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It seems that everyone is all ABUZZ regarding Margo Rabb's very thoughtful NYTBR piece on the indignities and ultimate pleasures of writing fiction for teenagers.  A lot of The Community seems mad about this article but, Margo, I hear you girl.  I started writing at least partially for the purpose of gaining respect and hopefully a little hot makeout action at parties and was surely in for a rude awakening when I actually started getting published and found that no one gave enough of a shit to even grab my ass.  The first question I get when I tell people that I write novels for teenage girls is "Oh, but you don't use your real name, do you?"

Yes, writing for young adults is something like being a porn star-- so shameful that a person is expected by the Serious New York Chattering Class to shroud his identity in secrecy.  (My porn name is Tommy Pinecrest, so if I ever decide to go the pseudonym route you'll know how to find me.)  It turns out the difference between being a YA novelist and a porn star is that people at parties are actually impressed by porn stars.  I can vouch for this; I have been at parties with a few porn stars and I was a quivering mess every time.  Did they even know I was in the room?  NO.

I have plenty of friends-- friends who shed big and sloppy tears at JUNO, for fuck's sake!-- who will never read any of my books for fear of losing precious IQ points.  People have basically told me this to my face.  For awhile I was offended, but I've decided that it's fine with me as long as these friends shell out the $$ for a couple of never-to-be-touched copies of the books or at least oblige me by filling a seat at a reading or two.  You can't worry about much else.  People at parties are never impressed by anything, and if they are, it only gives them cause to hate you and write bitchy things about you on the internet.  That's just how it goes around here.

I think a big part of the general suspicion about young adult books is that most people my age never read them when they were actually young adults.  What this means is that their notion of the category starts with Christopher Pike and ends, if you're lucky, with Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls. 

I myself read some really trashy YA books (not to mention WIFEY) when I was eight years old and then, having exhausted the limits of the school library, stopped reading entirely for awhile before I resurfaced at age fourteen and went straight to the grownup stuff.  It seems that a lot of people followed this trajectory, and it's for this reason that there seems to be a question of why YA is necessary at all.  If teenagers are capable of reading and enjoying books for adults, why should there be a special category of books for teenagers?  Are these books just intended for those teens too dull for Camus?

Maybe Camus is a bad example because, okay, it's hard to find a teen too dull for Camus.  The Stranger is pretty perfect for teenagers: it's really short and it's all about existential angst.  So forget Camus.  But haven't all the grownups in the room ever had the experience of revisiting a book you'd read (and thought you'd understood) as a young person only to realize that it made way more of an impact upon a rereading ten or more years later?  Like maybe you were always smart enough for it, it's just that you needed the experiences and concerns of an adult to actually make you care?  I think most people would answer yes.  And I think if that's the case that the reverse is also true.

I read WEETZIE BAT for the first time when I was fifteen.  I don't remember what caused me to read it; like I say, I didn't really read YA books when I was in high school.  But for whatever reason I read Weetzie Bat, and at the cost of sounding like a jerkoff, it completely changed my life.  I think the assigned reading in school at the time was Billy Budd or something along those lines.  Billy Budd is admittedly an extremely hot book, but at fifteen it was just not doing it for me or any other person I knew.  Weetzie Bat, on the other hand, left me walking around in a daze for a week after I read it.  I was exhilarated by the lushness of the world Francesca Lia Block had created and at the same time kind of depressed because that world didn't actually exist.  It was the same feeling some of my friends got from certain types of music.  Block was my Moz.

These days I reread Weetzie Bat every few years, and I will always love it.  There are lines I can quote by heart and it still gets me in the gut to see them on the page-- both because they are great passages and because they bring back such visceral feelings of what it was like to be the person I was when I first read them.  The book is weird and gorgeous and revolutionary on its own terms, but I think it's probably somewhat difficult for a person over a certain age to wrap his head around the brilliance of it, especially if he's reading it for the first time.  Yeah, you can certainly love it as an adult.  I definitely love it as an adult, but when I reread it, I feel like parts of it are maybe going over my head. 

Reading Proust at fourteen would I guess not be totally pointless, but it might be better to save your efforts until you've at least eaten one of those little cookies.  In the same way, reading Weetzie Bat at thirty is definitely worth your while, but I feel sorry for you if you didn't read it when you were fourteen, because I bet you would have understood it better.  And that's the point of having books specifically for teenagers.  There are things you learn as you grow up, but there's also a understanding that you lose.  In writing what I write, I'm usually trying to relearn some of that lost knowledge.

As for the snobs in the mess hall at Yaddo: if I really wanted to impress people I would have become a BLOGGER.

 

Based on this picture and article, I have to conclude that Heidi and Spencer are clearly horsepeople of the approaching apocalypse.  But which ones are they and who are the other two?

(Via Videogum)

Okay, I wasn't supposed to post about this until the press release came out, but I'm just going to jump the gun, because I'm so excited!  So, I don't know if you remember this, but awhile ago, my little sister was the star of an unforgettable episode of THE HILLS.  Unfortunately, her scenes didn't make the final cut, but MTV was so enthralled with her that they decided to give ME my own amazing HILLS spinoff!  It's called FOUR CEE (after my apartment number) and it's going to be totally amazing.  The best part is that MTV decided that I am so charismatic that I get to star in every role.  No Whitney, no Audrina, no Lauren, and DEFINITELY no dumb old Heidi!  Just me talking to myself!  It has been focus grouped to death, and everyone agrees that it is going to be MTV's biggest hit of all times.

Check out the super-secret preview clip from the first episode below!

Well the New York Times Magazine sure does know how to get their grubby hands on my hard-earned clickies!  First they put one of my dearest friends on the cover, and the very next week they feature TYRA BANKS-- the very woman I consider to be the world's biggest MONSTER-- in the same spot!  Naturally it is Emily and not Tyra who is catching all the the heat.  Unfortunately I cannot link to my old TYRA BANKS IS A MONSTER post because it was lost when my old website was stolen, but I will offer my thoughts on the Tyra article next week after I have time to read it.  I know you can't wait.  In the meantime I would like to offer my apologies that the follow-up to THE BLONDE OF THE JOKE may be a couple months late: I have been mesmerized by Jezebel's brilliant Faces of Tyra gif mashup (at right) and have been unable to do anything but stare at it, Narcissus-like, all day.  (Because, yes, this is what I look like without makeup.)  This condition may persist for quite awhile.

Also, I think the guys at the WoW Report are onto something with THIS.

Emily and I went to the Night of a Thousand Stevies on Friday.  I had my wig stolen.  If you want to see some really embarassing pictures of me, you should read our (Emily's) post about it on Jezebel.

If you want to have a truly MAGICKAL musical experience you should just watch this video:

 

This amazing marketing campaign where you stick your face through one of those cut-out holes in the movie poster did not work on me because, despite my eagerness to get my picture taken as THE BRIDE, I just can't approve of a movie about a MALE maid of honor! Also I think "Made of Honor" is the worst and most insulting pun I've probably ever heard. Still, don't I look beautiful?!

PS Forgetting Sarah Marshall was pretty bad. 

Fun: REM has a website for their new single, SUPERNATURAL SUPERSERIOUS.  It's really cool but kind of hard to explain.  If you're so inclined you can use the site to edit your own video for the song; if you're lazy like me you can just look at a pretty mosaic of clips and listen to a bunch of different versions of the song.  The acoustic one recorded in a moving van is a highlight.

Everyone has always seemed so suspicious of the post-Bill Berry REM, but I like this new song a lot.  Yeah, Murmur and Reckoning are two of my favorite albums of all time and pretty hard to top, but even the less successful REM albums always have at least a few awesome tracks.  The totally underrated Up has some of the prettiest love songs I've ever heard.

Speaking of bands from Athens, Georgia, the B-52s also have a new album out.  Unfortunately, late-period B-52s are fucking depressing, (although Keith Strickland has retained a remarkable level of hotness) so instead of posting their new FUNPLEX video, here is them performing the awesome HERO WORSHIP in 1978.