THAT Article.

If you're not big into the YA world, you may not have seen yesterday's article on Slate, which basically tells you all that, as adults, you shouldn't be reading YA, at least not openly.

Basically, the author believes that as grown ups, we should read edifying, grown-up things, presumably those things that book reviews refer to as "difficult, but beautifully rendered," or all-the-Proust.

Because so many people make it through this once you just shame them for liking John Green...

She then hates on YA for being easier to read, for including "satisfying" endings (which don't have to be happy, but, apparently, by virtue of actually being ENDINGS, not just a cessation of writing, are somehow less valid than "real" literature), and for causing her to have "oh, brother!" moments.

Because no "good" adult books have any of those.

Let's ignore the fact that clearly this woman was the one who had to talk about SAT scores and drop the names of literary critics she was reading during college conversations because that's how you prove you think deep thoughts--the fact that I don't want her at my cocktail party isn't the main issue here.

Neither is the massive condescension based on a super uninformed reading of what constitutes YA. She justifies herself by saying that she, essentially, aspired to reading the "real" grownup books as a kid, and we're making idiots who won't do that, but she ignores the fact that, by today's definitions, Salinger, a good chunk of Austen, and much of Dickens would fall squarely in the YA category.

This is no longer "real" lit, FYI.

Let's even ignore the fact that she "clinches" her argument by quoting Shailene Woodley's sense of herself as just-too-grownup for more teen parts, a girl I've previously noticed in People mainly because she's a super-devotee of not washing her hair, like, ever (truly, we should take her opinions as dogma).

I take real issue with this sentence:

"YA books present the teenage perspective in a fundamentally uncritical way." 

How do you figure?

Every narrative perspective, when it's first-person, is only as self-critical as the narrator. Humbert Humbert was self-critical in Lolita, but the story wasn't critical of his perspective, or his right to tell the story. There wasn't meta-criticism of his telling.

Like adult narrators, teen narrators are sometimes bitchy, sometimes quiet, sometimes self-loathing, sometimes just people...but their perspectives as narrators aren't meta-critiqued. They may not be reliable narrators, but they're taken at face value AS THE NARRATORS.

Does the author of this article want YA to "up its game" by adding a meta-narrative, in which YA authors show us all that sure, Hazel Grace thinks all these things are love, but she's just dumb because she's still 17? Since when is condescension to your characters a good thing, regardless of genre? And since when is presenting a narrative voice on the page the same as agreeing with the conclusions it draws--again, in any genre?

Faulkner famously used a mentally handicapped narrator to tell one of his stories. Should he have then gone in and reminded us that we're listening to an idiot, so, you know, take his emotions with a grain of salt?

Or did he trust the reader to see that the narrative perspective he chose may or may not be universally correct? That it may be inflected by important facets of that character's personality, like having serious developmental delays, or, you know, BEING A TEENAGER?

I realize this is just another layer of her condescension, and that the entire article is based on having read very little YA literature, but I have to say I'm disappointed.

Not that she's a snob.

That she, such an important adult, is still such a weak critical thinker--after all, I'm not digging very deep here.

It's even more shocking, since she clearly spends so much time reading "real" books...