On Labels

In an interview included in the US trade paperback edition of Tender Morsels, author Margo Lanagan reveals her thoughts on a question that comes up a lot in the bookstore and at Simmons:

Tender Morsels has been released as a novel for young adults in the United States and as a novel for adults in Australia. Which classification do you feel is right? What distinguishes young adult literature from adult literature, in your opinion?

I’ve spent quite a lot of my publishing life on this blurry line between adult and YA literature. All I can say is that sometimes my stories definitely fall to one side or the other, and sometimes publishers can’t make up their minds what it is I’ve written! I’m very happy to go with whatever market they decide they’re aiming at.

I’m not sure what defines young adult literature. It’s usually about young adults; it often deals with issues associated with coming of age and establishing one’s place in the world. It can usually be relied on to have an interesting plot, which is not always the case with adult literature, which is allowed to be just internal musings. Beyond that, I wouldn’t want to confine it any further; young adult literature is the literature that parents, librarians and schools offer to young adults, thinking they might find it rewarding—whether it’s graphic novels, literary classics, or targeted stories about teens.

In general, I think hers is a solid definition. And perhaps then it raises even more questions: how and why did the editors decide that this should be YA? How do you recommend or hand-sell a book like this, that in other countries is for adults and does deal with controversial themes? This is one of those books that once read, I have never been able to get out of my head. And therefore, it must be a worthwhile read, right? It’s intense, to be sure, but has so much going on that it could stimulate interesting discussions, relate to many other texts, and simply make you think. Which is definitely a good thing.

I think the editors may have known that some of the tougher stuff in the book would make it a difficult YA-sell. And perhaps that’s why much of the graphic action occurs “off-camera,” that is, perhaps it was edited out, knowing that librarians were supposed to be handing this book to teens. But as a bookseller, I think all I can do is recommend it to older teens, or those looking for fairy tale retellings or feminist works, but I feel sort of obligated to extend the book with a caveat. DANGER! There’s tough stuff here! But I feel like that shapes how others read the book and then maybe it makes it difficult for a reader to have a full, personally-developed opinion of the book. All to save me from being yelled at by parents? And then there’s the other problem of adults as readers. YA is one of those genres that can enjoy crossover appeal often: adults can read books for teens and enjoy them rather easily. However, swaths of adults won’t touch YA books, dismissing them as “easy” or “childish.” I’ve worked with, been friends with, and myself been a person like this at various times in my life. But this book is not easy. It’s not childish. An adult audience couldn’t certainly get a lot out of the book, and American adults could be missing out on this book because of its label. But is it more YA-ish because the girls are teens through most of it? Because they come of age (though a little bit before the end)? Liga, the adult mother, seems to be the main character, and she’s only a teen for the first few chapters of the book. Is it YA because it has a plot and because it’s generally thought of to be a “playful” or “childlike” way to write a novel in the form of a fairy tale retelling?

Obviously, I don’t have any answers. I just know that this book has a vise grip on my brain, and I read it half a year ago. It makes me think of things within it: fairy tales, the status of women, the symbolism of animals in literature, utopia, living life. It makes me think of things outside of it: the nature and status of YA literature, and the writing process, and POV and polyvocal narration and who this book is for, or if a book is “for” anything or anyone. And in my book, a book that makes you think is the best kind.

I obsess over this business of labels for a couple of reasons. 1: It’s academic. This stuff comes up all the time in classes. 2: the YA thing is very new to me, and I don’t believe I’ll always and forever and only write YA, so I wonder what it means if those are the books I start writing…are labels more forever than my work? Because how a publisher packages a novel definitely shapes how it is received and how the author is known. And it affects reviews, too. Tender Morsels gets some crazy intense reviews, and I would assume they’d be amped up because people are picking up and reading a YA book that is way intense and insane, and evaluating it as a YA book, when it in fact is more of a crossover kind of title. Maybe if we need labels to make things tidy (and I’m all for that! Go, go, Virgo power!) I propose a new one (see if you can spot it in the lineup of my imaginary book shop):

Non-Fiction
Young Adult
Children’s/Early Readers, Picture Book, Middle Grade
Literary Fiction
Poetry
Just Shut Up and Read It, Then Make Up Your Mind or Etc.
Mystery
Horror
Romance
Western
SciFi/Fantasy

Can’t you just see that on a label in a corporate bookstore? Who’s with me?

2010
06/09
CATEGORY
In a Book
2 comments

Book Club with Myself

The title of this post should be sung to Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself”

So basically, I love love love Tove Jansson’s novel The True Deceiver so much, that I’m going to do a book club with myself. Because I’m bad at maintaining book clubs. So, I’m going to take The New York Review of Book’s reading group guide for the book, and try and think of answers to the questions. If you haven’t read the book, DO IT NOW! It seriously was the best thing I read in 2009. The questions will spoil major plot points of the novel, but if you know you’re never going to read it, or that wouldn’t ruin things for you, then keep reading! Otherwise, read the book and come back here.

Okay, I’m so glad you’re still here, reading with me. :D

Just to help you out in case you haven’t read it, here’s a quick plot summary from the reading group guide [my notes in these bracket-y things]:

“It is the dead of Scandinavian winter [Yeah! Black Metal!], in the kind of sleepy village where everyone has an acute knowledge (Accompanied by a keen sense of judgment) about everyone else’s affairs. By and large, the villagers like and respect Anna Aemelin, a reclusive elderly children’s-book illustrator who lives alone in her parents’ old home at the top of the hill. [The house is shaped like a bunny. I totally kid you not.] Katri Kling, an out- cast in the town because of her strange looks [She has yellow eyes! Like Hobbes, my cat!] and blunt personality, is not so lucky: the townsfolk gossip about her, and their children cry “Witch!” when they see Katri in the street.

The novel takes shape when Katri begins to do little favors for Anna—at first, she is just bringing Anna’s mail and groceries [Bloody liver! Gross!], but before long, Katri and her simpleminded brother Mats have moved into Anna’s big, empty house. From there, the two women’s lives become intertwined in increasingly unpredictable ways, building a relationship from which neither will emerge unscathed [Emotionally. There are no fisticuffs.]“

Other important things to mention: Anna Amelin is famous for painting lush forest scenes with little bunnies with floral fur in them. She receives lots of mail from her fans, which she answers individually. Katri wants most in the world to make her brother happy. You get the sense from the novel that he’s perhaps mentally handicapped, very slightly. He can work, but his social dealings indicate something else is going on, and Katri is compelled to care for him as if he were a child, even though he’s legally an adult. What Mats wants most is a boat. And Katri wants most to make him happy, so she thinks Anna is a means to get the boat, since she’s loaded and doesn’t do anything with her money. Also, Katri is often accompanied throughout the novel with her German Shepherd dog, who is like her daemon or shadow, he’s always at her side, or always waiting around for her right outside the door. Mmmkay, on to questions:

Hold on, I’m reading them…

Hmm…

Okay, no offense NYRB (because I know they’re all smarter than me, and they’re writing these for people who don’t read literature very carefully), but these questions are boring. So I’m only going to answer the cool ones.

flickr user kanelstrand

9. What is the significance of Mats’s boat? Could it be a symbol of something else?

Boats probably mean something for Tove since they’re so omnipresent in her work. But Mats is such a simple, steady guy, it’s hard to think it’s anything deeper than just a way for him to get away from the village that teases him and his sister. A place where he can feel free and relax on the ocean.

I haven’t read the book since December, though, so maybe it says something explicitly in the text.

10. Why does Katri’s dog go mad? Is it Anna’s fault, for causing it to no longer obey Katri? Why does Anna tell Katri, “He isn’t coming back. He wants to get away from you” [p. 170]? Is this unnecessarily cruel?

When Anna first encounters the dog, she’s sort of repulsed by it. She doesn’t really like dogs, and this one is creepy. It’s creepily obedient to Katri. Katri and the dog are basically the same thing. I think, in an effort to try to like the dog or to get the dog to be nicer, Anna starts to spoil it by giving it treats and the like, and she finds Katri too harsh (herself, and on the dog) so Anna feels that if she spoils the dog, he’ll be happier, in having a break from Katri’s sternness. So trying to free the dog from Katri is easier than freeing Katri from herself, because she’s a stone wall, that one. So maybe Anna thinks the dog never liked Anna to begin with, and that’s why she says what she does. But I think the dog itself goes mad because his consistent, clockwork life has been overturned.

11.Just before the spring, Anna made her first visit to the woods. Afterwards she “was gripped by a terrible anxiety” [p. 147]. What gives rise to this anxiety? Is Anna experiencing artist’s block? Where does it come from?

The forest is her, and she is in upheaval. See next question.

13. At the novel’s end, why doesn’t Anna want to add rabbits to the forest floor anymore?

I have a theory on this based on some literary criticism I’ve read of Tove Jansson. It is thought that landscapes when depicted by Tove (she was a painter as well as an illustrator and author) are self-portraits. So in the end, when Anna sits down to crank out another bunny book, she starts as she always does, with this lush, detailed landscape that is some deep, unspoken part of herself. Like, her true, authentic vision…close to the earth. And when she’s about to add the first bunny, she’s basically stating that she doesn’t need to adorn herself anymore to make people like her, or to make herself more profitable, or to tame the wildness within her. She simply lets the landscape be, instead of adding fussy fakeness, as she did before. (But in the scene referenced in the previous question, she hasn’t come full circle yet, and is anxious about all she’s having to deal with about herself. Do I care if my fans like me? Why do I make the art that I do? What’s it all for?)

I’m also going to make up three new questions:

1. Which Moomin character would Mats, Katri and Anna be?

Mats would be Toft. He’s gentle and sad in a way, but finds things to occupy him, and in the end (of Moominland in November) a boat makes him happy.

Katri would be … the police inspector? Maybe a Hemulen? She’s kind of obsessive, and shrewd, and a bit opportunistic. Maybe she’d be Sniff? She’s not that goofy, though…

Anna would be Moomintroll: sweet, gentle, and always wants everyone happy.

2. Which black metal song best exemplifies Katri?

Burzum – A Lost Forgotten Sad Spirit (I would toss, like, eight commas into that title)

3. What kind of cupcake would Anna’s books be?

from flickr user Belinda (miscdebris)

Black forest.

Thanks for reading! What book should I do next?

2010
06/05
CATEGORY
In a Book
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A Fairy Tale

from flickr user Tatters:)

Once upon a time, there was a jungle, where vines grew on anything that stood still for long enough. The vines grew many flowers, which turned to fruits. The taste of the fruits changed depending on the mood of the eater. If you were in a happy mood, the fruit tasted sweet and light, if you were in an sour mood, the fruit would taste bitter, and if you were sad, the food would taste like salt and ashes.

One day, a girl ran away from her village until the flat valley turned to hills, and the hills grew trees, and the trees grew thick, and the thickness choked with vines.

Tired, and wary of the dark, the girl paused to rest by a large tree trunk. A full, fat fruit hung heavily from the tree. The girl was hungry and thirsty at the same time. She pulled at the fruit until it gave. She peeled away its skin with her fingers. She bit hungrily at its flesh. It tasted like tiny, sparking explosions and sweet, dark blood. Soon, all that was left of the fruit was the dark juice smearing her fingers and the empty peel. She dropped the peel to the ground and relaxed against the tree, tired. Slowly, without her noticing, vines began to grow around her feet.

The girl awoke to the vines tightening around her whole body. They began to curl around her throat and had already tied her arms and legs against the trunk of the tree. The girl screamed into the forest and listened to it echo back, animals scurried away from their hiding places and birds took to the sky. Suddenly a glowing body emerged from the trunk of a tree. “You must pull yourself away, if I cut the vines they will only bleed and grow back stronger.” The girl was desperate and terrified, but pushed through the vines as they fell to the ground around her.

The beautiful being disappeared into the trunk of the tree, and the girl followed after it.

2010
06/04
CATEGORY
In My Notebook
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The Bliss of Imbalance

from flickr user *Zephyrance

Wow, if you ever needed reason #1,997 to WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN RIGHT AWAY DON’T WAIT…

I keep putting off writing this scene in my novel because once I do I’ll not be able to stop but with school, etc., I don’t have time. So I have a couple of sentences and the overall structure of the scene written down for a prompt when I do have the time. I got some good ideas for a character recently, so I bust out my project notebook to jot them down. I happened to read wistfully over that scene sketch and I wrote down such a genius idea that will turn into a huge story arc that I TOTALLY FORGOT EVEN THINKING UP. SO glad I wrote that down, it was like a tiny gift from the novel fairy because my memory had no cookies stored from that idea-site.

This also makes me think about the project in general. I have two going right now. Both YA novels, both in similar stages of writing. I have more research to do for the second novel but I’ve got a huge outline ready. The first novel I have a few chapters written at least, and an outline, but, like I said, they’re both infant, writing-in-progress novels. I’m definitely more excited about the second novel, because it’s newer. I have a single notebook that I jot down research, outlines, scene ideas and character notes in. A pile of books to read for research. The other one I just have crappy chapters and a synopsis that I need to crank out into full novel form by this fall. I’ve been at it (outline and first chapter) for a year. It keeps changing. The other novel just keeps getting bigger (in scope) and better (in my head).

I need to think of something to get re-excited about the first project and try and stymie my interest in the latter so I stop wandering around “researching” it for hours. But there’s another voice inside me that says roll with it if I have the steam and the energy. So I’ll throw balance out the window and DO WHAT I WANT. (Because if it feels good [and doesn't harm others] then why not?) For now. And trust that when my passion is allowed to unfurl, the work will get done when it needs to. It usually does.

I am excited to finally get a project into a different phase, so I can maybe edit one while I write the other.

UPDATE: This post was originally written a couple of weeks ago. Today, I indeed threw balance out the window and wrote for hooours on my first project and effectively, by not worrying myself about burnout, totally got re-jazzed into my project and have left plenty for me to go forth and conquer with for future days when I might not be feeling it. The writing bits in my spirit feel like a cool, mountain breeze for all the refreshment today’s work has given.

read this now:
from Danielle LaPorte at White Hot Truth: The Suck Factor of Life
2010
05/18
CATEGORY
In My Notebook
1 comment

Who Left the Babies Alone?

an episode of "All the Modern Bunnies"

2010
05/14
CATEGORY
On My CCD
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Feature Creep

What do I really need in a kitchen, anyway?

I wish I could pinpoint the moment when I embraced minimalism. But maybe like many things, it was a gradual change that ended with a cataclysmic “that’s enough!” I’ve moved around a lot, and maybe that is a big influence. Constantly moving – and not just small distances – means a lot of work, and the more stuff you have, the more work it takes. And maybe because I’m the tiniest bit lazy (okay, a lot lazy) I am always interested in the most efficient way to do things (so I can scamper off and read books faster) and I get annoyed very easily at having to do things multiple times, or to do things that just don’t matter. Like pack things in boxes and move the boxes and unpack the boxes only to realize that 3/4 of the stuff was stuff that didn’t matter. So I don’t want to do a bunch of extra work to keep ahold of a bunch of things I don’t need or want or care for.

Also, I am endlessly fascinated by thinking of what are the most minimum items needed for living. What can I live without, or even more succinctly: what are the only things I need to live? In a lot of radical simplicity movements, or even through advice on de-cluttering, there’s this notion of paring down possessions to only 100 items. I like this idea, perhaps not for the arbitrary nature of the number but for thinking of one’s things in those terms. If I can only this many things, what are the most important things that will make the cut? I’ve never tried to do anything like this, again, I feel like the arbitrary nature fo the number would just create an endless back-ing and forth-ing in my mind: why not 99 things? Why not 101? Does a pair of socks count as 1 or 2 things? What about a series of books, you can’t have just one volume of most series… And so forth.

But, like I said, I like the idea of trimming everything down to essentials only. Or if not essentials (like the series of books) considering the use of every item. Do I really need to OWN it? What does it do for me? Could I find another way to meet this need that doesn’t add to all the crap I already have? I’ve thought about this idea a lot recently, as we’ve spent the last six or so months really getting settled into our place in Boston, which is a place we’re really planning on being for at least several more years. It’s been a long time since I’ve considered that I’ll be in the same place for a long time, so the worry about moving and not adding things to the next potential move is a worry a bit far from my consciousness, but the minimalism is certainly ingrained, so it’s a concern. And it’s not just material. I’m fascinated by über-minimalism in literature, as well. As Strunk & White say: eliminate unnecessary words. It’s so much more insane to me to see a story told in as few words as necessary, and I strive for it when I write as well: How can I get this across without beating it to death? Tove Jansson is amazing for this. Her book The True Deceiver is so amazingly spare, each sentence packs layered meaning and movement and tension that it makes my heart want to explode with the sheer beauty and mastery of it all. Truly, a book I will take with me on the next move.

When we moved in, we had NO kitchen equipment. We donated it all to a charity in Seattle before we moved. So, on move-in day, we stopped at an Ikea and picked up a kitchen starter set-all one really needs for a kitchen in a handy-dandy box. Oh, Sweden My love for you and your Scandinavian brethren really deserves its own post. I digress. The box from Ikea was great: the materials within were of good quality and it really was mostly all one would need for a kitchen. But then, the problems…

In software development, there’s this phenomenon known as “feature creep.” Pretend I’m genius-y enough to develop a word processing program. What do you need in a word processing program? You just need to be able to type and have words appear. But, with use, things become susceptible to desires and wishes and different ideas. Okay, now that I’m typing a lot, I want to be able to change the fonts so I can have cool heading, so now, I need to add all these fonts. And styles (bold, italic, underlining). I need to be able to change my paragraph (right, justified, centered, left). Ooh! Ooh! And BULLETS, I need to have bullets. But not just boring dots, I need to be able to have triangles and hearts for bullets, too. So I have to add all those into the code. And here you see the problem: you start off with a simple, straight-forward idea, but eventually, features creep in and begin to complicate an otherwise simple endeavor.

And that’s what happened in the kitchen. We open up the startbox and it has a great, plastic measuring cup. But it’s in metric! Not that metric is bad, but it’s weird metric. Like, deciliters and such, nothing that is easily convertible from American cookbooks. So the next time I’m out and about, I pick up a NEW measuring cup. And after a couple of months of cooking with the items out of our startbox, other problems emerge: heating leftovers takes too long because we don’t have a microwave and then we have to dirty one of our only three pans. And when one pan is dirty it adds all this work to clean it or try a different method. So we bought a microwave. And then after a while we’ve cooked all these weird things but we miss toast-plain old toast-so I bring home a toaster. And you know, we spend an awful lot of time making coffee in our french press and cleaning the thing out, so when we’re out and about and see a french press KIT, we can think of a million uses for all the items and we spend so much time at the french press, it’s an easily justified purchase. So from one small box, our counters’ clutter has grown to incorporate all these new things that we would have considered luxuries when we were standing in Ikea wondering: “What do we really need in our kitchen anyway?” But after a while, luxuries can start to feel like necessities, and feature creep can choke out the best of a minimalist’s intentions.

But, all hope is not lost. Yes, sitting around living life the same way can start to itch one’s skin, and provide the perfect breeding ground for feature creep. But I think there are methods by which to keep it to a … minimum … You can try to keep things at an arbitrary level. Only 100 items in the kitchen! Or the whole house! Or you can keep it at a more practical level. Only whatever can fit in this drawer and still be seen! OR, you can keep a couple of things in mind when you’re considering a purchase:

If it’s something pretty frivolous (and you totally know what those things are) you can wait however many days the item costs in dollars. That is, if you want an awesome new $40 mouse that you see in the store but yours at home is pretty functional, wait 40 days. Usually by day 3 shopper’s lust has faded, (or buyer’s remorse would have set in) and you save yourself a bunch of grief. And seriously, if you’re still considering the mouse after 40 days, it’s probably going to be a purchase you’ll get a lot of use out of.

Other things to consider

The questions I mentioned before: Do I really need to OWN it? What does it do for me? Could I find another way to meet this need that doesn’t add to all the crap I already have? Also, considering that I have to find the space to store it, clean it, pack it around if I move, etc., is it still worth it? Is there something at home already that can get tossed to make room for the new item? I still struggle with this stuff a lot, but awareness is the first step. If the goal (as it is with me) is to stay in a small space without a bunch of crap around, then thinking about these questions can help keep the influx of more clutter, features, etc., down.

More stuff to read:
NYT: Imagine No Possessions
The Simple Dollar blog
Unclutterer blog
Breakdown of Developer’s Feature Creep
2010
05/12
CATEGORY
At Home
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What’s on my desk

Yesterday marked the completion of my first year of graduate school. CLEARLY before the partying comes the desk cleaning and filing. Fresh slate! Go, go Virgo power!

The contents of my desk (can a surface have contents?) reflect the immediate projects at hand: pleasure reading (currently The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson), my vitamins (part of my ongoing New Year’s resolution), notebooks for all the writing I’m going to get done, and my meager point-and-shoot photo equipment, for some art projects I have planned this summer. One of the books visible also points to an upcoming project…teaching myself Swedish!

2010
05/10
CATEGORY
On My Desk
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