Nick Hornby, Shakespeare Wrote for Money
On a snowy Spring Break morning, I’m buying John Steinbeck’s East of Eden at Third Place Books. I thump it on the counter and the bookseller sighs affectionately, stroking its second-hand cover before warning that “this book made me hate the human race.” Taken aback, I peer down at the novel, the one praised by some of my most important and respected literary influences. I’ve been thinking vaguely that it looks longer than I expected; I hadn’t dreamed that it is heavy with the weight of human wickedness.
“Hate the human race?” I repeat blankly.
“I mean, it’s beautiful. But by the end of it, I just wanted to murder one of the characters. Really. I wanted to find her and kill her.”
I try—and fail—to find the appropriate response to this declaration. My lack of experience with Steinbeck leaves me unable to continue the conversation in any direction, so I’m relieved when she moves on to ringing up the other book. It is a recent release, a book that an English teacher might be forgiven for not having read and loved by the time she’s twenty-four. I mutter something about its being recommended by a student, then quickly put both books away, as the literate salesperson returns to praise of Steinbeck.
Even as I leave, though, I am mystified by her words about East of Eden, which I reduce down to “beautiful but awful.” Of course I have read dozens of books that express horror in terms of shocking beauty. If life itself can encompass both the lovely and the broken, I shouldn’t be surprised that excellent fiction reflects that truth. (I wonder why we love this so much. Is it because we are so jaded that we won’t believe in beauty unless it is wrapped around pain? Or because we would never take on extra pain, by reading it in books, unless it were expressed in a beautiful way?) This mini-review at the book counter reminds me of the distancing language of fine art and fashion critics. It also reminds me that I have been reading in a friendlier section of the literary world for a while. I’ve been reading books written for teenagers.
Though I’ve always been a secret fan of young adult fiction, my formal investigation of the genre started only this school year. Back in November, I was wandering around the classroom during a lesson and discovered six or seven novels on top of as many students’ desks. The desktop, territory technically forbidden to all but class materials, is sacred space for ninth graders. It’s where they like to keep thick binders covered with photos, or cell phones and iPods if they can get away with it. Books are almost never found up there. I was curious about the novels that the self-proclaimed book haters had left out, waiting for me to stop talking so that they could return to where they’d left off. I picked up the first one I found, eliciting a cry of dismay from the girl who was halfheartedly writing in her class journal.
“Don’t!” she wailed. “It’s Twilight!”
I scanned the cover, black and red and ominous. So this was the book that was causing all the commotion. The first in Stephanie Meyer’s series regarding the relationship between the human Bella Swan and the vampire Edward Cullen, Twilight and the other three novels have been changing hands several times a week in our school library. “The next Harry Potter!” kids cheered. “Trashy, but so fun,” shrugged the few adults I knew who had read the series. The most striking review had come more than a year ago, from a shy and brilliant student, whose approval is rare and whose taste I respect more than most. “They’re… they’re just really nice books,” he had sighed back then.
In an effort to become conversant in teenager, I started reading. Twilight, a frantic and repetitive account of Bella discovering and falling for Edward in the gloomy town of Forks, occupied most of a sick day in November, and I closed it with both alarm and curiosity. It tempted me to disagree with Mr. Hornby’s generous assessment of YA fiction: I found it neither smart, complicated, deeply felt, nor deeply meant.
Still, at the snail's pace of one book a month, I finished the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, a few weeks ago. I bored my friends and roommates with criticism that ranged from literary (“These are really terrifying if you attach any symbolism at all to them”) to petulant (“Honestly, if she uses the word ‘dazzling’ to describe Edward one more time…”). I skimmed, read ahead, read and reread the endings a long time before I had earned the knowledge: in short, I read the books poorly and haphazardly. But I was consumed with curiosity on a few points:
1. Why has Edward Cullen, a century-old vampire so arrogant that he constantly claims to know what’s best for his fragile human beloved, become the ideal man for legions of young (and even adult) women?
2. How have these books become so overwhelmingly popular without the aid of common literary devices, like narrative arc or interesting characters?
3. What does this popularity tell about the tastes of young people, who hate most other books and can’t get enough of these?
4. What on earth will happen to these flat characters in their always-cloudy world?
Having finished the series, I now concede that while each novel stands poorly on its own, taken together the four create a fairly compelling narrative. Chapters lead fluidly from one to the next, demanding to be read quickly in that magical suspension of disbelief that forms the foundation of escapist fiction. Even the characters, which I at first found bland and static, took on some shape, especially Edward the vampire and his werewolf competition, Jacob Black. The writing is straightforward and emotional, two magic components for young readers.
Yet, while the causes of the series’ popularity are no longer a mystery, it continues to concern me somewhat. The most common theme in the YA fiction I’ve read is the search for individual purpose in worlds that seem to package meaning in impossible forms. I read John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines at the same time as New Moon (Twilight #2), and I was struck by the contrast. Though both protagonists work through the world-shattering of ended relationships, Green’s Colin Singleton decides to engage on a quest to matter to the world in a larger sense than having had nineteen girlfriends named Katherine. Bella Swan, on the other hand, dissolves into a pool of nothingness, revealing how completely, in the short span of a few hundred pages, she found meaning solely in the worship of someone else. Throughout the novel I tried, again and again, to remember what Bella had been like before Edward, or outside of him, but I came up short. She is a character without tastes, interests, or hobbies. When, in the last few books, she invests in a friendship apart from Edward, the endeavor threatens her sense of self-worth, seeming to shake the foundations not just of her relationship, but her entire identity.
The Twilight Saga makes me wonder if writers of fiction for young people bear any responsibility to their readers for content or message. Children’s literature is governed mostly by the tastes of parents, who choose the books for their children. Perhaps toddlers would like more books with profanity and existential themes, but since they can neither read nor buy the books themselves, none are published. Young adults have enough disposable income to govern, at least in part, the content of books written for them. But are they discerning enough to realize what that content means? As an adult I can read The Great Gatsby as social commentary and Romeo and Juliet as a series of irrational decisions leading to tragedy; as a teenager, I might have taken them at face value, loving the romance in both.
While the treatment of sex and substance abuse in YA fiction is a charged issue, starting valid discussions about realism in the genre, the discussion of education provides more common ground. A reverence for education is perhaps the most absolute value preached to adolescents. In the Twilight books, the every-woman protagonist mocks the idea of higher education, consistently demeaning her own capacities by comparing herself to her vampire lover. Bella’s only concept of the future involves spending eternity with him by becoming an immortal vampire herself. In the fourth book, she makes a brief concession to attend college for the most bizarre reason imaginable, but this is quickly snuffed out by the demands of motherhood and immortality.
As I start East of Eden, I realize that young people are also looking for the mixture of beautiful but awful in the books they read, simply because they experience a world as intense and imperfect as the rest of us. I struggle with the worth of Twilight because it offers neither the heartbreaking beauty nor the critical awfulness of the best books. I have finished the series wanting to tell kids to read J.K. Rowling for fantasy, Jane Austen for romance, John Green for humor, and a variety of graphic novels for coherent reflections on the meaning of growing up. I probably will tell them, in fact. Or maybe I’ll stop complaining, and write something for them myself.
2 comments:
Having read East of Eden over 30 years ago, I still remember writing a paper on two words that struck me as the great hope for mankind, "thou mayest", in reference to the evil that seemed irresistible. I'll enjoy chatting w/ you when you've finished it.
My English Major sister recommended East of Eden to me for years, and I avoided it simply because of it's unapproachable length. When I finally gave it a try I was amazed by the surprising ease with which I became engrossed in the story, loving and hating characters with more passion that I often feel towards real people. It quickly became one of my all-time favorite books. I'm glad you are reading it!
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