One Last Response to the Wall Street Journal Dustup

Our beloved UsedBuyer2.0 has his own take on Meghan Cox Gurdon's anti-YA piece.

Mrs. Humphry Ward on Sensational Fiction, Sufferage, and the Servant Problem

Contemporary fiction for domestics & humble persons is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?

Mrs. Albert Bunthorn-Pandowdy, wife and mother of thirteen, recently stood amidst the cheap paper novel section of her local commercial library, in Minge Lane, Worcestershire, feeling thwarted and disheartened.

More where that came from.

Twenty Twenty Twenty Four Hours Ago...

Does anyone else ever get songs stuck in their head while shelving because of the titles/authors/covers/subjects of the books? I was just shelving this:

Starfish by James Crowley

...and I without realizing exactly why, I left the kids fiction section with this song stuck in my head (for people who can't/don't follow links, that's Mr. Crowley by Ozzy Osbourne). Knowing that I haven't listened to that song since high school, I had to think for a second about how in the world that popped into my head, and it made me laugh to realize my brain was quietly making those kinds of connections while all I consciously thought about was the alphabet.

The other titles I can remember getting me are parenting books, which seem to be really big on this, for some reason:

I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers
edited by Faith Conlon and Gail Hudson
(this one used to drive me crazy- that song is so hard to get out of your head!)

Beautiful Boy
by David Sheff

Does this happen to y'all? I imagine this is one of those librarian/bookseller phenomena that we all endure at some point.

--Anna, in Kids

#YAsaves

This is old news but important anyway, so we apologize for getting it up here late. On June 4 the Wall Street Journal ran an article by Meghan Cox Gurdon on the topic of young adult fiction. Specifically, she asserts that most young adult (YA) fiction is dark, violent, horrible, etc. The article contains stuff like this:

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

I stopped reading the thing somewhere around there, annoyed by the whole tone and not interested in feeling defensive about this category I spend much of my life reading and selling. It doesn't sound like she even reads YA for fun, so I felt okay dismissing the whole thing to save myself from a weekend of teeth-gnashing.

Well, one of the reasons I love YA is that the community of people who read, write, publish, review, and sell these books are particularly awesome and loyal people, and I should've known that the responses to this article would be worth keeping an eye on. Compiled below are some of my favorite responses so far.

The Age of Wisdom, by William Makepeace Thackeray

The Sorrows of Werther, by William Makepeace Thackeray

is the book dead?

(via McNally Jackson Bookmongers)

Selection from Thackeray's Henry Esmond

William Makepeace Thackeray Comes to Shinbone Alley

I did not grow up surrounded by English literature.  Fact is, I grew up in a place where books were somewhat suspicious objects, not unlike a good stray shoe; seemed a shame not to be able to find a proper use for the thing, but damned if anyone could think what that might be.  (Maybe put it under the low corner on that busted Lazy Boy?)  In childhood, what I was surrounded by  was some  rednecks; practical folk, liked a good demo derby, maybe go-carts for the kids, Smokey & the Bandit,  pancake suppers, swimmin' in the strip-mine, hillbilly music, snuff-dippin', that sort of thing.

You know the great Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys?  Why, sure you do.  The master of Western Swing, ol' Bob was a favorite of my Dad's.  We'd be out together on a Saturday, delivering dog feed -- a little sideline of my Dad's-- and the old man used to sing "Cherokee Maiden", "San Antonio Rose", and "Ida Red", top of his lungs, driving country roads in the old panel-truck.

To this day, the sound of a party, somewhere in the back of my head, is still  and will always be "Stay a Little Longer",. You know it.  Sure you do:

Stay all night, stay a little longer,
Dance all night, dance a little longer,
Pull off your coat, throw it in the corner,
Don't see why you can't stay a little longer...

Now, that's a party, son.

I had to cross to the shady side of forty before I could listen to country again.  Hillbilly was, frankly, everything I fled when I came away from home. Dinner parties, cocktail parties, the Socialist Party USA, just about any kind of party I'd seen in the movies, any party where people chatted about the latest books, sipped from glass-tumblers, pronounced the final "g" in words like "darling", ate sophisticated portions from little china plates, that was the kind of party at which I wanted desperately to be.  Eventually, I even went to a few such.  Not all one might have hoped, most of them.  Now, I'm fine with a good shindy.  Love me some Bob Wills now, too.

We're planning a little party here at the bookstore, come Thursday, July 14th.  A month or so ago, I was shocked realize that the 200th birthday of the author of Vanity Fair was coming up on the 18th of July, and so far as I could see, there wasn't a damned thing planned for the occasion anywhere.  (I've been searching.)  How could such a thing be?  William Makepeace Thackeray was one of the greatest, most successful novelists of the Nineteenth Century -- which is rather like saying the greatest and most followed "Tweeter" of the Twenty First, I suppose, for those that may not appreciate the three volume novel.  Not a candle being lit nor a word said, save here.  To celebrate, we're going to do a reading of Thackeray.   I'll be doing my part, as I hope will at least a couple of others from the bookstore -- if all goes well, we may actually even have at least one genuine Englishman on hand.

As unlikely as it may sound, I believe the novelist would be pleased, with or without our Englishman.  Thackeray was enormously popular in America.  At the height of his fame he came over and lectured here on the four bad English kings named George, among other things.  We loved that, and he was glad.  Thackeray liked Americans.  He came to see us twice.

The night of, I'm thinking we'll do a Thackeray story about a party.  Not the kind of hoedown I remember from my rural childhood, and certainly not the dazzling ideal of the cocktail party as thrown in the movies by Nick & Nora,  Thackeray's "A Little Dinner at the Timmons's" is a perfect little satire of mid-Victorian, middle class pretensions -- still perfectly recognizable today -- with a bit of slapstick and other silliness included on the bill, gratis.  Should be great fun.  Thackeray could be specially good describing snobs and climbers, and pretensions of every kind (see, for another example, his A Shabby Genteel Story) in other words, individuals like me, if I'm not careful.

It may seem specially strange, such a redneck as me proposing the memory of William Makepeace Thackeray, gentleman.  I suppose it is a little odd that I should have become so devoted to such a writer.  That's the beauty part, my dears.  It is cliche of the slack reviewer to describe the writing of almost any Tom, Dick or Harry as being "universal in its appeal," and I would not say that everyone should like a novel like Pendennis, or The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., or even Thackeray's masterpiece, Vanity Fair.  What I will say is that more should read Thackeray than do now, not as a duty or any nonsense like that  -- I don't believe in reading books because they might be good for us -- but we should more of us be reading Thackeray because he is that good, in fact masterful in many instances.  He can be deucedly funny.  No lie. More than this though, he was a brilliant writer, capable of many moods besides the comic.  He could be quite gentle, even sentimental about things like the superiority of the female, and the kindness owed to children.  (I'll put up a short reading here somewhere, from Thackeray in a quieter, more thoughtful, even melancholy frame.)   Rather than trust me about all of this, come to the celebration and see for yourselves, read one of the novels, and see if I'm wrong.  Don't think you won't like it.  You may well be surprised.  Remember, if some rube like me can get to appreciate his finer qualities, well then anybody might.

Again, please don't be put off from coming to the reading then because of any unfamiliarity with the writer.  You will have a good time, believe me.  I'll do my best by him, I hope, try not to lower the tone much, keep my shoes on.

So, do please join us, won't you?  When we have good ol' William Makepeace Thackeray down to Shinbone Alley for the evening of the 14th.  Should be a barn burner, you bet.

-- Usedbuyer2.0