August 27, 2008
What’s a YA novel? What’s an “adult” novel?
What’s a YA (young adult) book and what’s an adult book? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second was published as an adult novel, but some reviewers and libraries have categorized it as teen fiction. On the other hand, my friend Stephanie Kuehnert‘s wonderful new book, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, was published as a YA novel, but she’s getting just as many reviews that treat it as that so-called adult novel. What gives?
Well, over at AfterElton.com, author Brent Hartinger wasasked to recommend "gay-themed teen novels” and then wrote, “Here’s a little secret about teen novels: they’re very often read by adults. Why? ...the teen years are truly the ‘universal’ experience: almost every reader on earth is a teenager or they were once.” OK, I have no problem with that on it’s face. Seems like a fair enough argument to me. But a recent New York Times essay by Margo Rabb questions just how much “crossover"--meaning how many adults actually go to the book store, walk into the YA section andpick up a book for themselves--there really is.
Rabb’s point, in my understanding, is that there isn’t much crossover and that the YA label doesn’t get much respect. Rabb relates the following from another author, “’There’s an enormous level of condescension towards Y.A. writing in the literary world,’ said Martha Southgate, whose first novel, Another Way to Dance, was Y.A. She followed it with two adult novels. ‘My first book often gets literally left off my bio,’ she said in a telephone interview.”
Hartinger counters, saying that that he “…thinks that teen novels are far less self-indulgent than many ‘adult’ novels, more tightly plotted and more clearly written (but that’s a whole other discussion),” going on to note that some of his “favorite gay-themed teen novels are The Year of Ice by Brian Malloy, Leave Myself Behind by Bart Yates, How I Paid for College by Marc Acito, The World of Normal Boys by K. M.Soehnlein, and Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. I’ve also heard mostly good things about Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You by Peter Cameron…”
The only problem I have with this is that of the books he categorizes as teen novels, only Boy Meets Boy and Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You were originally marketed as YA novels. To top it off, the paperback version of Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You will be marketed as an adult novel.
Ultimately, who cares about the category. Hartinger writes brilliant books. I’ve read them without regard to categorization and enjoyed them. A friend of mine who works at a book store here in Chicago says only adults buy them at his store. I know I was one of them.
Ultimately, I think that Michael Cart, a former president of the Young Adult Library Services Association and a columnist for Booklist who is quoted in Rabb’s essay may be the one who’s right. “The line between Y.A. and adult has become almost transparent. These days, what makes a book Y.A. is not so much what makes it as who makes it — and the ‘who’ is the marketing department.”
One final note, Brent said I was “surreally smutty.” I don’t know what that means, but I love it.
Posted by Drew on August 27 at 06:09 PM