Would a Man Read Teen Novels Like Lizzie Skurnick Does?

On Monday Double X published an excerpt from Lizzie Skurnick's new book Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, and I've since found myself paging back through my own copy of her ode to the young adult novel. In the office earlier today, Noreen and I were discussing what the book suggests about why women read. We thought others might want to chime in here.

Skurnick's thesis, which she defends with her usual contagious exuberance, is that books like Daughters of Eve, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Jacob Have I Loved are important, that their companionship can be the thing that keeps you from dissolving into a pool of self-doubt before you ever get to kiss someone or get your own apartment or write a book. What she never explicitly acknowledges is that the authors and protagonists of most of the novels she discusses are female, and that she is writing specifically about how these books shape their readers as women. Certainly many male writers have reflected in print on the books that shaped them as thinkers, writers, and human beings. Do we have an example, though, of a man talking about the stories that showed him how to make it as a man? Which once again raises the larger question: Do men think of their maleness as being a distinct, challenging aspect of their humanity, as women must to at least some degree (see the prehistoric maxi-pad-with-belt in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret) regard being female?

Photograph by Getty Images.

Comments

Not Just Shopping Sprees

By: Martha Nichols | Tue, 07/28/2009 - 14:24

I do agree that YA lit for girls is far more varied than ancient stuff like "Class Ring" (which even for me at the time was a throw-back). I love a lot of YA sci-fi stuff, and there are some terrific, bold, strong female characters out there--the kind I longed for as a girl. Mostly what I was referencing was the *Twilight* series, which is extremely retro in its portrayal of gender roles. ("Oh, he's so unbearably handsome--will he bite me or not?") I tried to read the first of the series and was appalled. While I enjoy discussing male-female differences as much as anyone, I also long for a more complex view of how each individual person gets to be who he or she is. Lots of guys watched sports as kids, lots of gals longed for guys and went shopping, and everyone else did all those things and more.

Men don't think about their

By: Foobs | Mon, 07/27/2009 - 15:47

Men don't think about their male-ness in the same way that women think about their female-ness for the same reason that whites don't think about being white in the same way that black people think about being black. One experience is the social norm (and so doesn't need to be thought about), while the other is not.

I think that if you listen to men talk about their formative experiences, the ones that shaped their ideals of manhood and how they pursue them, you would find that it is sports (playing and watching) that comes up most.

YA Novels

By: magisterludi1 | Mon, 07/27/2009 - 14:10

I am an older man who not only did, but still do, read so-called YA novels among my voracious and indiscriminate reading. I am so old in fact that this looks like two possibly unrelated questions: do men read fiction marketed to youn people, and what reading (youthful or otherwise) helped shape becoming the man I have become (distinct I presume from the human being I've become.

OK, first and foremost, LORD JIM by Conrad - not strictly speaking a YA novel I suppose but certainly marketed as such. A different effect and signifigance every time I've read it: rousing adventure when I was a boy, duty when I was a soldier, protecting those in my charge when I was a parent. These days I'm more Marlowe than Jim but that is still a role for a man.

Martha, I've got to say that

By: tinyredcar | Mon, 07/27/2009 - 12:57

Martha, I've got to say that I think you've got a skewed vision of what young adult books for girls are about. Maybe it's the generation I grew up in, but I remember reading very few books that dwelt on girls pining over boys, as a teen. The Alex books by Tessa Duder, for example, are about a young woman who swims competitively, and eventually competes in the 1960 Olympics. There is little pining, and a lot of struggle and hard lessons. John Marsden's Tomorrow, When the War Began series is about a group of young people in Australia who are thrust into war and must fight for their lives. The main character, Ellie, is forced to deal with death, friendship, loyalty, trust, and some heartbreak. She is a fighter all the way. And, speaking of fantasy and sci-fi, the characters is Diana Wynne Jones' books, both male and female, have adventures and encounter magic. The characters in these books are inspirational, but all too human. I do think it is generalising to imply that just because you read books aimed at girls, you were only reading about shopping sprees and teen heartbreak.

What if you were a fan of Mr. Spock--and a girl?

By: Martha Nichols | Sun, 07/26/2009 - 16:36

Gender being such a weirdly constructed thing, it seems obvious that girls and boys relate to books (and old TV shows) in different ways. But I resist the either-or thinking here. For one, I believe male writers have talked about favorite books affecting their conceptions of manhood--especially if "manhood" is partly based on work and career. See Stephen King's *On Writing*. And while books were incredibly important to me as I was growing up an uncool, brainy girl in '70s California--yes, I loved Nancy Drew, and for awhile I was taken by early-'60s throwbacks like "Class Ring"--I was mightily influenced by science fiction and fantasy writers, the traditional boys' genre. I so much wanted to be going on a trek through Middle Earth and saving the world and hanging out with my buddies rather than obsessing about whether a guy liked me. In Anthony Lane's review of one of *The Lord of the Rings* movies in the *New Yorker* a few years back, he talked about Tolkien's vision being ultimately a boyish and asexual one. Lane remembered his own teenage fascination with the books, noting that the girls he knew all had their eyes set on the real world. But what if you didn't like the real world? What *is* the real world? A place of traditional gender roles, where women only focus on relationships? What Lane wrote is sort of true, for some girls and some boys, but leaping to generalizations about gender differences is always risky.

Male reads

By: geml | Sat, 07/25/2009 - 21:14

Many male science fiction readers I know began reading in the genre as teenagers and return to those earlier novels as reference points again and again. Perhaps the equivalent of ARE YOU THERE GOD isn't a male YA-marketed novel, but something closer to ENDER'S GAME. And the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy anyone?

This male's use of YA lit

By: earnestp | Sat, 07/25/2009 - 20:56

I love Skurnick's column because I grew up a voracious reader with a heavy appetite for Young Adult novels. I didn't use them as a guide to my emerging masculinity, however. I think they fulfilled another important role for me. They showed me how other people were and helped me understand relationships between people better. That was something that didn't come naturally to me. My favorite books dealt with people having trouble navigating society's twisted paths. Some of my favorites were Harriet The Spy, Bridge To Terabithia, Blubber, and Dreams of Victory-- I loved books about outcasts. Of course, I enjoyed just as many books about males: Gary Paulsen, Jerry Spinelli, Gordon Korman, and Daniel Pinkwater gave me wonderful books about males (as did Betsy Byars and Judy Blume!)

I didn't look to these books to tell me how to grow up, male. I looked to them to tell me how to grow up, period.

Would a man?

By: plorentz | Sat, 07/25/2009 - 17:10

I can't immediately point to a writer who is talking about the books that helped him make it as a man, but certainly there are books out there that, as a man, I've gone back to the way Lizzie Gurnick does, especially when I became a father. Specifically, the books of Robert Cormier had a major impact on me in junior high and high school; and over the last couple of years, I've read (and written about) all of his books - not just the ones I'd read as a kid, but the ones he wrote after I'd "grown up". Nearly all of his books are centered on teenage boys, and nearly all of them place those boys at odds not only with each other, or with their feelings for the opposite sex, but with grown men and society as a whole. In various books, Cormier talked about all sorts of difficult choices - sexual, religious, social, moral - in a context that, I believe, is uniquely centered very much around "what it is to be a man".

The Importance of Novels

By: dcbrowser | Sat, 07/25/2009 - 08:44

Thanks for posting this. I am looking forward to reading Lizzie Skurnick's book. It's especially timely because I just wrote about the links between the books I loved and enjoyed as a girl and my career/life choices (as well as those of my friends) on my blog www.CurrentMom.com. Of course, all the books that influenced our lives featured female heroines, including Claudia from the Mixed Up Files. See "Sonia Sotomayor and Nancy Drew: Solving The Mystery of the Book-Career Connection" - http://www.currentmom.com/currentmom/2009/07/sonia-sotomayor-and-nancy-d...