Book fandom and dystopia lovers alike, Veronica Roth’s Divergent hits theaters March 21st. Having read the novel, I am trying my best to avoid the early reviews. Spoiler alert: It’s next to impossible. The initial consensus is that this is no successor to The Hunger Games and that much of the feature film ‘feels’ like a patchwork of all things young adult that have come before. Is this just another case of good book, bad movie? I’ll reserve my criticism when I actually SEE It. However, You can draw a direct parallel with the massive, unprecedented boom in big budget fantasy films that followed the success of LotR and Harry Potter — a bunch of flops (Eragon, The Seeker), false starts (the Narnia franchise, Percy Jackson), and nonstarters (Golden Compass). With the box office flop Vampire Academy earlier this year and MEH adaptations of The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones and the latest Percy Jackson in 2013, is the general public moving away from the boom? Especially, the the older demographic that is swiping their debit cards for the movie tickets?
Some of us adults are guilty of giving the YA genre the side eye. Whether we believe that YA novels can’t possibly hit on themes we can relate to, or that dystopia and fantasy seem silly, or we believe that YA authors must be inferior to those who write for adults, some adults refuse to pick up young adult fiction. These people are missing out.
What I find appealing about YA literature is the directness of both the prose and plot line. Every decision feels life-changing, and every choice in these books can seem life-or-death. The emotions are no more or less valid than what one might experience at 30, but it’s the first time, and thus very powerful. Another way to put it, I think, is by way of Stephen King. He’s said that he writes for readers, not for other writers, or for reviewers. You can’t write for a YA audience without writing for readers. Arch, clever, sly, self-referential prose won’t cut it.
These novels are not, as a whole, lacking in literary merit. Some are average, some suck, some are good, a few are abysmal, and a few are excellent, just like any other genre of literature. If you want to reach a large audience with a book that contains SF, fantasy, or horror themes, you could do a lot worse than to pitch it as a young adult book. In many ways, genre fiction aimed at a young adult audience often tends to be thought of in much more glowing terms than the adult equivalent, because it represents the sort of thing that readers will look back fondly upon throughout adulthood. Just look at Madeleine L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Phillip Pullman… I suspect one of the reasons why Heinlein has not been categorically dismissed as a loon by most Baby Boomer fans is because they fondly remember his juveniles from the ’50s.
Just because a book is written with an adult audience in mind doesn’t mean it is necessarily challenging, innovative or well-made. I have no patience for the books that are very much “write-by-the-numbers” YA novels. But there is nothing second-rate about the The Graveyard Book, Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy or Harry Potter.
A good story is a good story. If something is really well written and tells a compelling story it will rise to the top and become popular or at least well liked. I don’t think it matters what the genre is. The things that are fading or floundering are the copy cat books and movies who were trying to be like something that was more popular. A great original story is what’s going to make an impression and last.
It’s a rare moment when I sit down with a book and recapture that feeling of perfection, where all that existed was my younger self, a great book and not a trouble in the world as I sank deep into the pages. Damned if I can concentrate like I used to, or shrug off the daily stresses, but just sometimes the right book will do it. Imagination is too wonderful a creature to be domesticated by arbitrary terms no matter what they may be.
-Dagobot
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