YA Saves--Counterpoint

After my blog post critiquing Meghan Cox Gurdon’s two attention-getting essays on YA fiction on Tuesday, I was advised by some commenters that I had stated my case a bit too broadly. I was forced to concede some points. I’d like to elaborate on those points. Because if you can’t argue with yourself, who can you argue with?

Point #1: Ms. Gurdon is not an idiot for stating her opinion or for sticking to it, if she truly believes it to be correct

Although I didn’t actually call Ms. Gurdon an idiot, I did say “Because when thousands are calling you an idiot, you should always stick to your guns.”

It’s not the worst that has been said of Ms. Gurdon, but this is my blog and I have a deep-seated need to be diplomatic, so let me clarify. When you truly believe you are in the right, you do not have to change your opinion, no matter how many people disagree with you. It takes a lot of strength to advocate for an unpopular opinion, and sometimes the unpopular is right.

I don’t think so in this case, but still. It can happen.

What I should have said is that when thousands of people are calling you an idiot, it is sometimes prudent to examine your position, inspect it for flaws, acknowledge the places you can bend, the places where perhaps you overstated your case, and provide concrete examples to back up the rest.

Extraordinary positions require extraordinary proof.  Ms. Gurdon did not supply any proof, even after her position was attacked. She cited no studies which have examined the effect of negative YA elements on YA readers. Provided no anecdotes from readers who date their personal moral decline from the day they read "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." Quoted no parents who noticed marked negative behavior changes in their teen readers after they read "Rage."  She didn’t even recount a personal anecdote about how profoundly disturbed she was for days after she finished "The Marbury Lens" and how she’s been suffering ever since.

Instead, she rests on her observation that there are bad elements in lots of YA books, hypothesizes that these bad elements might have negative effects on some impressionable readers, and leaves that suggestion to fester in the minds of paranoid parents everywhere. She didn’t use the C-word, and has specifically asserted that she doesn’t believe in censoring books, but she must excuse the YA community for being afraid that others might be inflamed enough by her unsupported musings to make that very leap.

Because that’s what uninformed people do with unsupported fear-mongering. They take a hint of trouble with a capital T, notice it rhymes with C, and make sure that stands for Censor. If that’s not what she meant to do, she should have been more careful. Perhaps she could have taken the time to share with us how to judge the message of a book by its cover, or at least acknowledged some of the good things that can come of the books she’s attacking.

If she needs examples, she hasn’t been paying that much attention to #YASaves on Twitter.

Point #2: Some elements can feel damaging, in and of themselves, depending on the reader

Fiction can be powerful. In the hands of a master wordsmith, readers can come away from a scene or a book actually feeling like they experienced what was described. That’s not always fun. It’s not always healthy. It’s not always ideal. A detailed scene of violent rape, for instance, can have lingering negative effects on an individual, even if the author takes pains to show how the victim overcame her trauma. It can be unsettling to learn that such evil exists in the world.

I’m a huge fan of Dan Wells’s books about 15-year-old sociopath John Wayne Cleaver, beginning with I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER. I love the message of the books—that you can overcome any odds and choose your own path in life. That you can decide how to act, even if all your instincts are dictating a different destiny. I find the books inspiring and uplifting, in a bloody, gritty, screaming sort of way. Even though John witnesses and even does horrible things, the books never once suggest that the horrible things are good. They call evil evil and evil is overcome. I find them inspiring.

My mother disagrees. On my recommendation, she read the first book. She found it to be “soul-destroying.” She (rather insultingly) wondered how anyone could read such depravity and not be damaged by it.

My mother is a generally reasonable woman. She is not taken to fits of sentimentality or illogical thinking. If she found the books personally offensive to such a degree, it’s because she truly felt that way. Same with one commenter on my Tuesday post, who described her “soul damaging” experiences with two separate YA books. I’ve had several online conversations with this woman and find her to be very level-headed. (She liked Dan Wells’ books.)

So how do I reconcile my mother’s and my friend’s experiences with my own? I don’t have to. Everyone is different. Perhaps I’ve already been exposed to so much of the horrible side of life that it is harder to shock me. (I do read a lot of police reports.) Perhaps the elements themselves don’t matter as much to me as the overall message. Perhaps others are more sensitive. That’s okay. People are different. This is why it’s irresponsible to say that such-and-such an element is always bad—or always good.

I do want to make it clear that I do not feel my soul has been destroyed by any of the horrible things I’ve read about, either in fiction or in real life. It’s intact, thank you very much. (I teach Sunday school, so it better be.)  Souls are remarkably resilient, actually.

So are teens. Even well-adjusted teens who haven’t been traumatized by real life. Though many of them may not enjoy learning about ugly things and may find they have to reflect on them to an uncomfortable degree in order to process what they’ve read, process they will. If the truth has been told, even if that truth is ugly, they will eventually learn to accept it. They will move on. They will still be happy, healthy, and well-adjusted. They will perhaps be wiser.

That doesn’t mean that there is a necessary virtue in facing the horrible things in life and accepting them. But for those who do, who can endure the adjustment, there is a world of empathy on the other side. There is an increased ability to understand the many ways a heart can be broken and how it can be put back together again. There is perhaps not as much peace, but there is still joy.

Point #3: Characters shouldn’t live in a consequence-free zone

The most damaging thing a YA book can do, in my opinion, is lie to a child. Telling a child, for instance, that they are worthless, or that they have no hope for happiness, can destroy them. They should never be told that good is evil, that evil is good, or that they have no power to choose between the two.

It should never be suggested that they can do what they want without suffering the natural consequences.

If there is any sometimes-legitimate complaint to be made about YA fiction today -- and, really, adult fiction has this problem, too -- I think this is it. Teenage characters get drunk and get high and are perfectly competent the next day. They never get thrown in juvie for smoking cigarettes. Teenage girls willingly sleep with adult men and no one points out that those men could now properly be labeled sex-offenders. They damage property, steal, and trespass and, so long as they’re having lighthearted fun while they do it, very few characters come away with a juvenile record and community service.

That’s just not accurate. Or, if it is, it might not be the best truth to reinforce.

One of the hallmarks of adolescence is a decreased ability to appreciate consequences. Many teens will unthinkingly destroy their own or someone else’s life because they don’t stop to consider what will happen next. The books they read should help remind them of the power of consequence—not reinforce their mistaken belief in their own invincibility.

It’s impossible, of course, when writing a book, to include a consequence for every last action – and even more impossible to include consequences that everyone will agree with. Authors must pick and choose which parts of “reality” will help build their theme, and which will distract a reader from the main story.  I think that, overall, authors in general and YA authors especially try to be very responsible with cause and effect. They try to show that negative actions bring negative rewards.  It doesn’t happen in every scene of every book, but I think few YA books can be accused of a blatant disregard for responsibility.

Responsibility is what parents are for. I frequently point out to my sons that, hey, this car chase they think is so cool? That “hero” will be paying off restitution on all those crashed cars for the rest of his life… if he ever makes it out of prison for sideswiping that cop car and causing it to flip like that. Aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer isn’t something to mess around with.

In the end, I think I can agree with Ms. Gurdon on this point: Parents should be the gatekeepers of what their children are ready to read. I’ll even take it one step further: Parents should be the tour guides as well. They should lead the way through the horror. They should answer questions and refer their children to additional resources. They should be a sounding board and a touchstone.

Above all, they should never presume to declare what is good or bad for someone else’s children. They should never declare that a certain work of fiction has no value for anyone. They should never judge a book by its cover.

So what did I miss this time? :)

[Note: this blog post was posted simultaneously on International Business Times-Business & Books, which also linked to my post from Tuesday: YA Saves--Especially when it shows evil. When they contacted me about republishing the first, I was already planning this counterpoint, so they published this instead. Go check em out!]