Led by Millions Top Tenner The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, dystopia is unseating vampires as the dominant theme in teen fiction, according to The Independent. The paper lists several other examples of the hot new trend, including Plague by Michael Grant and Matched by Ally Condie. (We’d argue that with dystopian classics like 1984 and Lord of the Flies on teen reading lists for decades, this is an old trend that’s new again.)
The Teenage Years are More Dystopian Than Ever
The Feeling of Being Watched
To give context to a new William Vollmann essay about reading his own FBI profile (available to subscribers only, sadly), Harper’s Magazine published a few pages from Vollmann’s file online. Among other things, they reveal that the FBI considered Vollman “exceedingly intelligent and possessed with an enormous ego.” (For a taste of the Harper’s essay, you can read this WaPo article on Vollmann’s connection to the Unabomber.)
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“An opus d’odure”
Heaven forbid someone ever draws parallels between your writing and that of “Robert Rabelais the Younger.” For his work, published in the nineteenth century, has been described as “the most appallingly bad epic poem to have ever been written in English, comprised of 384 interminable pages of doggerel verse devoid of any literary merit, an opus d’odure that screams stinkburger.” (And that’s one of the more positive evaluations.)
The Other Arts
Six novelists discuss their second-favorite art forms (after writing, of course). Before you click, see if you can guess which one of these folks is most interested in opera: Kazuo Ishiguro, Lavinia Greenlaw, John Lanchester, Alan Werner, Sarah Hall and Colm Tóibín.
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True Tragedy
“The way this propaganda works is you take something insane and wrap it in a little bit of truth, and then all those people swallow it because it’s wrapped in a little bit of truth.” Columbia Journalism Review talks to the victims of fake news, from Sandy Hook parents to election overseers. Also worth thinking about in this context, the American usage of modern English.
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On people braver than us:
Erika Anderson recites her teenage poetry at readings and shares her reasoning for doing so. “I want to live where irony meets kindness, where daring meets bullshit, where everything that failed meets the hope that something might not. I hope my readers do too.”
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Coetzee on Murray
Millions favorite J. M. Coetzee analyzes “the angry genius” of Les Murray for The New York Review of Books.
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A Frothy, Heady BFFship
“It seems that not only do Americans see beer as a person, they see beer as a person other people like better than them.”
Marilynne Robinson on The Daily Show
Author Marilynne Robinson appeared on “The Daily Show” Thursday night. No kidding. She talked about Absence of Mind, her new work of nonfiction, about the relationship between science and religion. (via The Observer)
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Dystopian novels are defintely the new “it” for young adults. Its about time too, I couldn’t stand seeing a new series about vampires. I think dystopian is a great genre for young people because it forces them to reflect on the society they live in, which is important contemplation for young people before they step out into the world.
Interesting timing – as I read and reviewed The Hunger Games just last night after much prodding from friends. That book is still getting lots of publicity and play. I was not at all impressed, but I agree that there are a lot of wonderful things for young adults to take from these post-Apocalyptic stories. While I think young people reading anything at all, even if it’s Twilight and the like, is a beautiful, wonderful thing – if authors manage to entertain AND provoke thoughtful discussion, all the better.