I totally don't get his thinking that "YA novel" is an oxymoron, either. Is it a total slap in the face of YA writers everywhere - saying anything YA isn't a real novel, as you're speculating? Or what? Good grief. All I'm askin' is for a little respect... just a little bit...

Honestly, I don't think there's anything we can do, and even if there was, I don't think I'd feel particularly compelled to do it, because I'd rather write for MY audience than try to explain my books or change them to suit the tastes of someone who would dismiss an entire classification of books (and its readers). Every time one of these anti-YA things goes down, it kind of sends me flashing back to middle school, and I'm all "Seriously, guys? Don't you have anything better to do than belittle books that don't fall within a classification you and your literary clique approve of?"

That said, it really surprised me to see this coming from King. This isn't the first YA book he's spoken highly of, and he's been on the receiving end of enough literary snobbery that I never would have predicted that he'd have this attitude about YA.

More tomorrow on my blog!

Maybe he means that novels are just novels the way shrimp are just shrimp. (Seriously, even jumbo shrimp are pretty shrimpy.) Okay, maybe I'm being optimistic here but it would be nice to think that he just wants novels to be placed on shelves without categorization and let the reader decide what s/he likes.

But there was a hint of snobbery with the "fairly standard teen-read stuff" comment. Like teens are so shallow and predictable. Maybe this book is helping him discover how much depth there is to the genre.

Wouldn't his bloody-prom-revenge-magical-teenage girl book, Carrie, be a YA?

I think that story is pretty "standard" stuff, clicky girls pick on the outcast who seeks revenge.

I read it the way newport2newport did ... I thought he was calling the genre label dumb, not the genre. But I must admit, my YA novels don't feature a single person getting stung to death by monster wasps.

Knowing that King is a HUGE JK Rowling fan, and that he's written several books that can be categorized as YA--CARRIE, "The Body" novella, EYES OF THE DRAGON, THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON (which was even turned into a pop-up book!)--I think he's referring to the idiocy of labeling the genre YA, ie, what's the distinction between a 'young adult' novel and an 'adult' novel? In other words, categorizing the novel as YA is silly to begin with. It's a novel.

As for the "fairly standard teen-read stuff" line, I don't disparage him for that one, either. He's the first to point out the conventions of the genre he writes in.

Overall, I think he's championing the book and questioning why the label needs to be slapped on the YA genre.

Huh. I'm not sure.


He's a genre-busting literary-horror writer who wants to bust all commercial categories?

Dismissing the love triangle as being less worthy than the horror elements seems misguided to me...

See, I guess I just don't get the hype or the diss.

I write what I write. Since that tends to be stories that are "speculative" in nature (leaning heavily towards dragons, fairies, cultural mythology, robots, ghosts, bizarre experiments and hairless pets), and *also* generally have teen-to-young-adult characters as MCs, I got handed the lexicon of "YA" and "Fantasy" which seems to dwell at the bottom of some imaginary barrel. But kids are reading older and adults are reading nostalgia and everyone enjoys a good story so...

...what's in a name, rose?

I really want some jumbo shrimp now. ;D

"YA" as a label is just as useful as any other genre label--like "fantasy," which tells me that, duh, there will be fantasy in the book. "YA" tells me that there will be a teen MC, the book will probably not be bloated, the story has a good chance of being capital-A Awesome, and none of the main characters will be getting a divorce or paying off their mortgages.

= WIN.

I'm just flummoxed. It still sounds like he's saying YA novels aren't novels. At least not usually. Or something.

I JUST read ON WRITING, and I liked it a lot. The one thing that struck me in an icky way? He said he put the letters, news clippings, etc, in CARRIE b/c it was so short it barely seemed like a novel when he finished it. So that leads me to believe he thinks that succinct=non-novel, which would leave out a lot of YA.

I suppose he could mean that "young adult novel" is an oxymoron because there is no such thing as a "young adult"?

I really think there are two interpretations of the statement that the phrase "young adult novel" is oxymoronic. The first is that if something is a novel, it's by definition not young adult. The second is that if something is young adult, it is by definition not a novel. To be an oxymoron (let alone the winner in a biggest oxymoron contest) one of those things would have to be true. For airplanes and food, it's that something served on an airplane does not qualify as food. For jumbo shrimp, it's that shrimp can never be truly jumbo. So what is it in this case?

Melodye's comment made me try to consider the alternative interpretation to the one I read the first time through- which is that by definition, if something is a novel, it can't be for young adults- or rather (and this is taking a big leap to make the statement a positive one), it can't be JUST for young adults. If this is what he means, then he could be saying that novels are for everyone, and that the YA classification is nonsensical, because adults should be/are reading YA, too. But where is the support for this in the rest of the article? The reference to the downside of the book as being the stuff of standard teen fare, whereas the better parts of the book aren't seen in teen books, but will be familiar to people who've read other adult novels... to me, that doesn't really support the "there is no difference and that's why YA is a nonsensical term" interpretation.

In the context of the article as a whole, I'm not sure if King is disparaging the label more than the genre- because if that was the case, I would expect to see the theme of the review as more "this book is an example of how YA is a genre for everyone" rather than "this book is an exception among its genre." While all reviews should point out what differentiates the book from its peers, in this article, King points out what differentiates it from other YA books, but not what sets it apart from similar adult books (several of which he names). The emphasis in the article is that this book rises above other books categorized as YA- but might tread on ground familiar to people well-versed in similar adult distopian titles. Given that emphasis, it seems strange to me to read the "oxymoron" in a way that says that YA books are on par with adult books and the division is nonsense, rather than reading it in a way that says most YA books aren't "novels."

Still, there's some ambiguity there, and I think I'd rather give him the benefit of the doubt. There are enough people out there who come straight out and diss YA that I figure we don't need to borrow trouble!

Young=young Adult=old
That's why it's an oxy-moron.

King does not seem to be disparaging the genre by saying "typical." I think the point of his article is that the book is rather violent to be marketed toward only teens and not adults.

Yes! It's always easy to misconstrue what someone says, so why not take it at face value - too much YA reading is terribly pointless, sappy, corny, etc. Not all of it, mind you, but enough. What he's saying is that although a bunch of YA is bad, this book belongs to the "good YA". And besides, it's not like Young Adults (18-23 is my age range) read YA novels.

It just occurred to me -- what if he really just meant that "young adult" is an oxymoron? Which, you know, it is. Seems far-fetched now that I re-read the quote, but maybe? Maybe that's the crux of his oxymoron point?

I think Mr King is giving YA novels a pat on the back, saying that a lot of the stories that we have in the genre would be fine for adults to read as well, and that we're selling them short by using that limiting term...
just my two cents worth.

Hey did you see you got a shout out on the PW Children's Bookshelf email for this discussion. I was like, rock on!

I think it's more a criticism of the publishing industry than books with the YA label. All genres and labels are just lines drawn in the sand that very little meaning outside the context of the marketplace. The impression I got is that he was suggesting that "YA" is merely the latest in a long line of marketing trends.

After all, his buddies Neil Gaiman and Dave Barry have many YA books.
The question I am led to then is whether YA really is just another trendy label, or whether it is, as some would suggest, more of a movement. And if it is a movement, what is it about?

Uh, Heidi, I clicked on a link in the Publisher's Weekly Children's Bookshelf I get every week in my e-mail box, and it sent me HERE! Holy blogroll, batman! I'm e-mailing you the thing, so you can see for yourself (hopefully it will come through in e-mail).

It's on the sidebar under "Media" and says, first, "Stephen King gave The Hunger Games a prominent review in Entertainment Weekly" with a link. And then below that it says, "And some bloggers debated whether King had dismissed the YA genre by stating his dislike for the YA label."

Wow - go you!!! :)

I think Stephen King was just trying to sound cool and scholarly and actually gave himself away.

Chiming in good and late, but FWIW, I think he was saying that labeling YA books might be foolish, since there's so much within the genre that could appeal across the spectrum, but the love triangle thing left me scratching my head. I mean, being a teenager is about the big melodrama and so often, it's wrapped up in some form of first love and one of the best ways in which that can be illustrated is through the love triangle.

Besides-- it's not as if it's exclusive to YA-- seriously, how many other genres employ it as a literary/plot device?