The culprit was Meghan Cox Gurdon’s posing of this question:

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

The result was a flood of vitriol, hash tags and quite a bit of rather ridiculous posturing in my humble opinion.

I read the article a number of times and I just don’t see it as the all out attack on young adult literature many make it out to be. To me it instead read as a complaint that yet another area of our lives seems to be becoming dominated by the dark side of life; and that maybe we should rethink this direction. There are caveats and acknowledgments that the issue is complex throughout but it is clearly written from the point of view of parents not an art critic.

To me the fundamental issue at the heart of this little internet controversy lies instead in the inability of many fans of contemporary young adult fiction to understand that there is a whole world out there that does not share their ideology or worldview when it comes to art, literature or raising children.

Sure, I think many in the YA community (reviews and authors) are overly sensitive and thus over reacted to what was really a rather standard response to popular culture. To be fair, I read YA fiction and can be sensitive about it myself but I don’t come from that world nor do I indentify with it strongly. There is a feeling that the genre or label has come of age in a sense and attacks on it in any form are attempts to snuff it out just when it has achieved something good.

But this article was not an attack on young adult literature or fiction for teens as a whole. Articles of this length are by nature made up of large generalities and Gurdon was simply asking whether it was a good thing that the hottest books for teens seem to be getting darker and darker; full of violence, language and sexuality that would have shocked previous generations.

Surely, this is not a shocking thing or a new complaint.  Are people unaware that this sort of thing disturbs parents; always has and always will?  It can’t possibly shock you that some parents are doubtful of the value of their kids reading about rape, incest and murder on a regular basis. Put aside whether you agree with it or not, why the anger and vitriol at what is a rather common belief and argument?

I think it is because it goes to the heart of the liberal view of art. More below.Here is the key section from the article:

But whether it’s language that parents want their children reading is another question. Alas, literary culture is not sympathetic to adults who object either to the words or storylines in young-adult books. In a letter excerpted by the industry magazine, the Horn Book, several years ago, an editor bemoaned the need, in order to get the book into schools, to strip expletives from Chris Lynch’s 2005 novel, “Inexcusable,” which revolves around a thuggish jock and the rape he commits. “I don’t, as a rule, like to do this on young adult books,” the editor grumbled, “I don’t want to compromise on how kids really talk. I don’t want to acknowledge those f—ing gatekeepers.”

By f—ing gatekeepers (the letter-writing editor spelled it out), she meant those who think it’s appropriate to guide what young people read. In the book trade, this is known as “banning.” In the parenting trade, however, we call this “judgment” or “taste.” It is a dereliction of duty not to make distinctions in every other aspect of a young person’s life between more and less desirable options. Yet let a gatekeeper object to a book and the industry pulls up its petticoats and shrieks “censorship!”

It is of course understood to be an act of literary heroism to stand against any constraints, no matter the age of one’s readers; Ms. Myracle’s editor told Publishers Weekly that the author “has been on the front lines in the fight for freedom of expression.”

This is at the heart of the disagreement. There is a viewpoint that any attempts to stifle or disapprove of books by subject matter is de facto censorship and one step from book burning. That art is sacred somehow and that any criticisms are a giant step towards a very slippery slope.

One blog reaction highlights this in her reaction [emphasis in original]:

Articles like the WSJ one don’t just attack YA literature: they also attack the intelligence of young adults and YA readers, the act of reading, and the very institution of education and learning itself. The article is an attack on progress above all.

Get that? If you suggest that contemporary literature for young adults is too dark and violent to the point of desensitization it is an attack on reading, education and progress itself.

Um, no, it is not. The irony is the post bemoans the lack of discourse and the insistence on a black and white world – only to draw very black and white lines about the author she disagrees with. The world is apparently full of gray except for this article which is an attack on all that is decent and human.

The liberal view of art is that you can’t criticize art that pushes the boundaries because that is what art does. It is a trope that has become conventional wisdom: all art is attacked as dangerous and bad and then eventually becomes accepted as worthwhile or even great. Oh and any attempts to avoid focusing of the most brutal aspects of reality is prudish repression that is stupid and unhealthy.

This is the same thing. If you want to complain about dark ya fiction you are undermining all young adult fiction. Another author offered a profanity laden post to this effect. He refuses to justify his art. Fine, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree it is art or agree that it is age appropriate art, etc. (And by the way, if you want to counter the argument that contemporary literature is unduly coarsening our culture perhaps the angry F bombs are not the way to go. That author might write great books but that post made me think he was angry, vulgar and rather egotistical. )

Heck, I even read tweets to the effect that kids should be allowed to read whatever they want – that nothing should be off limits. Many seem unable to see that lots of people just don’t share this perspective. There are lots and lots of parents who are sensitive to the emotional and intellectual development of their children and would prefer to guide their reading and steer them away from things they think are unhelpful or potentially harmful.

And to counter this the twitterverse comes up with #yasaves – testimonials to the fact that dark and subversive ya fiction sustains and saves adolescents across the land. Forgetting for a moment that the plural of anecdote is not data, this does not take away the point of the article: that parents have every right to be worried about what their kids are reading and to make decisions about what they think is best for them. This is not censorship nor a threat to free expression but what good parents do. Dark books are not inherently moral nor are taboo subjects naturally part of maturity. There are good and bad, useful and detrimental, fine for some ages and not necessarily good for others.

Sure, lots of parents draw the lines very differently based on the way they see the world and on their child’s emotional and intellectual development (one would hope). But to say that there should be no lines is silly and flies in the face of reality (and of the nature of parenthood).

If you don’t believe me, suggest a nakedly racist book and see how the free expression folks react.

What I found interesting about this whole scandal was the seeming inability of some people to disagree without engaging in hyperbole and near hyperventilation. Take a deep breath, take a step back and gain some perspective. Whether you agree with the author or not, this is not an existential threat to the publication of young adult books dark or not. Bookstores are not going to start pulling books because of one article in the Wall Street Journal.

Many love to talk about tolerance and discussion but someone writes an article they disagree with on a subject near and dear to their heart and they react as if civilization itself is at risk (social media over-reaction, weird I know).

Gurdon’s critics complain that she is unaware of the reality teens face today, but I think it is just as likely that they are unwilling or in capable of understanding that large swaths of the population see the world differently that they do.

Reality is a two way street after all.

Cover of The Killing Sea

I am a big fan of Richard Lewis. I Loved his first book and have been enjoying his writing ever since. Maybe it is his unique background, or just his personality, but he brings a different sensibility and viewpoint than most authors – and I enjoy it.

His latest work was self-published as an e-book for reasons discussed below. It might not be economically viable in today’s publishing world but – like all of his books – it is an engaging and entertaining read that I hope you will check out.

BTW, in light of recent events you might want to check out Lewis’s The Killing Sea.  A novel Booklist called “a powerful fictional tale of survival and cooperation in the wake of the 2004 tsunami.”

Richard graciously agreed to answer some questions via email about his books, writing and career.  My questions in bold and his below.

Remind us how you ended up writing young adult fiction in the first place.

I wrote a book for adults called THE FLAME TREE, set in Java, against the backdrop of 9/11, about the friendship of the son of American missionary doctors and a Muslim village boy.  It went on submission after 9/11, adult houses passed, but an editor at Simon and Schuster YA read it and loved it.  I had to cut out some sub-plots, but I still think it’s adult.

And what led to your self-publishing The Last Witch as an e-book?

Essentially, my four YA novels that S&S published didn’t make them money.  My career as Richard Lewis, YA author, was pretty much done–at least in the traditional publishing sense.  One of the brutal (and impersonal) facts of the business.  I had this novel on my hard drive, and I liked it enough to think it should at least have a chance for an audience.

How do you think the ability of authors to sell directly to readers via e-books changes the self-publishing and standard publishing worlds?
Gosh, so much has ink has been spilled, and pixels aglow on blogs and industry websites, about this topic.  As Yogi Berra said, prediction is hard, especially if it’s about the future, so I’m not sure what is going to happen, but I do think some measure of equilibrium between the two will be reached (by standard publishing I mean standard publishing houses publishing both print and electronic editions).  I’ve been honored to be a part of the traditional world.  There is a sense of self-validation in being print published by a major publisher.

What’s happening in the self-publishing world (whether a printed book or an e-edition) is a growing cacophony of noise, and so it seems to me that clever, dedicated, sly, and at times very loud self promotion is key to standing out. People aren’t going to read you if they don’t know you aren’t there.  Unfortunately, I don’t have that personality. I’m a writer–I love writing stories–well, I hate writing stories because it’s a process of continuous, frustrating, hair-pulling dissonance resulting in many nights of insomnia and grouchy mornings, but I do love it too. I’ve always loved putting together puzzles, and there’s nothing like making a story fit together from out of nowhere. But the process is like having ants crawl around in your brain.

The Last Witch has elements of science, higher math, faith/religion, mysticism, etc. All of these elements have appeared in your previous books. Do you use things that might not have been used directly in previous projects or that you “collected” along the way?

Everything that I’ve ever experienced in my life, or heard about, or read about (and I read a TON of non-fiction, love it) is fodder for my imagination, plus my imagination can come up with things on its own.  Being the son of missionaries, who grew up on Bali where the mystical world is just real as the world you see, add in my education in science and math (only to a first year PhD level before I bailed to go surfing), and that’s just the start of what I have to draw on in making up my stories.

As for the LAST WITCH, I’d been doing a lot of reading in science & religion, and the “new atheism” of Dawkins, Hitchens and the other High Prophets of There is No God, plus I’d read Philip Pullman‘s GOLDEN COMPASS trilogy with its atheistic world view, and so I decided to try my hand on the other side of the ledger, so to speak.  Not that I can write like Pullman, but it was a certain aesthetic & world view I wanted to express for myself in a YA story.   (And I’m doing the same again right now, but in an adult novel).  I was not entirely satisfied with the result, but satisfied enough to let it go out into the world, alone with bag slung over the shoulder, to make its way as best it could.

Do you find it a challenge to write from the perspective of a young girl? What helps you capture that voice?

Having a daughter helps an awful lot.

What drew you to Central Park as a setting? So famous and yet probably full of little known secrets and facts.

A huge sprawling park full of nooks and crannies (Eden both pure and corrupted) in a huge sprawling city (Gotham and Babylon)?  What a set-up for a fantasy, for all kinds of what-ifs.  I devoured books and websites on the park, scoured it with Google Earth.  And I might add, I’m not the only writer attracted to that place. A colleague of mine, Lesley Livingston, used Central Park as a principal setting in her terrific faerie novel WONDROUS STRANGE

Do you write with a particular audience in mind (Americans of a certain age, etc.)?
Nope.  The story shapes itself.  Who reads it, reads it.

You like to surf. What comes first writing or surfing?  Do you have a set schedule?

Surf depends on swell, which comes and goes. So if the surf is good, yeah, I probably go surfing before I sit down to write.  I also do a lot of boat trips to outer islands to go surfing.  I don’t write, but I catch up on my reading.  (I can’t wait to get a Kindle and travel with one device with a thousand books on it–but Kindle, and other e-devices, aren’t  available in Indonesia, not just the physical platform, but the downloading service.

What is one thing that surprised you about writing YA and something you find frustrating?

Nothing particularly surprising.  Or frustrating for that matter, except for maybe the increasing PR writers are expected to do.

What’s next? On to “adult” fiction? Can you give us some insight into what you are working on now?

Oh, adult fiction for sure. Last year I wrote a very adult novel on the 1965 massacres in Bali (over 50000 Balinese massacred by other Balinese as a consequence of a Communist-inspired coup attempt in Jakarta, although it’s more complicated than that).  Impossible to get this book traditionally print published at this moment of upheaval, but there is definitely a niche audience, so I will probably get it e-published later this year.

Right now I’m working on a more commercial project, a kind of post-apocalypse set in the States, from New York to Chicago to Vegas to LA. More info later!

Related articles

• The Last Witch of Manhattan by Richard Lewis (collectedmiscellany.com)

The podcast is after the jump. As part of the rollout they also have a book giveaway for one of the 4 new books featured on this month’s show – Rosanne Cash’s Composed, Maile Meloy’s Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, Doug Dorst’s The Surf Guru or Sloane Crosley’s How Did You Get This Number.

So let’s keep this simple.  Leave a comment below and tell me why you want to read one of the four books listed. I will pick a comment using the random number generator and announce the winner. Please leave a comment by Thursday.

Book is a shifty word, denoting both the physical object and the content within. As an author, I think of myself as having “written books,” when in fact I’ve typed hundreds of pages of fiction and nonfiction into various word processing files, e-mailed them to my editors, and only much later seen them take physical form. To say all that, however, seems pedantic. To describe myself as, say, a “content provider,” however fitting the term might seem, strikes me as something akin to insult. I write books.

And I’m a lover of books, too, unaccustomed to making a body/soul distinction where the printed word is concerned. The book is the object and its contents, inseparable in my mind. I dwell in a house lined with shelves, most of them bowed by the weight of their printed content. Beautiful books and ugly ones. Read and unread. Objects of comfort, outrage, derision, admiration. Some pristine and others scarred. Some bound in leather, some in paper (at least one in shagreen). Prized and cheap side by side. Tangible things, each with a history. I can tell you where they came from, where they’ve been. The ones I sought out and the ones I discovered unexpectedly. The ones kept under glass in dark bookstores and, all too often, the ones overnighted from the clean, well-lit warehouses of Amazon. All of that will disappear when the book’s body does.

Hearing that the Amazon Kindle had been compared to an eight-track player Alan Kaufman decided he needed a real attention grabber analogy if he was to gather the eyeballs necessary to get Huntington Post readers to click away from pictures of the latest porn actress claiming to be Tiger Wood’s mistress.

Not content for hyperbole he went straight for ridiculous and offensive. That’s right, Kaufman decided to use the Holocaust to make his point:

When I hear the term Kindle I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit.

I believe my reaction is best expressed in the language of teenager texters everywhere: WTF?

Is Kaufman really insinuating that e-readers are akin to racial genocide? Even for the Huntington Post this is absurd (but its lack of logic is par for the course I am afraid).

Kaufman tendentiously connects Nazi policies with new technology and the process of putting books into digital form and decides that a literary holocaust is upon us.

The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas, where every examination of a text leaves behind a trail, a record, so that curiosity is also tinged with a sense of disquieting fear that some day someone in authority will know that one had read a particular book or essay. This death of intellectual privacy was also a dream of the Nazis. And when I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit.

But his argument is made up of nothing more than his own lack of shame in using the Holocaust to comment on the Kindle and some stream of consciousness paragraphs about the history of the Holocaust, Nazi attitudes about technology and books and a tacked on conclusion that links this all to the Kindle.

I hesitate to even try and counter this argument for fear of giving it more readers.  But allow me to point out a few things that should have been obvious:

1. Considering that no actual human lives are involved, the use of the Holocaust in this column is senseless and borderline offensive.
2. Given that e-readers are owned by a tiny fraction of the populace and the prevalence of physical books – not to mention the continued dominance of their sales as a part of the publishing industry business model – the argument is a stretch of epic proportions.  The mere possibility of digital libraries means authoritarian control and the destruction of literature at the flick of a switch? Huh?
3. And what exactly would happen to all of the physical books still around and being published in droves these days?  So in addition to a entity powerful enough to erase all copies of e-books we need to worry about a sudden urge on the part of the world to burn all existing physical books. Not real likely, no?
4. Finally, most of the post actually has nothing to do with Kindle or e-readers so the whole column is a giant non sequitur and therefor see #1.

Godwin’s Law has perhaps jumped the shark – to combine slang and cliches – but I think Kaufman would have so very much better off had he at least understood the spirit of this internet rule. If you feel you have to use the Holocaust to make your point, please stop a moment and question whether what you have to say has anything to do with the actual historical event or ideas directly connected to it.  And err on the side of not bringing it up.

Of course, it is hard to take anything seriously from a site that makes money by not paying writers, stealing content, and posting porn-like pictures …

I have just begun to catch up with some blog posts on The Amazon Kindle, Sherman Alexie, and the future of publishing.

I haven’t followed the kerfuffle in detail, but it started with this:

At a panel of authors speaking mainly to independent booksellers, Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices “elitist” and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, “I wanted to hit her.”

Ed Champion decided to get a better handle on exactly what Alexie meant and actual got a much more nuanced response.

Now, as a Kindle owner I am not offended by the term “elitist” because I am actually in favor of elitism when properly understood and because I understand that this is an expensive gadget. But I did find the claims interesting.  So I followed some links and tried to get a handle on the arguments.

Since I don’t work in publishing, and I am not an author, I am not going to speak to the larger issues of digital rights or the impact of e-books on writers income, etc. Instead, allow me a little rant from the consumer’s perspective.

First off, let me just say that I find this reaction very puzzling:

Why do you consider the Kindle “elitist?”

I consider the Kindle elitist because it’s too expensive. I also consider it elitist because, right now, one company is making all the rules. I am also worried about Jeff Bezos’ comments about wanting to change the way we read books. That’s rather imperial. Having grown up poor, I’m also highly aware that there’s always a massive technology gap between rich and poor kids. I haven’t yet heard what Amazon plans to do about this potential technology gap. And that’s a vital question considering that Bezos wants to change the way we read books. How does he plan to change the way that poor kids read books? How does he plan to make sure that poor kids have access to the technology? Poor kids all over the country don’t have access to current textbooks, so will they have access to Kindle?

For the sake of argument let’s grant him the price issue.  The only reason I own a Kindle is because it was a gift.  I get the it’s too expensive part.

But the rest of it seems bizarre to me.  Is Jeff Bezos required to figure out the socio-economic, political, and cultural ramifications of the Kindle?  The guy is trying to sell things.  And are you not allowed to build and sell technology unless you have a plan to insure poor kids have access to it?  This whole thing strikes me a caricature of politically correct thinking.  The Amazon Kindle is a threat to poor kids reading habits!!!! What?

This reads to me like a complex argument built to prop up an emotional reaction.  He likes old fashioned books – the Kindle and Amazon seems like a threat to that so he digs his feet in and says “No!”

Alexie seems unable to comprehend that the vast majority of people don’t think this way.  People don’t think about sweeping issue of how technology impacts society.  People think about what helps them or gives them joy.

I read a lot of books. I read books for pleasure, books for work, and books for personal growth.  I read magazines and newspapers too.  The Kindle makes reading more convenient because:

- I can carry a wide variety of books and magazines in one small lightweight device.

- My subscriptions follow me electronically and don’t pile up at home.

- If I need something to read I can get it instantly.

- I can make notes and add highlights (and now access those on the web).

Why is it hard for people to see this?  If you are heavy reader who travels very much at all the Kindle is a lifesaver.

I ride the bus, or take my scooter, to the office to work.  Only having to grab the Kindle is great.  It not only saves the pain in my shoulder that would be involved in carry all of this, and saves me the trouble of having to remember which books to grab, but I can even listen to some nice background music instead of the chatter and noise around me.

And what I find so hilarious is that Alexie’s complaints are elitism dressed up as egalitarianism.  Do you think poor kids give a crap about the socio-economic, political or cultural impact of e-books?  Of course, not.  Sure, maybe they struggle with wanting the latest gadget but not being able to afford it.  And those avid readers often wish they could afford to buy books instead of having to get them at the library, etc.

But the kind of issues Alexie raises are only thought about by those who are politically engaged and have the leisure time to contemplate the impact of consumer products on culture.  It is the same type of attitude that wants to shut down Wal-Mart because they would never consider shopping there. For certain people everything has a political angle and that has to be addressed.

And here is the thing.  I may disagree with some of the politics or cultural concerns and I may agree with some of them.  And, obviously, I think people have every right to voice their opinions and take action based on those opinions. Hate the Kindle?  Don’t buy one.  Want to try and convince others to do the same? Fine by me.

And if you work in the industry, or are impacted by it, I completely understand why you would voice concerns and take actions that you think are in the long term interest of your career and industry, etc.

But don’t expect everyone to think politics/culture/industry first.  Some of us just like reading books and any technology that makes that easier or improves the process is going to be popular.

And any strategy that doesn’t take this fact into consideration is doomed to failure in my opinion.

In his commentary on the Tournament of Books championship, John Warner echoed my sentiments toward publishing and eBooks perfectly in saying “Let a thousand flowers bloom—only free market, rather than commie-style.”

But he also offered a powerful example of the attractiveness of the Kindle:

The digital/print divide was reinforced for me this weekend after reading the New York Times Sunday Book Review online. The lead review was of Wells Tower’s new short story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. It’s a rave and reinforced many of the great things I’ve been reading elsewhere, as well as my own impressions of Mr. Tower’s writing, having read his fiction in McSweeney’s and his nonfiction in Harper’s. It has become, officially, a “book I want.”

In the same edition there is a review of another new collection of stories, Caitlin Macy’s Spoiled. Another positive review, though the description doesn’t make the book sound as immediately appealing to me specifically as Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. Still, it became, officially, a “book I’d like to check out.”

This was Saturday, early, maybe eight o’clock. It was raining, unseasonably cool. I’d finished digesting the paper and was working on my oatmeal and I figured I’d see what’s what with these two new story collections. With the weather and the early hour, I wasn’t going to go anywhere, so I turned to the wife’s Kindle and found that only Macy’s book has a Kindle edition. I’d downloaded the first story in seconds, finished it in 15 minutes, and ordered the rest of the book right then and there. Meanwhile, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned remains in my unbought, “books I want” category, potentially forever since I’m constantly coming across books I want. Wells Tower and his publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux would’ve had a sale. Now, who knows? It may just get buried under the avalanche of new books.

That story illustrates one critical aspect of what makes the Kindle so useful and attractive (and dangerous quite frankly).  If you have a sudden desire to read a book, as John Madden might say: “Boom!” you can be reading it is seconds.

I found another example of smart marketing myself last month.  I found out that Ballantine Books was offering the first book in a series (His Majesty’s Dragon) free for Kindle users.  I quickly downloaded it and in fact started reading it rather quickly.

Now why was this so smart giving away books?  Well, as I am sure you have guessed, I went ahead and bought the next book in the series.  Risk one free book to hook readers into a series.  Gain loyal readers and customers.  As I said, smart.

And these scenarios can be played out anywhere.  You don’t have to be at home or near a computer.  You don’t have to have money with you or worry about carrying another heavy book. You just push a few buttons and start reading.

And this sort of convenience can’t be put back in the bottle.  Once you start to appreciate this capability you want to have more of it.  Those publishers who don’t find a way to offer it will miss out.

I will confess that I don’t know a great deal about the business end of publishing so I can’t comment on the concerns of publishers and authors.  But I know as a reader I love this instant on feature when it comes to books.  It doesn’t mean I will stop buying hard copy books by any means.  But in certain situations the publisher who finds a way to make their books available digitally, and at a competitive price, is going to have a distinct advantage when book buying choices are made.

Technology and business innovation is going to change the face of digital publishing and e-books.  I am sure the landscape will be much different in five years.  But I don’t think this kind of convenience and portability is going away.  Publishers will have to adjust; and soon.