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How far is too far?
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From: Erin Murphy <kitohana>
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 08:30:43 -0700
Sue Hemberger wrote:
"More abstractly, our reactions to violence and sexuality in YA lit may come down to whether we value the innocence of childhood vs. the potential for growth and open-mindedness."
Sue, I love this! Thank you for saying it. It is a wonderful way of gauging our responses, without judgment on one side or the other.
However, to move this from readers' reactions to writers' motivations, I think writers of YA novels, even more than those of children's books for younger readers, are drawn to issues of growth. That is the nature of the YA novel, in my mind. To set out to write a YA novel about innocence, or that furthers the cause of innocence...hmm. I'm trying to wrap my mind around that. All the scenarios I come up with seem somehow fraudulent; to try to persuade adolescents to hold onto the innocence of childhood rather than grow into adults....Oh, but then I think of Spinelli's Stargirl (forgive me if I'm off a bit on my remembrance of it; it's been awhile since I read it). The most innocent character there was not the protagonist, and what I took away from it was how a life can be touched by innocence, how growth can come from that contact--and how fragile innocence is. In the end, the story was about the "versus" part of Sue's statement, not one side or the other. How to maintain some of that childish innocence *and* grow into an adult. That seems to me to be the key; a "gray" answer instead of black or white. (And so much for me not judging one side or the other.)
But I'm rambling as I fumble my way through thinking about this. Apologies.
What I originally set out to say: One thing that I find, in my daily work, is that the writers I know tend to ask "how far is too far?" as an outside-in question (as someone here brilliantly put it); if they ask it in the midst of writing a novel, I strongly encourage them to put the question aside until they are ready to revise. Finding the truth of the story from the inside out is so much more important than worrying that a particular scene or a particular word is wrong for the audience. And nearly always, I feel that these writers have *not* gone too far, once I see the completed work. I would hope that good writers would weigh every scene of a draft of a work in progress and determine if it is necessary to the whole, not just those that might push the boundaries of sex or profanity etc.
(On a separate issue, thank you, Leda, for pointing out the Wall Street Journal article and what it said about how i live now. I don't want to go on and on about this book and its reception, as I've already written about it once, but it's simply amazing to me that anybody who has actually read this book--which may be the defining factor in articles like this--could mention only that cousin relationship. Like you, I was fascinated by the way the war played out in contemporary England in the story--the way it had an impact on individuals, the way terror could be set up in familiar, friendly lands--the way it is not shown to us when it takes place in Afghanistan or Iraq.)
Murphy literary agent who also gets the digest form of ccbc-net
Received on Sat 25 Jun 2005 10:30:43 AM CDT
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 08:30:43 -0700
Sue Hemberger wrote:
"More abstractly, our reactions to violence and sexuality in YA lit may come down to whether we value the innocence of childhood vs. the potential for growth and open-mindedness."
Sue, I love this! Thank you for saying it. It is a wonderful way of gauging our responses, without judgment on one side or the other.
However, to move this from readers' reactions to writers' motivations, I think writers of YA novels, even more than those of children's books for younger readers, are drawn to issues of growth. That is the nature of the YA novel, in my mind. To set out to write a YA novel about innocence, or that furthers the cause of innocence...hmm. I'm trying to wrap my mind around that. All the scenarios I come up with seem somehow fraudulent; to try to persuade adolescents to hold onto the innocence of childhood rather than grow into adults....Oh, but then I think of Spinelli's Stargirl (forgive me if I'm off a bit on my remembrance of it; it's been awhile since I read it). The most innocent character there was not the protagonist, and what I took away from it was how a life can be touched by innocence, how growth can come from that contact--and how fragile innocence is. In the end, the story was about the "versus" part of Sue's statement, not one side or the other. How to maintain some of that childish innocence *and* grow into an adult. That seems to me to be the key; a "gray" answer instead of black or white. (And so much for me not judging one side or the other.)
But I'm rambling as I fumble my way through thinking about this. Apologies.
What I originally set out to say: One thing that I find, in my daily work, is that the writers I know tend to ask "how far is too far?" as an outside-in question (as someone here brilliantly put it); if they ask it in the midst of writing a novel, I strongly encourage them to put the question aside until they are ready to revise. Finding the truth of the story from the inside out is so much more important than worrying that a particular scene or a particular word is wrong for the audience. And nearly always, I feel that these writers have *not* gone too far, once I see the completed work. I would hope that good writers would weigh every scene of a draft of a work in progress and determine if it is necessary to the whole, not just those that might push the boundaries of sex or profanity etc.
(On a separate issue, thank you, Leda, for pointing out the Wall Street Journal article and what it said about how i live now. I don't want to go on and on about this book and its reception, as I've already written about it once, but it's simply amazing to me that anybody who has actually read this book--which may be the defining factor in articles like this--could mention only that cousin relationship. Like you, I was fascinated by the way the war played out in contemporary England in the story--the way it had an impact on individuals, the way terror could be set up in familiar, friendly lands--the way it is not shown to us when it takes place in Afghanistan or Iraq.)
Murphy literary agent who also gets the digest form of ccbc-net
Received on Sat 25 Jun 2005 10:30:43 AM CDT
