not like we're blowing second hand smoke in your face and I promise we also won't turn into drooling idiots . On that note I'm off to scare myself silly with The Bird Box.
