i feel like there is a whole glut of american/european white male authors whose works are supposed to be So Good and The Best and they always seem to fail to deliver for me (see: on the road by keroauc, all of salinger's and most of fitzgerald's short stories and novels, hemingway, and probs some more i can't think of rn)
like, i dunno, i think a lot of their stories just feel so milquetoast and all their emotional impact relies on moments and experiences that claim to be universal but are in reality apply only to a small group of people of which i am not a part? and it just kills whatever possible investment i could've had in them. plus i'm not really into a lot of literary theory so stuff like structuralism just floats over my head i guess.
not to say that a lot of other non-white male authors are any better, i guess, but i've found a lot of them to have some sort of visceral quality that made me care so much more.
also, speaking of YA, i've also found a lot of the time that... i feel like a lot of the reason books for adults tend to be so bland is because the audience expects a certain amount of "realism", and "realism" in this case is about how bad things happen to good people, and about how people are selfish creatures, and about how you can't always get what you want, and all those little lessons people learn, and i feel like that puts a huge damper on storylines too. like kids' fiction and YA almost has more freedom in that way, and i wonder if that's why adults are tending towards YA now, because adult fiction is boring and full of artistic attempts at structuralism and all this stuff that a casual reader might not want to think about. (i certainly don't always want to think about it.) but of course what rings for a 22 year old won't ring for a 14 year old and vice versa.
i dunno. i don't think i have any great insight on it seeing as i haven't touched a YA book in a long time, but i think it's part of a greater trend of escapism i've been seeing in fandom, and it's interesting to think about!
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Date: 2019-03-15 11:44 pm (UTC)like, i dunno, i think a lot of their stories just feel so milquetoast and all their emotional impact relies on moments and experiences that claim to be universal but are in reality apply only to a small group of people of which i am not a part? and it just kills whatever possible investment i could've had in them. plus i'm not really into a lot of literary theory so stuff like structuralism just floats over my head i guess.
not to say that a lot of other non-white male authors are any better, i guess, but i've found a lot of them to have some sort of visceral quality that made me care so much more.
also, speaking of YA, i've also found a lot of the time that... i feel like a lot of the reason books for adults tend to be so bland is because the audience expects a certain amount of "realism", and "realism" in this case is about how bad things happen to good people, and about how people are selfish creatures, and about how you can't always get what you want, and all those little lessons people learn, and i feel like that puts a huge damper on storylines too. like kids' fiction and YA almost has more freedom in that way, and i wonder if that's why adults are tending towards YA now, because adult fiction is boring and full of artistic attempts at structuralism and all this stuff that a casual reader might not want to think about. (i certainly don't always want to think about it.) but of course what rings for a 22 year old won't ring for a 14 year old and vice versa.
i dunno. i don't think i have any great insight on it seeing as i haven't touched a YA book in a long time, but i think it's part of a greater trend of escapism i've been seeing in fandom, and it's interesting to think about!