I ended up in a loop of articles tonight with each one leading me backwards to the next. Just want to remember them and be able to find them again since I'm really only able to skim them tonight
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Haven't had the time to read all three pieces yet, but from the NYT article by A.O. Scott: "we can see that to be an American adult has always been to be a symbolic figure in someone else’s coming-of-age story". That hit a nerve for me. The "nitwit dad, smothering mother" approach is all too common on screen, particularly.
Preliminary reaction to you no longer having the time/patience/energy for Henry James: are we as adult YA-fans drawn to it because it offers an escape from our own miserable/busy/stressed-out lives? I could kind of see that.
I don't think that explanation explains me. I could certainly see it being the explanation for some people, however. But not to the extent that so many of the most popular YA novels with adults such as Hunger Games are not really happy escape novels. I mean if reading about miserable depressed people makes one feel better about their own lives then I'd rather read an Edith Wharton or Henry James novel about those kind of miserable depressed people than people living in a world where killing children is their happy escape. Twilight, on the other hand, is the kind of happy escape that probably appealed to some adults as it was pure candy and escape with extra sparkles and glitter
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I do know someone who reads Russian novels when he's depressed... hmmm. He's a classicist, so maybe anything that's not in ancient Greek is easy going?
Are people are drawn to intense stories like Hunger Games because it offers high-stakes, meaningful engagement with life? Certainly it adds safe excitement to riding the bus to work. I'll have to check out some Henry James: haven't looked at Edith Wharton in years either. The writing is beautiful but, as you say, the brain needs to step up and work out.
Another friend argued recently that for grade 7 kids, dystopias are magnetic because they express all that early-teenage angst; she, on the other hand, doesn't like reading them any more as (being our age-ish) she prefers worlds that are less bleak. In other words, pass us the bonbons! ;)
Well with Henry James, the movie versions of The Golden Bowl and The Wings of the Dove are good places to start! And there was a modern version of What Maisie Knew with Alexander Skarsgard and Julianne Moore that I have been wanting to see....um and apparently just this second accidentally purchased! LOL! But The Turn of the Screw is one of the shorter and "easier" to read of the written variation
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Preliminary reaction to you no longer having the time/patience/energy for Henry James: are we as adult YA-fans drawn to it because it offers an escape from our own miserable/busy/stressed-out lives? I could kind of see that.
More soon when I've looked at the other pieces!
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Are people are drawn to intense stories like Hunger Games because it offers high-stakes, meaningful engagement with life? Certainly it adds safe excitement to riding the bus to work. I'll have to check out some Henry James: haven't looked at Edith Wharton in years either. The writing is beautiful but, as you say, the brain needs to step up and work out.
Another friend argued recently that for grade 7 kids, dystopias are magnetic because they express all that early-teenage angst; she, on the other hand, doesn't like reading them any more as (being our age-ish) she prefers worlds that are less bleak. In other words, pass us the bonbons! ;)
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