Or a cataclysmic earthquake, I'd accept with some despair

[sovay]

In which I shoot fish in a barrel.

As someone whose subway rides tend to resemble scenes from an "Evil Dead" movie, in which I am Bruce Campbell dodging zombies who have had all traces of their humanity sucked out of them by a sinister book—not the "Necronomicon," but "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"—I sometimes wonder how any self-respecting author of speculative fiction can find fulfillment in writing novels for young readers. I suppose J. K. Rowling could give me 1.12 billion reasons in favor of it: get your formula just right and you can enjoy worldwide sales, film and television options, vibrating-toy-broom licensing fees, Chinese-language bootlegs of your work, a kind of limited immortality (L. Frank Baum who?) and—finally—genuine grown-up readers. But where's the artistic satisfaction? Where's the dignity?

Let that steep for a moment.

To its credit, "InterWorld" isn't sugarcoated for its readership; it wastes no time in putting its young heroes in mortal peril and pitting them against at least one brutal adversary who threatens to floss with their innards. But its prose is often only functional, and it has a slight problem of verisimilitude: are there really any high-school-age iconoclasts out there who have heard of synesthesia, Benoit Mandelbrot and the Midgard serpent, but not of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen?

Yes. In high school? Me.

May Dave Itzkoff be haunted by the shades of all the children's authors who died in this last year, except that he would not appreciate it.

Comments

[gwynnega]

But where's the artistic satisfaction? Where's the dignity?

WTF? The dignity??? ::boggles::

[time-shark.livejournal.com]

Really, the fact that Itzkoff thinks today's high school kids, generally speaking, would have any who Sid and Nancy were, dates him in a particularly calcified sort of time warp...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Idiot. My revenge is thinking of the arid, arid, ARID, can I say it a little louder

ARID

world he lives in.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

BTW,

my favorite part of Sid and Nancy is when they imitate daleks:

"Boring, Sidney, boring, boring, boring... exterminate, exterminate, exterminate" (in dalek voices)

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Itzkoff, for making me not want to read China Mieville.

You, sir, win.

My boot.

As a brand new integral part of your anatomy.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

There are times I seriously contemplate whether to put my vote in favour of my household's ceasing to subscribe to the NY Times. This is one of them.

There are also times I seriously wish there were a good chance of the giant shark Megalodon's survival, so that certain individuals could be used as fodder for it. This is also one of them.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

What a terrible child he must have been, and what an miserable man he has become.

[chomiji]

>> I sometimes wonder how any self-respecting author of speculative fiction can find fulfillment in writing novels for young readers. <<

To quote Ursula LeGuin (and this is from memory, so it may not be word-perfect): "Sure, writing for children is easy. Just as easy as raising them."

I feel for any children this man has, or may have at some future time. And I'm really sorry that his own inner child seems to have decamped a long time ago.

(FWIW, I didn't like Interworld that much either. But I'm wondering whether my classic-rock-loving almost-16-yr-old knows about Sid and Nancy - likely not. And you won't get anywhere with me by making snide remarks about what Gaiman, who has a young teen, a college student, and a recent college grad of his own, understands about his young readers.)

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

In high school, I knew about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen the exact same I knew about synesthesia, Benoit Mandelbrot, and the Midgard serpent: from references in books.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

I'm STILL not entirely sure who Syd Vicious and Nancy Spungen are... other than musicians.

I knew about fractals (though not the founder of the geometry behind them) in middle school, the Midgard Serpent in middle school, but synesthesia I just learned about last year. Words that look like colors!