Re: The Future of Young Adult Fiction?

On 09 Apr 2008 04:56:13 GMT, "Dan Goodman" <dsgood@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Brian M. Scott wrote:

On Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:23:17 -0800, Bill Swears
<wswears@xxxxxxx> wrote in
<JZKdnbArKKIKtWHanZ2dnUVZ_hKdnZ2d@mtasolutions">news:JZKdnbArKKIKtWHanZ2dnUVZ_hKdnZ2d@mtasolutions> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

Patricia C. Wrede wrote:

[...]

It isn't really as simple as this, but I think the need to
have vocabulary that stretches across the various media,
the realization that being able to say something in
twelve big words when three little ones would have done
the job, and the ease with which we confuse the
egalitarian belief that everybody can learn whatever they
want to, with the renaissance concept that everybody of
quality ought to have expert level understanding of
everything understandable, all add up to a growing
population of young people who don't want to take the
time or go through the learning curve to be literate
enough to read Alma's Jin-Shei, or even my zombie
thriller. People who are quite pleased with their levels
of intellectual life, and the availability of media that
allow them to consider advanced concepts, without having
to learn my vocabulary.

If they're willing to limit the range of concepts to those
for which a limited vocabulary suffices.

Is it impossible to discuss advanced concepts in languages (new
creoles, for example) which have relatively small vocabularies?

Is it impossible to discuss snow in languages which don't have a native
word for it?

In some instances,yes, it is - because whatever you do you are NOT in
fact discussing those advanced concepts, or snow, but you are in fact
discussing approximations of those concepts within built in
limitations of the language or vocabulary that you have available. I
remember a story my husband told me about his Florida-born toddler
when someone trucked down a bit of snow and the kid saw it for the
first time - it was a treasure that diminished rapidly, of course, but
it was present for a sufficiently long time for the child to get his
hands buried in it... and then start crying in astonished fright and
fury because his hands were COLD, and they had never experienced that
sensation before. That, it is impossible to explain to someone who
doesn't "get" it. I can write a chapter-long rhapsody of what it feels
like to play in the snow - but to someone born and raised in Papua New
Guinea or even New Orleans these words will remain just words
describing an abstract concept which has no physical meaning. Until
they themselves plunge gloveless fingers into ice and feel the
numbness creep under their fingernails, until they themselves hear the
crunch of frosty snow underfoot, until they themselves figure out the
difference between the kind of snow that supports the making of firm
snowballs for a nice snowball fight and the kind of snow that powders
in your hand and won't stay cohesive long enough for a ball to be
formed, let alone thrown.

Trying to explain quantum physics in terms of pure anglo-saxon comes
up with essays like "Uncleftish Beholding", which works fine as an
amusing curiosity and even goes a certain way towards giving a glimpse
into the theory of relativity but trying to use this language and this
vocabulary to actually hone a cohesive and working theory would
quickly sink under its own weight. Anglo saxon culture and vocab
didn't have the mental space to get clarity for those ideas.

Vocabulary is born of experience.

For many of us that experience was born in massive reading binges. I
learned my vocabulary not from a dictionary but from immersion into
language, from listening to people talk, from speaking to other
people, and from *reading* enormous amounts and varieties of material.
People who grow up without the foundations of that - well - I don't
know if massive experience in texting and SMS is going to prepare the
current crop of teens for actually reading a novel written in fully
spelled out language.

I don't know, I am a biased witness. I have been so much in love with
language, with writing, with reading, for so long that I am probably
not in a position to offer a fully objective opinion on the matter - I
get defensive of the language as I know it and love it when I see it
rendered in SMS shorthand, or verbal stories being shortened,
simplified to the point of banality, or judged according to whether or
not they would do well when distilled into pure visual form in order
to satisfy a mindset which cannot conceive of sitting down to read
something substantial. (And yet I confess to being vastly amused by
LOLcats, bad grammar and all. Go figure.)

What do I look for in a book? Vision. Clarity. Grace. The kind of
story that grips. Characters that live. Words that don't need pictures
to tell a story. Not much to ask, eh...? <wry grin>

A.
.

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