Vulture’s been running some stories on YA fiction this week in recognition of the long-awaited Veronica Roth release later this month. Among the most interesting articles was one in which Jenn Doll “comes clean,” so to speak, as an adult YA addict.
Adults reading YA is an old enough phenomenon that it shouldn’t inspire any shame by now; and Doll, to her credit, betrays no embarrassment in her taste in books.
She’s got some good theories about why adults like to read YA—some of them almost exclusively—though she can’t quite avoid falling into the old literary/not-literary trap:
It should be noted that I read plenty of things written by and meant for adults. I can stand tall as I show them off on the subway. But adult as they are, they don’t always captivate me the way YA does. Those are the books I read in a one-night rush, staying up until three in the morning to find out what happened, and when I do, sighing in pleasure because the heroine really does get the guy, the world has been saved, the parents finally understand, or there is at least the promise of things working out in the end. Adult books may be great literature, but they don’t make me feel the same way.
Ugh.
Will we ever be able to get past the notion that choosing between literary fiction and [fill in the blank] is not, in fact, akin to the choice between eating our vegetables or having an extra slice of cake instead? Some things taste great and are good for you, too. It’s time to have a conversation about genre that moves beyond “lit fic is deep and meaningful but genre is so much fun!”
So, with that in mind, here are two theories of my own about why so many adults are getting into YA these days:
1. Adolescence is inherently dramatic. Most great literature focuses on characters in transition. This is how things were, then something happened—and nothing was the same. That’s the basic movement of every great story. And this is what adolescence is like. In the space of a few short years, you move from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to experience, from naivete to knowledge. There are major transitions that happen at other times in life, of course, but adolescence is the most intense—and everyone gets one. There’s no mistake that some of the best works of literature in history focus on adolescent characters: Romeo and Juliet, Huckleberry Finn, Jane Eyre. Today’s YA writers aren’t hacks laboring shamefully in some lesser category; they’re artists working in a well-established literary tradition.
2. YA books kick ass. YA books are awesome. They’re known for being extremely entertaining and pleasurable to read, but they’re also frequently complicated, thematically rich, and deeply meaningful. Full stop. In fact, if we’re ever going to get beyond the false “literary : genre :: vegetables : dessert” analogy, we could do a lot worse than look to contemporary YA. Yes, the category has its fair share of duds, like any other—but I can think of no other section in the bookstore that has a higher percentage of awesomely entertaining stories that also happen to be stone-cold works of art.
Completely agree! Aaaand, disagree a little. For me, not all YA is the same. There is deep, richly textured YA, and fluff fun YA, and terribly written generic YA, and educational message-driven YA, and crossover YA, and hilarious YA and… And I’d say that some authors aren’t artists. There’s nothing shameful about writing formulaic stories commercially and there is nothing shameful about reading it. Writing can be art, writing can be a job, writing can be a lifestyle, writing can be all of the above and more, but I’d say none of those are absolutely in being an author.
When I talk YA with my reading friends, we usually pinpoint which branch we’re talking about because you don’t compare Meyer to Roth to Duane to the Hobbit to Diana Wynne Jones to Narnia.
It’s like talking a genre of music - “Yeah, I listen to rock. You listen to classical?”
Meaningless without specificity if you’re talking to someone who knows anything about music.
That’s a great point. I agree with you! I paint YA with a broad brush here, but actually you’re 100% right—the quality and seriousness of intent runs the gamut. People tend to lump things together in YA, but at this point it’s such a broad category that it encompasses all genres and levels of quality.
I do think, though, that regardless of this variation in quality, if you’re looking for an entertaining read that’s also a really meaningful experience, you have your best chance, percentage-wise, of finding it in the YA section. Those books are hard to find anywhere, but they seem to be really dense in the YA shelves these days.
Those books are hard to find anywhere, but they seem to be really dense in the YA shelves these days.
Mmmm, maybe. But to play the devil’s advocate, just as dense in the YA is the teen paranormal romance subgenre which (to paint in those same broad strokes) can be incredibly generic and melodramatic in a not-good way if you’re not in that kind of mood. If you don’t know where to start in YA, you’re most likely to end up there and then come away ready to judge everyone and anyone who admits to being an adult who reads YA.
My gut instinct when you said “if you’re looking for an entertaining read that’s also a really meaningful experience,” my knee jerk reaction was “Wait, wait, fantasy and science fiction! Detective novels! Urban fantasy!!” Those happen to be my default genres, hah, so I completely admit that I’m completely biased.
I’m biased, too—those are some of my favorite genres! Particularly detective novels. Ah, if only we all had a benevolent guide to the genre shelves to steer us toward the best of each category.
I think we’re on to something here, comparing YA to adult fantasy. In my experience, some of the best YA books are fantasy. So maybe it’s not just the fact that they’re YA that makes them great, but that they’re fantasy as well.