A
few days ago I found myself involved in a twitter conversation with Teri
Lesesne, A.S. King, and several other authors and librarians about “edginess” in YA fiction. It was a
far-ranging and hard-to-follow (for me) string of tweets loosely gathered
around the question of what “limits” librarians and other gatekeepers
(including authors) observe when it comes to “edgy” teen fiction. I suggested that one must have a "limit" to have an "edge." The words edgy and limit soon became confusing—we were all using the terms in
different ways, but it was valuable conversation nonetheless.
Deciding what books should be in a middle school library is tough. We authors have it easy—we start with "Include my book!" and go from there. Librarians face a far more complex calculation.
Deciding what books should be in a middle school library is tough. We authors have it easy—we start with "Include my book!" and go from there. Librarians face a far more complex calculation.
Anyway, that twitter conversation reminded me of a short article I wrote
back in 2005, shortly after the publication of Godless. I’m reprinting it here,
with a couple of minor edits.
The
Elusive Edge
 |
| The Maiden Rock |
Mary
Logue and I have a small second home in the town of Stockholm, population 66,
on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Pepin. We go there often—nearly every weekend
during the summer—to hide out and recharge.
About
three miles upstream of Stockholm is a particularly tall and beautiful bluff
known as the Maiden Rock. The Maiden Rock is a sheer limestone cliff that drops
200 feet before hitting the steep, forested talus slope that forms its base. The
slope is interrupted briefly by a two lane highway and a railroad track, and
then continues all the way down to the shore of Lake Pepin.
The
bluff was named for a local legend. A Chippewa girl, it is said, once fell in
love with a young man from a neighboring tribe, but she was ordered by her
parents to marry another man. In despair, the girl leapt to her death from the
tallest cliff she could find—the Maiden Rock.
I
am drawn to high places. Heights scare me, but at the same time I love the
thrill of the precipice. I visited the Grand Canyon a few years back and tried
to walk right up to the edge. As I got closer I found myself crouching and
doing this sort of sidling ape-walk. When I couldn’t go any farther I got down
on my hands and knees and crawled until I could hang my head over the edge and
look straight down. It was...memorable.
So,
of course, when I finally visited the Maiden Rock from above, I went looking
for the edge of the precipice. I wanted to stand on it like that kid in the
movie Titanic on the prow of the ship.
I
could see what looked like the edge—an abrupt end to a grassy field. But as I
walked toward it I saw that what I had thought was the edge of the precipice
was not really the edge at all. There was another grassy shelf, about fifteen
feet wide and four feet lower, just beyond it. I let myself down onto the
second ledge. From there I could see the highway below, and beyond it the lake.
I ape-walked toward the brink, leading with my right foot. When I was about
halfway there, I saw yet another shelf, a rocky platform about three feet below
the brink. I sat down with my legs dangling over the rock, then let myself down
onto the third shelf, which was about the size of two queen-size beds end to
end.
That
was the point at which I began to crawl. I could see the outermost edge of the
forested slope below. But the edge was not the sharp, abrupt brink that it
appeared to be from below. It was a rounded, shrubby, uneven transition that
kept getting steeper. I went as far as I could, but I still could not see the
face of the cliff.
And
that is what a height junkie really
wants to see: The glass and steel face of the building, the sheer rock surface
of the cliff, the underside of the overhang.
#
Very
few authors set out to write risky or aggravating novels. Most of us write in
hopes of attracting a large, faithful, and enthusiastic audience. You don’t
accomplish that by writing things that make people feel bad.
On
the other hand, if one is writing so safely that there is not even a hint of
discomfort, one risks being both bored and boring.
So
what we do is write at the periphery our comfort zone. We push the outer edges
of the zone, hoping to convince our readers to share our thrill at flirting
with the unknown.
I
do not consider myself to be a particularly edgy or dangerous writer. A few of
my novels have succeeded in alarming some teachers and parents—Mr. Was contains some graphic violence, No Limit shows the allure of gambling
addiction, and Godless is about some
kids who start their own religion worshipping a water tower. I certainly don’t
push the envelope as vigorously as Judy Blume did back in the 1970s, or as do
writers such as A.S. King do today. But I have written about addiction,
obsession, domestic violence, suicide, goth culture, idolatry, mental illness,
and so forth—topics that may seem “edgy” to some, but are by no means
unfamiliar to most teens, or to most readers.
Why
did I chose such topics? Each book has its own origin tale, but the one thing
they all share is that they deal with matters that were of utmost importance to
me when I was a teenager.
Graham
Greene once said, speaking of writers, “Our childhoods are our credit
balances.” I used to resent having been brought up in a stable, suburban,
middle class, environment. Why wasn’t I raised by missionaries in the Congo, or
by circus clowns, or by Joan Crawford? How will I ever become a writer if I
have no astonishing, exotic, terrifying experiences to write about?
Because
I viewed my life as mundane, I read books that let me experience things outside
my personal history—war, sex, death, agony, ecstasy, horror, etc. I wanted to
know about life on the edge. I wanted to experience the whole human package,
from birth to death, and I wanted it NOW.
Teenagers
who are bored out of their skulls (by which I mean most of them, much of the
time) are compelled to do interesting things, including such old standbys as
driving fast, using mind-altering substances, practicing the art of
procreation, and performing remarkable stunts on skateboards.
They
also perform dangerous intellectual stunts, including hero worship, competitive
apathy, extreme narcissism, and abrupt reordering of the universe in the form
of sudden religious conversion—which was what I dealt with in Godless.
In
fact, most of my YA work is drawn directly from those five or six boring,
embarrassing, mind-numbing, awkward, adolescent years—it’s all still there in a
midden at the back of my head. I mine that midden—my credit balance—on a daily
basis.
Godless,
in fact, came straight out of that pile of teenage memories. One summer day I
was hanging out with two friends beneath the local water tower. Our boredom led
us to debate our respective religions. I was raised Catholic. My friends were
Jewish and Lutheran. Our discussion, as I recall it, was something of an
irreverence competition, with each of us making the case for our own religion
being the worst.
After
some discussion, we decided to bag our old religions and make up one of our
own. But what to worship? We looked up at the belly of the tank sixty feet
above our heads. Our choice was clear: the water tower would serve as our god.
We
stole bits and pieces from the great religions of the world. We wrote our own
ten commandments, and we bowed to the ten-legged one three times a day. Our
mock religion was a great success by teenage standards. It alarmed our parents
and kept us entertained for about a week and a half, at which time we became
distracted by some other variety of teenage idiocy, and we left our new
religion behind.
All
of these peculiar things that teenagers do are seductive for the same
reason—they push the boundaries of the permissible. In other words, they seek,
find, and redefine that elusive and ever-shifting edge.
Which
is exactly what we teen novelists do—or try to do—with every book we write. Find
something a little thrilling, a little dangerous, a little off-center, and a
little scary. Find that brink and sidle up to it. Get as close as you can. Find
that place where the air gets thin and your stomach does flip-flops and you
realize that you really, really do not want to die. Remind yourself what it
feels like to be alive.
Just
like a kid.
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