Jack's Second Law of Marbury says:
Not knowing is the same as not happening.
There are lots of things Jack never knows about, so he doesn't have to feel the weight of their consequence -- to actually know what happened.
And the same is true for his friends and, especially, for Wynn and Stella, Jack's grandparents who love him. They never know what's been happening to Jack, so, to them, it's almost like every traumatic and horrible thing Jack goes through never really happens -- at least, not in their universe.
I guess I felt like that a lot when I was a kid; that if nobody knew the things that happened in my life (or universe), it was just as good as those things never actually happening at all.
I suppose in Jack's case (hmmm....) his Second Law is a kind of defense mechanism that simultaneously insulates him against feeling accountable for the terrible things that happen, and allows him to perpetuate the convincing internal argument that maybe none of this is real, anyway. This way, he doesn't have to be too introspective about things like blame, innocence, and his true feelings; and he makes it easier to play off his aloofness and justify the what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about? attitude he projects when people who care about him start to get too close.
That's how things work in Jack's universe.
[I just realized how frequently the concept of rules/law/order comes up in my books.]
So there you have it, Jack's psychological/physics laws of Marbury. You can run back through earlier blogs and see how they congeal to define his reality. So all these laws construct and bind together Jack and Conner's universe -- and give structure and boundary to the universe of The Marbury Lens.
In the next few days, I want to get back into the meta thing and write a little bit about writing, about being a guy, and guys writing for guys who read YA. I will try my hardest not to piss anyone off.
But you know how much I suck at that.
In the mean time, you may be interested in seeing this video response I made to a video-blogger's (ooohhh... how meta) post about The Marbury Lens and the idea of warning labels on YA literature:
5 comments:
I will say this: if I can get my book published, PLEASE put a warning label on it. Hell, please ban it from schools. Nothing get teens interested in something faster than telling them they can't have it.
When it comes to other people's books though, fuck no. Don't put labels on anything, don't censor a thing.
Here's some advice for parents (I have two daughters, 15 and 9): Read the books your children read. If you're worried they might be disturbed or discover something bad, read it first, but at the very least read it after them so that they can ask you about it if they need to.
I'm not going to suggest that my daughter reads Nabakov's Lolita or Welsh's Trainspotting, but I'm not going to forbid it either. If she happens to come across those books, and chooses them, then there is a reason she is curious about that subject. Trying to pretend that teens don't come across issues, of whatever kind, is just a bunch of bullshit.
Oops... try this again:
Thanks Matthew.
I think that for a lot of people warning labels act as intermediaries to parental involvement. They're like prescription medication for overly-active imaginations. They lessen the actual burden of raising children, so a parent can take a quick glance, see a color-coded letter, and then ignore their kids for the rest of the journey.
That said, being challenged or banned or labeled as inappropriate is not really very fun at all. It is most often the case that people who get behind those kinds of efforts generally don't read the material in question and end up turning their misguided ire into personal missiles that assail the writer's value as a human being.
It feels like being a condemned prisoner, and it sucks.
Matt its too bad more parents don't feel the way you do. That's why I read what I read and why I became a Pokemon master when my oldest was 4 (since he loved it), why I learned about Yu-gi-o, read the Potter books and watch all the shows they watch. Trusting someone else to teach/tell my child what he should read or watch is insane but so many parents rather go that route.
So a warning label on your book ... hmmm how curious.
Connie
I was mostly joking.
You're right though Andrew, I can't imagine how difficult it would be to actually endure that kind of experience in real life. I mean just take Laurie Halse Anderson and SPEAK.
There are plenty of ignorant people in the world, but they mostly leave you alone until you step onto the public stage.
Readers bring their own expectations and experiences with them - it's so hard to predict what will be scary and/or disturbing. Sometimes it's something seemingly benign.
And really, of all the ways kids are exposed to issues and the scary bad things in the world, a book is the easiest to self-censor. Just close it. And they do.
Thanks for writing books that get people talking, thinking and asking questions.
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