Generally speaking, contemporary fiction for teens is much more readable than the literary dreck that is pushed on adults. But the young adult (YA) genre is also, as a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed notes, rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity.
Although this should be obvious to anyone who reads YA novels, some defenders of the genre are getting a bit carried away in defending the value of the works. For example, YA novelist Laurie Halse Anderson recently wrote:
Books don’t turn kids into murderers, or rapists, or alcoholics. (Not even the Bible, which features all of these acts.) Books open hearts and minds, and help teenagers make sense of a dark and confusing world. YA literature saves lives. Every. Single. Day. [emphasis in original]
Alan Jacobs provides some much needed perspective on the issue:
Let’s get serious, people. Everything that has power has power for good and ill. Can we just begin by stating what should be obvious to everyone, that some books — whether for children, young adults, adults, whatever — are good and some are bad? And they’re good and bad in different ways and for different reasons. Some are poorly written but morally sound; some are beautifully written but morally corrupt. Some are bad all round; some are perfectly wonderful.
Of course, there’s no universal accounting for reader response. As G. C, Lichtenberg said, “A book is like a mirror: if an ass looks in, there’s no use expecting an apostle to look out.” Mark David Chapman even found in The Catcher in the Rye a reason to kill John Lennon. People are variable creatures, in their responses to books as in all other things. But there are general tendencies that we can try to understand.
What I’d like to see from these YA writers is less panicky defensiveness and more actual thinking. Admit — please — that some books are bad for some people. Admit that writers can make aesthetic misjudgments, so that certain scenes, or even whole books, can have effects on many readers that they don’t intend. And admit that some writers — yes, even YA writers — are nasty people who write nasty books. And then try to think about what distinguishes a book that is likely to help most of its readers from a book that isn’t.
What books would you put into the “beautifully written but morally corrupt” category?
June 8th, 2011 | 12:08 pm
Anne Tyler comes quickly to mind. Of course, her books aren’t filled with horrible depravity, but the moral universe is just wrong, but in an enticing sort of way.
I avoid books that have any real blatant depravity so I can’t think of any example of that.
The notion that you can defend a whole genre is just ridiculous. I mean, of course with few exceptions, any given genre is defensible as a whole, but to claim that no book in that genre should be criticized because the genre is legitimate is lunacy.
June 8th, 2011 | 12:19 pm
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.
June 8th, 2011 | 1:34 pm
When I was a teen I enjoyed reading Robert Heinlein novels that were written for teens. When I had exhausted all of these books in the children’s section of the public library I ventured into the adult section for the first time just to see if there were any there. I soon devoured those such as Stranger in a Strange Land, and Time Enough for Love. I was extremely injured by these books.
Not too long ago; I attended a meeting held at our High School’s library. I was horrified to see one of those two books displayed prominently on one of the chest high cases. I wondered who would do that to high schoolers!
June 8th, 2011 | 1:37 pm
If we aren’t limiting ourselves to YA fiction, which I almost never read, I would have to say that while I am, in a way, a fan of Daniel Silva’s series about Gabriel Allon, an extremely talented art restorer and also an agent for Israeli intelligence, Gabriel Allon, for all his sensitivity and his professed reluctance to live the life of an intelligence agent, is a ruthless, amoral torturer and mass murderer. Of course, the torturing and killing are all done for a good cause, but if ever there was a series in which the lesson is that the end justifies the means, this is it.
A year or two ago I read a thriller by Brad Thor in which the “good guys” treated al Qaeda terrorists with such hideous brutality that I began to root for them—but only in the book.
It is difficult for me to believe these kinds of books, which in many ways are quite immoral, actually do any harm.
I have always thought the song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” tells an ugly little story.
June 8th, 2011 | 2:43 pm
How about Hermann Hesse novels like Demian and Siddhartha? Good art, bad worldview.
The latest movie that I felt fit this category well was “No Country for Old Men.” Beautiful movie, and represented the worldview of nihilism well. Problem is, it is nihilistic. ;)
June 8th, 2011 | 3:56 pm
I am an unpublished YA writer with an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. I find this discussion and Alan Jacobs full length piece most interesting – it isn’t everyday that you find people outside the YA community talking about the impact of books on young readers, at least not in a reflective, philosophical way. But I’m not surprised by the defense the YA authors have given. It is a well-used mantra to give overselves some kind of hope (and it is often a false one) that all the blood we sweat over our manuscripts matters for something.
As a side note, I’ve never read or heard or attended any book/class/conference/workshop in which YA writers evaluate current YA fiction according to any kind of moral standard. That’s because everything is relative to each writer’s moral position. And boy, does that vary. Such an event or (even the suggestion of such a thing) would be a serious no-no – a faux pas of the highest order. But wouldn’t it be fun?
I always put Philip Pullman’s HIS DARK MATERIALS in the beautifully-written-but-morally-corrupt category. Even included the idea in my MFA graduate lecture in 2003…which was on the topic of “ethical fantasy.” Guess how much of the audience concurred?
June 8th, 2011 | 5:58 pm
The problem with this is the moral injury can be argued from a LOT of books.
Bethany might have heard of Redwall, the hugely popular YA series. That one is incredibly morally dubious when you realize that every single animal in it that is a vermin species is evil, and unredeemable. They also all tend to die, and you get the unintended lesson that evil cant change, and you are good or evil based on your birth.
There was another YA book that really got me. Girl was a werewolf, met a normal boy. She warmed to him, and was having difficulties with the semi-violent pack leader. How did it end? Normal boy is frightened, and girl stays with her pack, Lesson learned, differences are unsurmountable.
Ray, I’d be interested in why you think Ender’s Game is bad. I’m not a fan of the whole “kid fighting our wars and the destruction of life as a video game.” Keep in mind though, Ender’s Game is NOT a YA novel, and that it won the Hugo Award from your mostly atheistic peers.
June 8th, 2011 | 6:09 pm
Oh, the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. Beautiful, complex, and enchanting, but Pullman’s understanding of the universe is eerily perverse. Not just because the heroes of the story are trying to kill God, either. Somehow, almost everything about it is wrong.
June 8th, 2011 | 7:10 pm
Some critics are unable to disentangle the presentation of evil (say, Dinah’s rape and the subsequent massacre of her attacker’s people) from the advocacy for evil. Maybe Genesis isn’t the best example, there …
Immoral themes are only a problem in literature when they are not discussed. Conservatives are at a disadvantage, perhaps. If you’re going to talk about Pullman, why aren’t you going to talk about a controversial point in theology (like women’s ordination), too?
Suffice it to say if you’re not bothering to talk about books, movies, music, and tv with your kids, then sure: limit their reading. But libraries and schools aren’t responsible to do what some parents are too lazy to do for themselves (or for their kids).
June 9th, 2011 | 8:02 am
Dblade, the actual words “Ender’s Game” in my comment above link to an essay that I think makes the case rather well. As to the Hugo… it’s an award for art, not moral instruction – and I do agree that the book is “beautifully written”.
June 10th, 2011 | 8:57 am
I don’t know about that. I think the whole point of Ender’s Game is the manipulation of Ender. They never really tell him the games he plays aren’t games, but use actual people towards the end. Peter abuses both him and his sister in his pursuit of power. The entire situation itself is abusive in that the human military is using children to fight their battles. Reading the later “sequels” like shadow puppets shows that a lot of the children come from abusive or often deadly situations.
The whole reason to choose children is to make sure you don’t have people even able to understand or question the moral intentions of their actions. Children also don’t have the ability to fight back. The essay is meh because to be evil means to have some nature or awareness of what exactly you are doing. Everyone hid that from him, and it’s only really at the end do we learn what the story of the game was: the eradication of an entire race, and each little blip in the game was humans he sent to death.
The problem in marketing this to YA is not that people think Ender is moral, they think he is cool. he is a symbol of powerlessness, not empowerment. That powerlessness (and the realistic nature of it: Ender is the ultimate child soldier. How many children can really resist or even fathom adult authority?) is why he isn’t blamed for the genocide. A child soldier is a product of his culture and is a weapon.
Unfortunately that does get hidden. It’s more a problem I think in trying to market a book to an entirely different audience. If you want to judge it based on moral messages, I’d hold it to the standard of adult SF. This is also an argument not to cross market books: YA readers LOVE dystopias and see the heroes as rebelling against authority. They see Ender surviving a corrupt system, the bullying and fighting, and him showing skill: moral reflection can get lost in it.
It also annoys me slightly that Card gets hit a lot based on being Mormon and conservative: there’s a lot of needed criticism on the “favored” books and authors, and not just on the unpopular ones. The Hunger Games for example: Katniss through the entire series is manipulated as much as Ender was, and by such caused a tremendous loss of life. Only this time, the “good” guys won, nearly almost losing their soul.
Sorry for the rant, YA fiction is dear to me, and often ignored in serious criticism.
June 13th, 2011 | 8:54 am
Dblade –
Since Ender’s Game unquestionably is marketed to kids, I still think the essay is spot on – “beautifully written but morally corrupt”.
Well, Card also stakes out public positions on political issues; gotta expect to get attention when you’re trying to draw it.
June 15th, 2011 | 3:41 pm
I found Will Grayson, Will Grayson to be extremely offensive. The story line was not bad — about a gay young man finding himself. It was the explicit language that was not necessary to tell the story. Why do we have to use shock value when the message should be enough?
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