The Difference Between YA Fiction & Adult Fiction

[mallorys_camera]

I blow hot and cold on Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

The subject matter is interesting to me: I play video games. I’m the only person I know in my age cohort who does. That doesn’t mean I’m the only 70-year-old who plays video games, of course; just that I don’t know any other 70-year-olds who play video games.

Video games are so much more immersive than movies or television.

Also, you can’t fast-forward through them.

I foresee a day in which they become all humans’ primary escapist entertainment of choice—pending that technological advance in which you can download your consciousness in some way, shape, or form into actual gameplay.

My issues with Tomorrow are two:

(1) It’s written like a YA novel. Simple sentence structures; subject->verb->object. This is the difference between YA fiction and so-called “adult” fiction, by the way—not subject matter but sentence structure.

This is a deliberate and very smart choice by Zevin, of course: It expands her readership. Most readers do not like grappling with complicated sentence structures, which is why Tomorrow is gonna sell a lot more copies than Candy House, even though Candy House is the greater book.

Personally, though, I’m a sucker for complicated sentence structures.

(2) I hate its main characters. Hate! In terms of the novel’s chronology, Sam and Sadie, the novel’s two protagonists, are GenXers, but they lack that GenX irony and present more like (ugh!) pious Millennials.

I like GenXers. I ❤️LUV❤️ irony!

I don’t like Millennials. Not only are they preachy and pious, they are also strident and humorless and remarkably obtuse when it comes to subtext.

For a book about playing (which is what gaming essentially is, right?), Tomorrow is singularly humorless. There’s a certain flatness to it. I can practically see Zevin implanting the MacBeth references in the text on, say, her fourth rewrite; they don’t feel organic.

Anyway, I am determined to finish it. Though I keep putting it down. It’s not a book I can immerse myself in. Maybe if it was a video game…

###

Of course, I really shouldn’t be immersing myself in anything on account of I have a staggering amount of work I should be doing.

I’m behind in everything.

Lew actually texted me last night demanding to know whether I’d received his Christmas presents yet, and I have, but I haven’t opened them: They are lying fully wrapped in the midden of junk that is rapidly developing in the middle of my bedroom.

I have no idea why I haven’t opened them, and I am usually very good about sending thank you notes promptly, so WTF, right?

Must. Do. That. Today!

###

I suppose the deal is that having lain off the gummies, I am now feeling the full punch of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Maybe even there’s some kind of rebound effect since, for the most part, I managed to stave the SAD off so successfully these past two months.

I don’t feel depressed so much as I feel mean.

And then I feel ashamed of myself for feeling mean.

I’d love to be strong enough to embrace my inner meanness!

But meanness is one of those qualities that get you shunned by the collective plus, every time I get really into the meanie groove, I am besieged with mental images of the people I’m being mean to as small, helpless babies struggling with tragedies I can’t ever guess.

So, you know. A rigged game.

Comments

[asakiyume]

It’s not a book I can immerse myself in. Maybe if it was a video game… --Hah! I see what you did there.

Yeah, I don't like a flat writing style either :-\

Re: not opening the presents, I know this feeling! I have it happen with letters sometimes. Sometimes I get a letter--a letter from a friend!--and I just. don't open it right away. And sometimes I don't open presents right away. Yeah. It's a mystery...

[mallorys_camera]

Hah! I see what you did there.

It's such fun having a friend who's as into the craft as I am! 😀

At the joints

[bb_lurks_here_too]

Do you find the "generation" memes help you parse people well? I've met my share of humorless, sanctimonious people of all ages, and flexible, supple minds capable of irony exist in all cohorts. Perhaps like many stereotypes, there's some grain of truth, but it's not really worth, for me, considering in looking at any particular person, any more than other half-true stereotypes are. They just get in the way--IMHO.

Re: At the joints

[mallorys_camera]

Weeeell, of course, I am mostly being snarky 'cause it's my diary, and I can whine if I want to, right?

But, yeah. I do think there's a wee bit of truth in the generational archetypes. It's mostly useful not when applied to individuals but when applied to depictions of individuals in books and films.

Re: At the joints

[bb_lurks_here_too]

How do you mean "useful"? To the viewer/reader of those depictions? That seems not right, as the depiction is more or less totally the choice of the creator. So the insufferable Holden Caulfield is that way because Salinger made him thus.

Or do you mean, useful to the creator, because mobilizing stereotypes allows the author to assume they'll be applied to the character, thus saving perhaps needless description?


Or some other use I haven't thought of?

Re: At the joints

[mallorys_camera]

I was thinking of Douglas Coupland when I wrote the above. I guess nobody reads Douglas Coupland anymore! 😀 But he's the writer who quite literally defined GenX (with a novel entitled Generation X.)

On the Well—which was my first exposure to social media—there were lengthy discussions between members of my generational demographic (Boomers born 1946 to 1964) and members of the GenX generational demographic (mid-to-late 60s to early 80s) about the differences in outlook between the two groups. Mostly they were friendly discussions, but occasionally those discussions got heated. 😀. There definitely is a difference in outlook! It's an overlay, of course, lying on top of individual personalities. Kind of the Zeitgeist-al candy shell (if Zeitgeist actually had an adjectival form. 😀 )

You see it a lot in the types of marketing people respond to and also in the types of popular music they like. Radiohead, for example, is the quintessential GenX band, and Radiohead communicates despair with a wicked sense of absurdity that is deeply ironic.

Re: At the joints

[bb_lurks_here_too]

Perhaps "Zeitgeistisch" As always, the Germans have a word for it.

Re: At the joints

[mallorys_camera]

Zeitgeistisch!!!!

::SWOONING::

I am in ❤️LUV❤️!!!!!!! 😀

[bleodswean]

I've been fascinated how Rowling's work brought YA to a front and center place for discussion regarding Literature and literature and YA and Adult genre and how those discussions can be hotter than politiks. You do remember the Sturm&Drang AS Byatt elicted with her "Harry Potter and the Childish Adult" essay??? Sheesh! I avoid YA and recommend others (including young adults) do so as well. HOWEVER, some adults do enjoy it and that's fine, but surely we can point out the literary differences?

[mallorys_camera]

I like a lot of YA, but yeah, A.S. Byatt was not wrong with that essay (which I haven't read in a billion years and now must track down and reread. 😀 )

I think the deal is that today's readers—all four of them 😀—do not want to struggle to extract the meaning from what they're reading. And complex sentence structures confuse them! Now that diagramming sentences is no longer part of elementary school curricula, they simply get confused by subjunctive clauses and other literary devices. They are interested in story, not style.

Diagram this!

[bb_lurks_here_too]

I'm reading Proust. Diagramming those sentences I leave to the pros.