Why teenagers shouldn't read adult books

[author_by_night]

What has become of the literary world?

It is truly offensive to my senses that more and more, you have teenagers read adult books. It completely ignores the fact that fiction is narrow - certain people are supposed to like certain things. If you are not in the intended group, or even in the supposed intended group (as some would argue), the book is not for you. So why, then, are we allowing this absurdity?

Teenagers cannot understand the deep issues presented in adult literature. Let's take To Kill a Mockingbird. The only saving grace of the novel for teens is that the main character ages from six to nine, so not too far from the simple minds of sixteen year olds. There is much to be said for To Kill a Mockingbird, but what do teenagers know of hate, of injustice?  There is nothing in it for them. They aren't capable of that level of depth, because not one single thing in their lives and the world that surrounds them might make them harken back to the novel, either while reading or after they close the book and go on to other ventures.

Teenagers also do not understand social hierarchy, so a novel such as The Great Gatsby is lost on them. Especially the age of Facebook and social media, how on earth could they possibly understand a story about a man who invents himself, who invites hundreds of people into his life, but doesn't really know them, nor do they know (or truly care about) him? Romeo and Juliet is similarly lost on them; two groups of people who hurt each other, which ultimately results in the death of their children, over some feud nobody even appears to remember means nothing. That sort of thing simply does not occur in the world of The Teenager.

Romeo and Juliet also involves love and loss, something teenagers don't know anything about. They haven't ever questioned how real their love for someone is (in the way you might question how in love Romeo and Juliet really were), and what do they know of loss? Of pain? They don't, because they're shallow. They haven't even had to flush a beloved goldfish town the toilet. There is nothing there that any intelligent adult could ever possibly relate to, and vice versa.

Some may argue that while many teenagers might indeed dismiss these novels, others, not so much. They might somehow be able to relate to them, they might be able to see the points I just made - some of them exactly, some of them not so much, but still, people would argue, they'd understand and appreciate them. Besides, not all adult readers enjoy those books either! But that isn't the point. The point is that books were written to be enjoyed by a narrow set of human beings; that's why there aren't any copies of the Bible in languages other than Latin. Let teenagers stick to Sweet Valley High and Gossip Girl; we've got it covered.



(For those of you who might be utterly lost right now, this is a response to an article criticizing adults who read Young Adult literature. For some reason I can't find the link, but I think it's been passed around the internet enough that you should be able to find it somewhere.)

Comments

[rainbowstevie.livejournal.com]

I love this response.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

The article at Slate is here:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/06/against_ya_adults_should_be_embarrassed_to_read_children_s_books.html

And yes, I think your response is excellent. I read Dickens at 9 and Narnia at 15. I don't think reading them "in the wrong order" did me any harm.

Also, one of my favorite conversations with my dad occurred on my way home from summer camp one year. I'd read Gone with the Wind and To Kill a Mockingbird that summer and we discussed everything from legalized segregation -- which had only ended a few years before -- to future racial issues.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Wow. :) That's great. I never read GWTW but I did read TKAM, and it did give way to a lot of deep - and important - conversation.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[nevrafire.livejournal.com]

*massive eye roll*

what is it with the media thinking they know better? or to tell people what they can or cannot do?


the article was stupid and your response was flawless. (also perfectly snarky in a great way )

[arctic-comet.livejournal.com]

It's sad that some people are so narrow-minded that they never read any kids/YA books and think it's their business to judge people who do.

[stereolightning.livejournal.com]

HA! This is a great response. :)

[quinns-crossing.livejournal.com]

Our daughter read Sweet Valley, Goosebumps and later the Fearless series. After a while, she lost interest in them and moved on to something else. We were just happy that she was reading books.

During high school, she became a lifelong fan of Barbara Kingsolver's writing. In fact, she is the one who introduced me to the author.

[mollywheezy.livejournal.com]

Your response is brilliant. I just read the article to which you were responding, and I want to ask that author, "What crawled up your butt and died?" Especially regarding her commentary on TFioS. I help dying people for a living, do grief counseling, have led groups like that portrayed in TFioS, but of course, I'd have no interest in reading a book that offers an excellent treatment of various ways that both teens and adults deal with anticipatory grief. I don't roll my eyes at YA fiction, but I was sure rolling my eyes reading the article, and find your beautifully snarky response spot on.

[ragnarok-08.livejournal.com]

You are so right - this response is so well written.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think we should have EXACT ages written on each book because every single person's reading level and life experiences are the same when they are younger anyway. That way parents can just buy the books labeled for their child and know that they will be able to read it and enjoy it.

(you had way too much fun with this post :P)

[vivaciousmuse.livejournal.com]

This is my favorite response!

[white-serpent.livejournal.com]

Quite honestly, the Slate article reminded me of my tenth grade English teacher who thought I should stop reading fantasy and start reading something worthy like biographies. (This went so nicely with the fact that she was the only high school teacher who gave people gold stars and had people apply for exciting jobs like paper-passer-outer. The combination of treating us like we were in elementary school and deriding books I enjoyed was not a good one. She was not among my favorites, as I'm sure you can imagine.)

If people like to read, why stop them? I really don't enjoy reading most of the gloomy books of the literary canon, and I don't really want my hobby to become work. I spend quite enough time working, thank you.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

See, I think shitty ideologies like that are partly WHY teens don't read. It's sad. While I have nothing against recommended reading lists, sometimes they're not lists for kids, they're book lists for the approval of academia. Out of the fifty kids who got the list, five of them are going to want to read Wuthering Heights. There's nothing wrong with telling a kid to read Jane Austen or To Kill a Mockingbird or anything else, I think in fact they should be reading those, but it's not like you either read classics or nothing.

Although as far as biographies are concerned,... sadly I think fiction is sometimes considered a bit "low brow", too.

(Sorry for the edits, typing too fast.)

[white-serpent.livejournal.com]

Well, I agree that there's a definite hierarchy in people's minds about what constitutes worthy reading. Nonfiction (and specific subcategories among such) seems to be at the top of the hierarchy. Reading history, etc. seems to be the way you prove you're an intellectual. (Now, whether you're able to draw any lessons from what you read is another question altogether.)

(One of the books I keep meaning to buy on this subject is highbrow/lowbrow: http://www.amazon.com/Highbrow-Lowbrow-Emergence-Hierarchy-Civilization/dp/0674390776/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403137879&sr=1-1&keywords=highbrow+lowbrow. I haven't gotten around to it yet.)

My husband suggests that I (and a friend) probably experience fiction a bit differently than the people who write articles talking about how we need to read deep fiction. So, you probably cannot get me to read the Mayor of Casterbridge. It was on the syllabus of an English class I took in college, but we didn't get to it. (I would have read it if required, but, given I escaped that, I'm not going to bother.) I probably wouldn't jump at Tess of the d'Urbervilles, either.

I identify very strongly with viewpoint characters in fiction. If I find them unlikable, I don't want to read the book. Given that I identify with them, I don't like to see them suffer. (If they suffer and get a happy ending, I'm okay. If they get a happy ending and book 2 brings them back to more suffering... not so much.) So, I really don't find "how someone deals with suffering" or "seeing how bad the world is" to be a valid reason for me to read a book; I don't find it uplifting, I find it depressing and exhausting. I can take a non-viewpoint character suffering, because there's more distance. ...But, again, I don't really want to read fiction to see how miserable the world is.

If I want to see how someone deals with suffering or how bad the world is... I read nonfiction. That allows me more distance. I can still empathize with the real people, of course, but I don't get as trapped in it as I do in fiction.

I will occasionally read biographies, but I'm not clear why biographies are of particularly more value than any other nonfiction. Am I supposed to pattern my life after someone in a biography? Admire them because they are great? See how we are similar or dissimilar? I really don't get why they're specifically more valuable than anything else.

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

I love this response of yours!
What I find idiotic is that people seem utterly confused by the idea that the whole YA thing is just a marketing strategy and doesn't actually have anything to do with who reads what -_-

Also they tends to be the genera were you can still have a sense of wonder and not you know grim dark angst.

I saw a post pointing out that this is pretty much just replaced Fantasy and Romance as not being taken seriously which IMHO is just yet another sign that things perceived as heavily enjoyed by girls and women will usually be called out as stupid by snotty reviewers. >.>