For teenagers, GCSE, BTEC, A-level and International Baccalaureate results are days away and fate stands by, snickering, with a sharp pair of scissors in its hands. Later on this summer after they get their results, these teenagers may have cause for reflection. They might even consider turning to literature for consolation or counsel. But what books should they read?
Of course they could always plump for Great Expectations, The Bell Jar, The Catcher in the Rye or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Some fiction hits the sweet spot of every generation. But isn't most coming of age fiction friable? Doesn't its relevance fade? Obama may be the first mixed-race US president, but how many teenagers will read James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain?
My generation flipped through novels without the help of colour-coded guidance from publishers and bookstores. Even so, we quickly found our way. The 70s zeitgeist spoke through a megaphone. We read Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five because the Vietnam war was senseless; we read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because taking drugs was counter-culture and rebellious; we read Siddhartha because Oriental religions still promised answers; we read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance because the most influential post-hippy truism was that the only truth worth a bean was the truth inside you. Promiscuity was liberating, so we read about zipless fucks in Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. But we only really read Portnoy's Complaint to find out exactly what the boy did to the liver.
Of course young people read silly books for silly reasons. A sloe-eyed Serbian Mona Lisa suggested that I read those interminable Germans, Hesse and Mann, and so I did. I read The Glass Bead Game and The Magic Mountain and I wish I hadn't. When sweetly pretentious friends quoted strophes like "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas", instead of guffawing, I read The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock and copied them.
When teenagers adopt an adult classic they soon trash it. It soon loses its gravitas and clout and becomes cult fiction. Much coming of age fiction is suspect, isn't it? Woody Allen famously said: "If I had to live my life again, I'd do everything the same, except that I wouldn't see The Magus", and I feel the same way about John Fowles's book. The memory of reading and enjoying Richard Bach's maple syrup Jonathan Livingston Seagull can also make me cringe in embarrassment.
For understanding to bloom and the world to make sense to them, the young should not merely read literature that reflects on their immediate concerns, but books which reflect the zeitgeist, as ours did. They should read around the filibustering of religious narratives in the face of evolution, on the theme of the death of the exotic, about fabulous financial foxes and climate change catastrophe.
Each generation has its own coming of age literature. What is this new generation reading?
Suggestions culled from the Guardian books blog:
Trainspotting, Remainder, On the road, 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius', Zeitgeist, The Wasp Factory, The Trial, The Getaway, Madamme Bovary, The Colour of Magic, Wuthering Heights, Dracula, Frankenstein, 1984, Brave New World, Death of a Salesman, The Colour Purple, Jane Eyre, The Third Policeman, The Restraint of Beasts, Candide, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, The Communist Manifesto, A Room with a View, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, The Secret Life of Bees, Hemingway's stories, Collected Dorothy Parker, The Death of St. Narcissus, Terry Pratchett - Discworld, Book's Hard Boiled Wonderland, The End of the World, Norwegian Wood, Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Commitments, Homage to Catalonia, Lolita, The Time Traveller's Wife, How I Live Now, The Graveyard Book, The Great Gatsby, On The Black Hill, The Master and The Margarita...
Of course in every country the list will be different.
Of course they could always plump for Great Expectations, The Bell Jar, The Catcher in the Rye or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Some fiction hits the sweet spot of every generation. But isn't most coming of age fiction friable? Doesn't its relevance fade? Obama may be the first mixed-race US president, but how many teenagers will read James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain?
My generation flipped through novels without the help of colour-coded guidance from publishers and bookstores. Even so, we quickly found our way. The 70s zeitgeist spoke through a megaphone. We read Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five because the Vietnam war was senseless; we read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because taking drugs was counter-culture and rebellious; we read Siddhartha because Oriental religions still promised answers; we read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance because the most influential post-hippy truism was that the only truth worth a bean was the truth inside you. Promiscuity was liberating, so we read about zipless fucks in Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. But we only really read Portnoy's Complaint to find out exactly what the boy did to the liver.
Of course young people read silly books for silly reasons. A sloe-eyed Serbian Mona Lisa suggested that I read those interminable Germans, Hesse and Mann, and so I did. I read The Glass Bead Game and The Magic Mountain and I wish I hadn't. When sweetly pretentious friends quoted strophes like "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas", instead of guffawing, I read The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock and copied them.
When teenagers adopt an adult classic they soon trash it. It soon loses its gravitas and clout and becomes cult fiction. Much coming of age fiction is suspect, isn't it? Woody Allen famously said: "If I had to live my life again, I'd do everything the same, except that I wouldn't see The Magus", and I feel the same way about John Fowles's book. The memory of reading and enjoying Richard Bach's maple syrup Jonathan Livingston Seagull can also make me cringe in embarrassment.
For understanding to bloom and the world to make sense to them, the young should not merely read literature that reflects on their immediate concerns, but books which reflect the zeitgeist, as ours did. They should read around the filibustering of religious narratives in the face of evolution, on the theme of the death of the exotic, about fabulous financial foxes and climate change catastrophe.
Each generation has its own coming of age literature. What is this new generation reading?
Suggestions culled from the Guardian books blog:
Trainspotting, Remainder, On the road, 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius', Zeitgeist, The Wasp Factory, The Trial, The Getaway, Madamme Bovary, The Colour of Magic, Wuthering Heights, Dracula, Frankenstein, 1984, Brave New World, Death of a Salesman, The Colour Purple, Jane Eyre, The Third Policeman, The Restraint of Beasts, Candide, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, The Communist Manifesto, A Room with a View, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, The Secret Life of Bees, Hemingway's stories, Collected Dorothy Parker, The Death of St. Narcissus, Terry Pratchett - Discworld, Book's Hard Boiled Wonderland, The End of the World, Norwegian Wood, Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Commitments, Homage to Catalonia, Lolita, The Time Traveller's Wife, How I Live Now, The Graveyard Book, The Great Gatsby, On The Black Hill, The Master and The Margarita...
Of course in every country the list will be different.
Comments
Post a Comment