From: Norma Jean <nsawicki>
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 12:19:50 -0500

Ellen Levin's astute/thoughtful posting has made me realize I did not fully explain what I meant by "books reflect the society in which we live." It is short hand for saying writers, at any given time, are influenced by the preoccupations and mores of the society in which they live which subsequently affects/informs directly, or indirectly, the books they write. Most biographies published in the forties and fifties, including those about Susan B., Elizabeth C., were fictionalized, and the complicated aspects of their lives omitted. During my first week as a editorial assistant in the late sixties I had to proofread the galleys of a fictionalized biography of Mark Twain that made me cringe then as it does now. An awful book that was well reviewed and reprinted.

I cannot claim to have read most of the terrific middle grade/YA novel published in the last decade or so but I am not sure we are sufficiently evolved that a novel with a contemporary setting in which a female character is passive, and that passivity not dealt with would pass the current PC test. If one were to read /analyze all of the realistic fiction for kids published in the late sixties/early seventies certain patterns would emerge no matter the writer. And if one were to take those same novels and compare them to novels with the same themes that are published today, differences would emerge because the mores/preoccupations of the society have changed. As someone who grew up in, and was part of the sixties, my view of the issues/tenor of that period has changed not only because of the passage of time but of history which is not to suggest it is a decade I view through a disparaging lens...I do not, not by a long shot. Each group has its own definition of PC, and these days novels can generate criticism from one group or the other but for dramatically different reasons. It is the tenor of the society in which we currently live. Norma Jean
Received on Sat 23 Jul 2005 12:19:50 PM CDT