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"Adults Should Read Adult Books" - Joel Stein

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The only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy on the plane looking at pornography on his computer is seeing a guy on the plane reading “The Hunger Games.” Or a Twilight book. Or Harry Potter. The only time I’m O.K. with an adult holding a children’s book is if he’s moving his mouth as he reads.

I’m sure all those books are well written. So is “Horton Hatches the Egg.” But Horton doesn’t have the depth of language and character as literature written for people who have stopped physically growing.

I appreciate that adults occasionally watch Pixar movies or play video games. That’s fine. Those media don’t require much of your brains. Books are one of our few chances to learn. There’s a reason my teachers didn’t assign me to go home and play three hours of Donkey Kong.

I have no idea what “The Hunger Games” is like. Maybe there are complicated shades of good and evil in each character. Maybe there are Pynchonesque turns of phrase. Maybe it delves into issues of identity, self-justification and anomie that would make David Foster Wallace proud. I don’t know because it’s a book for kids. I’ll read “The Hunger Games” when I finish the previous 3,000 years of fiction written for adults.

Let’s have the decency to let tween girls have their own little world of vampires and child wizards and games you play when hungry. Let’s not pump Justin Bieber in our Saabs and get engaged at Cinderella’s Castle at Disneyland. Because it’s embarrassing. You can’t take an adult seriously when he’s debating you over why Twilight vampires are O.K. with sunlight. If my parents had read “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” at the same time as I did, I would have looked into boarding school.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/28/the-power-of-young-adult-fiction/adults-should-read-adult-books

Last night on Twitter, Chris posted a link to this and spent the next few tweets debating and explaining his opinion with regards to this article (the overall message was that he agreed with it.) Twitter isn't a particularly strong medium for debate, so I figured a thread might be better.

What do you guys think?

Personally, I disagree. I do think that the majority of books read by adults should be books written for adults -- mostly due to the fact that the book in question is aimed at them and their disposition. However, when there is a cultural phenomenon such as Harry Potter, The Hunger Games or even Twilight (which I will admit to having not read), I think it's ignorant to disregard it out of hand.

Literature connects with people for a reason. It allows us to expand our ways of thinking, and the books we enjoy usually connect with us on some emotional level. If a book becomes immensely popular (with any demographic), it tells you something about that group of people. In the early-mid 20th Century, Russia was a hugely romantic country; all believing in free love, care, communism etc -- literature on such topics were huge sellers.

In 1920s Paris, life was carefree and artistic and wonderful and insane; from that we have such great works as Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises or Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. These books spoke to people because they came from a certain place in a certain society. You can argue that these are anomalies, and that their survival is because of their writer's genius, but you can't deny that they certainly connected with a certain audience.

I'm not saying that The Hunger Games is on par with those -- perhaps in 80 years no-one will even know what it is -- but if you want to get an insight into what Young Adults are thinking, feeling, right now, it's utterly invaluable. No-one would buy it/read it if they thought it was terrible.

I suppose it all depends on what you want to get out of literature; if you want to have your own viewpoint on a particular topic changed, or if you want to feel enlightened in some way, I guess that's only achievable by the truly great works of literature. But, if you want to understand the minds and thoughts of others, then reading books not for your own personal demographic is a good place to start.

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I will say I am beyond baffled at the response to The Hunger Games. I got through the first five chapters of it (thanks for the book for buying the Nook Color I guess, B&N) and saw where it was going, and wanted no part of it. But apparently it's "enthralling!" and "an incredible story". It's a young adults book with very transparent themes that anyone over 16/17 should have already figured out by now.

I guess what I'm saying is leave the Young Adult section to young adults.

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Despite having studied English in university and reading a lot of relatively "adult" books, I have to come down on the side of disagreeing. Not because of any kind of reason related to the merits of one type of book or another, but just as a knee jerk "You're not the boss of me" resistance to this guy telling people what they should do. People should read what they want to read. In the unlikely case that they are somehow unaware that reading "adult" books can be worthwhile, sure, they should be made aware of that, but if they know that and still want to read Hunger Games (or whatever), more power to them.

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Yeah, I'm pretty much with juv3nal on this. Giving people the freedom to read more "adult" books is important, and even exposing them to said books if they might not otherwise look their way can be helpful. That said, I have no interest in being told what I should or shouldn't be reading.

I also think a reasoning revolving around the idea that something that someone else does is embarrassing to you is total nonsense. What the hell do I care if some of my adult friends like Justin Bieber? That doesn't mean I have to, and it certainly doesn't mean I need to be embarrassed on their behalf. I might take the piss out of them but I would never tell them to stop doing it for the sake of my apparently delicate sensibilities.

Finally, I'm surprised no one else has mentioned yet the part of that article that completely writes off films and video games as media that can engage the brain or be opportunities for learning. What the fuck? Those sweeping, ignorant generalisations kind of mingle with this article to create a pattern of thought that is both strange and unappealing to me.

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Huckleberry Finn.

Or, Chris said on twitter that he would lump Dan Brown in with the youth fiction. Which to me seems like giving up the argument altogether. That's not saying, adults should read adult fiction. That's saying, people should read good fiction. Which I think few would argue with.

Cory Doctorow did an interview around the release of either Little Brother or For the Win in which he said that writing YA fiction that treated the audience like they were intelligent, creative people and not mentally deficient animals was a revolutionary act in itself. He's probably correct (especially in the current cultural climate), but his point, of course, was not that we should avoid YA fiction, but that we should expect more from it.

(There's also a whole argument about Twilight & The Hunger Games which is entirely separate and deals with the de-legitimizing of female-centric fiction due to it taking as givens certain facts that contradict foundational assumptions of the heteronormative consensus that are found even in "feminist" works like Buffy, which is so often used to counterpoint Twilight. Leigh Alexander's essay on Twilight at Thought Catalog points to some of those issues.)

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Huckleberry Finn.

Or, Chris said on twitter that he would lump Dan Brown in with the youth fiction. Which to me seems like giving up the argument altogether. That's not saying, adults should read adult fiction. That's saying, people should read good fiction. Which I think few would argue with.

If that's what I said, I didn't phrase it correctly. I don't mean Dan Brown is youth fiction. I mean it's not adult fiction. (If you want to apply a label to it, it would be genre fiction, or thrillers, or something.) When I refer to adult fiction, I don't mean simply stories about adults, I mean stories that actually demand an adult's level of reading comprehension and that are best experienced by people with an adult's breadth and depth of life experience. Similarly, a game being rated "M for mature" doesn't make it a game for adults. If anything, games rated M are generally pretty ridiculous.

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Finally, I'm surprised no one else has mentioned yet the part of that article that completely writes off films and video games as media that can engage the brain or be opportunities for learning. What the fuck? Those sweeping, ignorant generalisations kind of mingle with this article to create a pattern of thought that is both strange and unappealing to me.

I thought about mentioning it, but simply forgot!

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If that's what I said, I didn't phrase it correctly. I don't mean Dan Brown is youth fiction. I mean it's not adult fiction. (If you want to apply a label to it, it would be genre fiction, or thrillers, or something.) When I refer to adult fiction, I don't mean simply stories about adults, I mean stories that actually demand an adult's level of reading comprehension and that are best experienced by people with an adult's breadth and depth of life experience. Similarly, a game being rated "M for mature" doesn't make it a game for adults. If anything, games rated M are generally pretty ridiculous.

I believe you said you wouldn't consider Dan Brown adult fiction, so my fault for making that leap.

I assume you aren't differentiating "stories that actually demand an adult's level of reading comprehension and that are best experienced by people with an adult's breadth and depth of life experience" as a category mutually exclusive with genre fiction or thrillers or whatever, just saying Dan Brown specifically would fall into the latter but not the former.

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I believe you said you wouldn't consider Dan Brown adult fiction, so my fault for making that leap.

I assume you aren't differentiating "stories that actually demand an adult's level of reading comprehension and that are best experienced by people with an adult's breadth and depth of life experience" as a category mutually exclusive with genre fiction or thrillers or whatever, just saying Dan Brown specifically would fall into the latter but not the former.

I think it's considerably less common for genre fiction to fall into that category, but yes, mutually exclusive would be putting it strongly.

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I'm leaning more towards agreeing with this guy's statement. I think he took a hard stance on the issue, but I don't think he's entirely wrong.

He even said he appreciates the occasional cartoon or video game but then draws the line with books, which he has a point, but I'll disagree and say if it's ok to watch the occasional cartoon, play a game, then it's alright for the occasional book as well.

But I think the main point that he was trying to make is that is should be occasional. My generation has a high population of adult children, I am one of them, and the generation after us, from what I can see, is farther along being children their entire lives.

I know it would be great to counter his argument about games, and there are some counter points there, but personally, I'm growing out of games because they aren't growing up with me. I'll watch a half an hour cartoon because it's easily consumable, but I won't read teen fiction that takes me a few days. So with that in mind, I also wont sit and play a childish game for 4-8 hours either, which is why I'm playing games less and less these days.

I don't think its entirely wrong to enjoy media for children and it's cool that society is accepting of adults doing such things, but the hard line Joel has taken isn't terrible either as it doesn't take a genius to see where civilization is heading if it goes to hard in one direction.

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I would agree that fiction targeted at young adults is stupid by definition. Kids who like to read are already reading more serious stuff at that age mark. Most YA books are seriously crappy formulaic nonsense—but then again, most books are. Most of everything is.

So who gives a shit if adults read kids' books? I read the Earthsea books in college. Should I have avoided these exquisitely well-crafted and original stories so as to not give an opportunity to this ass to feel annoyed at me for reading outside of my age group? Since when is, What will people think!? a good reason to do or not do anything?

No newspaper that publishes this kind of throwaway church-lady trolling, proudly has Tom Friedman in its pages and produces hagiographic documercials about its own monolithic machismo (in the year 2012 as journalism itself seems to be circling the drain) should be allowed to matter.

This may be WAY off-topic, but I feel we're talking about this link bait in the first place because it was published in the New York Times.

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I don't know, I think it's interesting to discuss the hidden merits of books aimed outside your apparent demographic, hence the majority of my main post. =)

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This text made me so sad when I read it yesterday.

First off, I don't really understand what this guy's motive is. If he's trying to convert people who at this point 'still' read YA fiction, it's a miserable attempt since he's insulting them in a rather crass and unnecessary way.

I don't disagree with the statement that adult readers will get a lot more out of literature than they would out of Harry Potter, but the way this is put is just heinous and misinformed. I would've backed any argument along the lines of:

You should read adult literature, because it'll challenge you in ways Harry Potter will not. It will more often than not speak directly to you about events and thoughts that matter to you in this phase of your life, and enrich you in the process, deepening your insight into the human experience.

But what do we get instead? A troll shouting BLARGHARGHARGH, thou shalt not read Hunger Games, because it's inferior crap, embarrassing akin to being caught watching pornography, and oh yes, also films are crap and games are just a waste of time!

I would be sad and baffled by this line of reasoning, if it didn't already make me upset and insulted and desiring this person's exile from any publication henceforth. This text is a vile piece of trash and the worst advocate adult literature could ask for, hurting its cause instead of promoting it, dividing and alienating groups instead of bringing together.

For the record, I don't read a lot of Young Adult fiction (barely knew the term, actually), but I have read and immensely enjoyed Harry Potter, even though I was shockingly older than 18 at the time. I am an omnivore when it comes to all media. I will read pulp gaming novels by Blizzard next to evolutionary biology treatises, literary classics, biographies, historical reports, everything across the board.

I see Harry Potter and its ilk as a genre in itself, able to appeal in certain specific ways that literature can or does not and therefore is a perfectly valid thing to read. As soon as you limit yourself to only one thing, especially for completely artificial, bullshit reasons such as 'it's not written for me', you are closing yourself off from certain experiences and will be the poorer for it.

Edited by Rodi

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No newspaper that publishes this kind of throwaway church-lady trolling, proudly has Tom Friedman in its pages and produces hagiographic documercials about its own monolithic machismo (in the year 2012 as journalism itself seems to be circling the drain) should be allowed to matter.

This may be WAY off-topic, but I feel we're talking about this link bait in the first place because it was published in the New York Times.

This piece was one of only seven editorials published together on the topic of young adult fiction, and most of the pieces were positive. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/28/the-power-of-young-adult-fiction

The New York Times didn't produce that documentary, and in fact gave it a negative review.

Disagree with the content of the article itself. A publication you do not respect can publish a piece with which you agree, and a publication you respect can publish a piece you find unreasonable.

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Well, the original article is a straightforwardly and proudly ignorant exercise in cultural elitism, considering one of his central points of argument is "I don't need to read this to know I'm better than it".

Beyond that, I still don't see how this amounts to more than read good books (or rather books that people you respect have read and say are thought-provoking/interesting/worth spending time on), avoid bad books (or rather, etc.)

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As a 20 year old I feel kind of lucky now that I'm allowed to play video games and watch Pixar movies. the statement

"I appreciate that adults occasionally watch Pixar movies or play video games. That’s fine. Those media don’t require much of your brains." Makes not care what this guy has to say, whether or not I agree with it. That being said, If I saw a 50 year old woman in public reading Twilight I would wonder why she was doing it in public.

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As a 20 year old I feel kind of lucky now that I'm allowed to play video games and watch Pixar movies. the statement

"I appreciate that adults occasionally watch Pixar movies or play video games. That’s fine. Those media don’t require much of your brains." Makes not care what this guy has to say, whether or not I agree with it. That being said, If I saw a 50 year old woman in public reading Twilight I would wonder why she was doing it in public.

Why? What's the difference between her reading it in private or in public? (Not attacking, just curious.)

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Oh WOW I hope this discussion gets out of everyone's system before the bookcast is recorded. Because I want to be able to enjoy the bookcast.

Edit: That article is horrible, by the way. It took me a while to realize I agreed with some of it, because of all the implicit belittling (but permitting) of people who play games, like Pixar movies, comparing people who read YA fiction to mentally handicapped people (introducing that into an argument is always a slick move), etc.

There was a point to be made there but he dicked it up with being a dick. Made it really hard for me to take his position seriously.

Edited by DIUM

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I guess it doesn't really matter whether it's in public or not, I was just sort of thinking about the first line of the article "The only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy on the plane looking at pornography on his computer is seeing a guy on the plane reading “The Hunger Games.” Or a Twilight book. Or Harry Potter". I was only thinking about Twilight, as the other books I could see as being normal fiction, but Twilight I see as being a straight Romance novel and I just find it weird when people read those in public, as someone who sat next to a girl in high school who read books with titles like "Bedding the Heiress". If I was out walking around and I saw a 50 year old woman sitting on a bench by herself reading Twilight I would find it weird, but if a 50 year old woman was reading it at her house I would find it less weird, probably because I would assume she just is casually reading it to see what the fuss is about, or maybe she has a daughter who is into the books/movies and wants to connect with her.

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Nothing doesn't have subtext, someone that has an interest in reading deeply is going to be able to read The Hunger Games and Invisible Cities and extract meaning out of both of them.

Maybe it's taking it to far, but decades of critical thought is based on the fact that no text is dismissible, when you say your off to read '3,000 years of fiction ' your fucking covering your ears when Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari are talking to you.

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To expand upon my 140 character reply to Chris' post:

I am in the process of becoming a teacher of young adults. Specifically, English. I felt that it was important for me, in this position, to be up on what "the kids these days" are reading, so I picked up and read the Hunger Games trilogy. Hey, surprise, I really liked it. That's not to say I don't read "real" things either (though I will say that my intake of fiction is surprisingly low compared to my intake of philosophy, sociology, and historical books), but to in any way claim that those books weren't worth my time is ridiculous and I can only say that this columnist is talking out of his ass. I am now happy to recommend the series to friends of mine who are outside of teaching, as I think they do, as circadian wolf pointed out in the movies/tv thread, do a fantastic job of drawing attention to the way in which a media-obsessed culture uses heteronormative love stories to manipulate its populace regardless of whether there is any truth to it. The actual composition can be lacking, sure, but it is written to be comprehended by tweens. That said, the underlying premise is a good one, the story is powerful enough to pull you through (despite the obvious names of the characters), and if you're looking for a good introduction to dystopia, there are far worse places to go. If you're looking for a light read, why the hell not read that? My girlfriend read them before me, and was talking a lot about how much she would have loved to have had something like that when she was growing up. Nancy Drew this ain't.

In closing, unless you work with kids, I'm not sure if I could give you a list of reasons that you should read the books (though those who do work with kids definitely should), but I feel fairly confident that I could shoot down a list of reasons why you shouldn't.

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I have my share of guilty pleasures in all sorts of media, but I can appreciate this guy's stance.

I won't begrudge someone checking out a stupid book, but it's bad when people never leave a certain comfortable area. It seems like a lot of people fall into a particular genre and then never explore outside of it again.

I like an exciting story as much as the next jerk, but things like YA and genre fiction put far too little emphasis on style. In fiction, style is where the mind-blowing happens, at least for me.

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but I feel fairly confident that I could shoot down a list of reasons why you shouldn't.

The only reason I can think of is that you could be reading something more fulfilling.

The crux of it is that for any given book for young people, there is likely something more enriching you could be spending your limited life-hours reading instead.

I am trying my hardest to word that in a way that sounds convincing, but it's hard because it's not actually a stance I agree with. There's a lot of value judgements being made based entirely on assumptions, and value judgements of literature are subjective even when you actually read the work in question.

Is there another reason I'm missing, or is that basically it?

For the record, I don't read much young adult fiction. Besides the last Harry Potter book (I started the series in Elementary school) I haven't read a YA book in my adult life. (You can probably deduce that my adult life hasn't existed very long) That said, I have been tempted to read The Hunger Games, and I may.

A more compelling, very similar variant of the above argument would be:

People need to read adult books, and there's a problem with how popular teen books are with adult audiences because it implies people don't read enough adult material and instead are trapped into the same level of literature they read when they were 16.

THAT is a statement I agree with. But the article (and I assume Chris) take a stance that is significantly more hard line.

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The only reason I can think of is that you could be reading something more fulfilling.

The crux of it is that for any given book for young people, there is likely something more enriching you could be spending your limited life-hours reading instead.

You could always be doing something more fulfilling. If he wants to say to me "why are you reading the Hunger Games when you could be reading something better?" (better being, as you say, an extremely difficult case to make and problematic term to use even if he had read the books.) I could just as simplistically reply "why are you reading at all when there are soup kitchens desperately in need of volunteers?" It's a cheap shot, I know, but it's not invalid. To judge me based on how I choose to spend a few hours of my life (that's all that reading one of these books ever take) is goddamned ridiculous. Yeah, I could be reading/doing something more fulfilling, but I'm happy with what I'm doing thanks and he can fuck right off with his judgements.

A more compelling, very similar variant of the above argument would be:

People need to read adult books, and there's a problem with how popular teen books are with adult audiences because it implies people don't read enough adult material and instead are trapped into the same level of literature they read when they were 16.

It's not like someone reading the Hunger Games means that they aren't also reading something "more substantial". The two are not mutually exclusive. All that seeing person P at time t reading The Hunger Games tells you about them is that at time t, person P was reading The Hunger Games. To judge that a person does not read adult fiction because there is evidence that they read young adult fiction sounds to me like saying that I must never drink water because you have a video of me drinking a can of coke. For all I know, there is a trend of people forgoing adult fiction because of the emerging popularity of YA fiction. That's not really for any of us to say without evidence. Anecdotally though, of all the adults I know who have read the books, one is my girlfriend who reads absolutely everything, and the others are former English majors who do not lack for appreciation of good literature.

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I just think that the quality (twilight as an exception) of the young adult novel has increased greatly.

The Harry Potter books are not only interesting in scope and fiction, but technically well written. That is what set the Potter books apart from other YA fiction. And really pushed the genre forward, heightening expectations.

I think that the Hunger Games books (at least the first one) are decently well written, and on top of having some interpersonal drama, it is a rare example of Science Fiction being popular! Which is rare, very rare.

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