I read this piece in the New York Times where they posed a question to a number of YA novelists and other thinker-types, asking for their theories behind the recent popularity in dystopian fiction for young adult readers.
So, I'm going to pretend the New York Times asked me, which in my fantasy-pretend-universe will allow me to exceed the apparently miserly word-count they limited their respondents to. I'm also going to pretend to be obtuse, snobby, and evasive in my response, as well.
Heck. It's my pretend-iverse, after all.
Ah, trends.
Don't you love them?
Trends are terrific and useful things for people whose impulse to sell vastly overshadows their creative capacities. (See? I told you I'd be snobby. Now for the obtuse and evasive bits...)
The truth is that dystopian fiction (and, by that, I imagine we're talking about works which establish a kind of nightmare-world that is generally believable) has been around forever. As long as novels (and even epic poetry) have been written. There's nothing new about dystopian literature at all, and certainly nothing new about its popularity among readers.
So go away with your stupid hipster, scenester questions, dumb New York Times.
(Snobby bit #2)
The thing that concerns me is that the moment people start talking (in all caps) about TRENDS or A SCENE, then there's all this polluted kind of acceptance about necessary ingredients that identify a work as part of this great new giant TREND or SCENE. Then things start to get watered down, neutered, and just not very interesting.
And the door is suddenly open for an awful lot of not-too-clever poseurs who latch on to their coveted list of magical and necessary ingredients and proclaim themselves to be "in the scene."
(Warning: Extreme snobbiness is about to ensue. Stop reading now if you are sensitive.)
I know it's just me. I know I am weak and shallow. I am a bad person. But I want to punch everyone in the world in the face who says something like, "Oh! I am currently writing a Steampunk novel!"
Go away.
Just write a novel.
Make it good.
Then let the hipster, trend-identifier police tell you if you're in the club or not.
I know some people are going to say The Marbury Lens is a dystopian novel. Okay. Whatever. There are also going to be people who say that the guy who wrote The Marbury Lens is an ass. Okay, too.
I am hip to that scene.
6 comments:
Ha!
What would you really have written if you had been approached?
I love the Times. I read it every day, which kind of identifies me as a sort of liberal hipster. I would have said exactly that (except it could use a brushover from a decent editorial eye -- keep in mind that I just spout off blog posts sitting here in my spider-free Christmas underwear, between paragraphs of prose and cups of coffee). And I would have used profanities, too. Lots and lots of profanities.
I imagine one day being invited to this vast "dystopian authors' party," and everyone cool will be there and we'll all be sitting around with Mojitos and eating tapas with real, authentic insects in them, postulating about the end of days and playing Ouija board and shit like that.
That would be cool.
Maybe the bookstores need a "I'm an ass" section for writers that don't fit anywhere else. I'd shop that section any day.
Two years ago I was invited to NYC to do an event with Scott Westerfeld, Carrie Ryan and James Dashner. It seems we aere all part of the dystopian YA trend.
This was news to us since we'd all just sort of written stuff and had not actively colluded in the act of trend creation.
Now any time I work on some new project I live in fear that I'll be "part" of some new trend. People with huge egos don't like being "part" of anything.
Michael,
Who are those people whose names you've dropped?
And, I do foresee a "Titles Without Vowels" trend starting in YA, to be followed by a "Steampunk Titles Without Vowels" trend.
And Connie,
Someone (unfortunately for you) left a very funny comment on Facebook about the "I'm an ass" section.
(Connie does not play in the Facebook sandbox.)
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