A historical fiction of now

I’ve been thinking a lot about historical fiction, because I’ve recently read two books set in 2003.

I said before (though I’m not sure if I explained it well) that the intentional dated-ness is one of the things that really worked for me in SUNRISE OVER FALLUJAH: we know, if not “the end” to that story, more than the characters do. Walter Dean Myers doesn’t have to show us Birdie learning that there are no WMDs, because we know; it makes his belief more poignant.

(And actually, this makes me think that a very powerful story could be written that goes farther in this direction, and doesn’t have the characters experience the kind of disillusionment that Birdie does undergo in that story. This would really exploit the asymmetry of knowledge between the characters and the readers. Anyone have a good example of a story like this — doesn’t have to be about Iraq?)

More recently (by which I mean yesterday), I read Peter Cameron’s SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU. Emily and I have talked a few times about books set in New York, about which we’re bound to have strong opinions one way or the other; this one rang true to me. Partly that’s because, while it’s set in a far wealthier slice of New York than I usually intersect with (and an eminently parodiable one at that), it just happened to hit the details of my own haunts. This passage made me sit up and cheer:

I wouldn’t become part of the evil empire that is NYU if you paid me. (NYU has single-handedly ruined most of the Village, including the dog run in Washington Square: they built this huge building that casts its shadow over the park, so that areas of the dog run are perpetually in shade.)

I went to NYU, and hated it (great profs; lousy place), and they have ruined big chunks of my neighborhood, and they are an evil empire. Sing it, Cameron.

But besides my own personal joy at seeing my enmity printed in bestselling book form, what I think worked about Cameron’s portrayal of New York was its specificity. When he described the protagonist’s feelings about a specific intersection I’ve walked by hundreds of times (LaGuardia and Houston), I couldn’t remember the details he described from my own wanderings, and I lacked the same associations this character had, but I got it. Not just because the narration was describing the city, but because the way this character described the city made me understand who he was. His character was bound up in it being precisely downtown New York in 2003, and vice-versa. That’s why it felt like New York, not like name-dropping New York.

I can’t get behind this mode of storytelling — this retelling of our own recent past — unreservedly: I saw, for example, that David Levithan’s new book is set on and after 9/11, and I cringed. I’ve had enough of that, thank you.

But in general, I’m intrigued by setting YA books so distinctly in a time we’ve just been through. Compare it to, say, Sarah Dessen’s studied timelessness: her characters are barely digital (keep in mind, I haven’t read her two most recent). I feel like a lot of YA authors are living out their own adolescences in their books, or some warp of their adolescence with their lives now. But contemporary teenagers’ lives aren’t necessarily the intersection of universal teenage angst plus, say, cell phones the way a thirty-something author might use them.* Like, how does it change teenage dating that everyone has a cell? I was extraordinarily privileged to have my own phone line in high school, and let me tell you, my high school dating life was different because of it.

My point is, there’s something else being portrayed in books like Dessen’s, that’s sold like it’s some universal adolescence, but it isn’t (and I’m sorry to always use Dessen as my punching bag, because I love her books, but they are also to me the best representatives of a category of book I can’t quite wrap my head around, or understand why I enjoy so deeply). The “timelessness” is really an experience that never quite existed for anyone: it’s, perhaps, what teenagers living in the ’80s would’ve been like in an altered reality that made pop culture more like today’s (or more cynically — especially since many of the lead characters and love interests in these books are more emotionally mature than half the adults I know — it’s what Gen X women, not just the YA authors but the growing number of adult women YA readers like me, project backwards to reimagine adolescence). And I wonder if the girls who are attracted to Dessen’s books are exactly the girls who are most inclined to try to fit their lives into some idea of what universal girlhood looks like, if that’s part of their appeal.

I’m not getting anywhere thinking more about this… opinions?

* And because I am, to my great surprise, an aspiring demographer, I will tell you that this phenomenon — where the experience of being a particular age at a particular time is something much more specific than just the effects of the age (universalized to any time) plus the effects of the time (for people of any age) — is called a cohort effect. UnderageReading: puzzle over book, name-drop tv show from fifteen years hence, snark, define jargon, call it a day.

Why I Love It/Page and Screen: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist: Why I Love it

I got NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST (the movie) from Netflix last weekend. I’m a fan of both Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, but this was a pretty lame movie, in my opinion. It did, however, help clarify for me why I liked the book by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan so much — which I did, very unexpectedly.

The book does not feel to me like an ode to NYC in all its glory — as Elizabeth mentioned, this was not my teenager-in-the-city experience. In fact I think part of what the book does well is capture the suburban teenager’s sense of adventure and freedom at a night out in the city, and the slight sense of smugness at “knowing” the city, which of course they don’t know or experience in the same way as a teenager who lives there like Elizabeth and I did.

Basically what I loved about the book is the consistent accurracy and immediacy of Nick and Norah’s thoughts — it just felt real to me as I was reading.  I especially like that both characters are pretty self-aware and self-analytical, but it still doesn’t stop them from being utterly confused about their crushes, or going in circles in their heads, or doing the things they’re perfectly well aware that they don’t really necessarily want to be doing, which is what I was like as a teenager.   And that aspect — the in-the-moment inner brain workings — doesn’t come across in movie.  So you’re left with just a story about two teenagers having a night out on the town, and they come across as very predictable, a little shallow, and a little annoying, all of which is true to the characters actions in the book, but in the book you’re not paying attention to their actions, you’re following their thoughts.  In the movie, you’re just following them, from one club to another. 

Plus, of course, the book has the ultimate bonus: not one but two MSCL references, which are not just thrown in but are used as a natural part of Norah’s thoughts, which is dead on — trust me, a teenager who loves MSCL will automatically use it as a reference point and will, without even trying to, relate aspects of their life back to scenes from the show. Plus, Norah thinks one of my favorite quotes:

Much as I want to learn more about Nick, I also want to take a time-out so I can tell Caroline all about him.  If Caroline were here, we could dissect Nick via My So-Called Life script/Jordan Catalano moments.

Rayanne:  I think part of him is partly interested in you.  Definitely.  I mean, he’s got other things on his mind.

Angela:  But that’s the part that’s so unfair.  I have nothing else on my mind.  How come I have to be the one sitting around analyzing him in like microscopic detail, and he gets to be the one with other things on his mind?

Rickie: That is deep.

Nick and Norah’s (vs. Elizabeth and Emily’s) New York

Emily and I often agree about books, but one where we didn’t was NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST, the first Rachel Cohn – David Levithan collaboration, which became a movie with Michael Cera. Emily liked this a lot more than I did, and I’ll let her say why, but one reason I didn’t is that Rachel Cohn’s chapters in particular, especially early on, felt way too self-conscious.* I should have loved it — it’s all about my life! They even had a character from Emily’s and my high school (Hunter from Hunter)! — but it just felt like name-dropping to me.

And I think one reason is that even though it was supposed to be So Very New York, it didn’t really capture New York as I experience it. (Possibly this is because I was not really connected to the private school scene, but hey; there are reasons I’m grateful for that, and some of them I was reminded of reading this book.) What makes New York what it is, for me, is not the fact that you can apparently go see stripping nuns at 3 AM in midtown should you so desire. It’s littler stuff.

Like, Emily and I and everyone else we know from high school all had a problem when we got to college and realized that for normal people, interrupting them is not a sign of enthusiastic engagement with what they’re saying. It’s just… rude. And instead of riffing off our interruption to escalate the intensity of their storytelling, they would politely fall silent and wait for us. It was terrible! We started interacting with others and realized we were all That Guy.

Since I moved to Madison two and a half years ago, I recognize New York less by seeing its absence in other people than by seeing it lacking in myself. Like, when I was home for Christmas I found myself waiting for the light to change to cross the street in the second place, and doing so on the actual curb instead of a third of the way into the street in the first place. It’s like I don’t even know myself!

So how would you guys want a book set in New York to establish its world? Any you think do it particularly well?

Bonus question: How would you convey being in Madison? The only kids’ book I can think of set around here is Betty Ren Wright’s THE DOLLHOUSE MURDERS, which I like for a lot of reasons. Here’s how I would start setting a book in Wisconsin: with the observation that my entire state suffers from a bizarre conceptual difficulty. You’ll hear even the most intelligent and thoughtful of Madisonians say things like, “…a high of -12.” Am I the only one who sees that -12 degrees is, by definition, not high?!

* ReviewerX, whose reviews I generally quite enjoy, agreed with me on Cohn’s early chapters being particularly weak, and has a pretty funny review dramatizing one complaint I didn’t have — maybe because I, too, curse like a motherfucker.