Remembering Alan Coren

is it really necessary to give pre-teens a diet of child-abuse, divorce, gore, death, and suicide?

Have we ever had a thread on a related topic? I’ve sometimes thought about the issue of when is it a good idea to introduce various general topics and also specific books in the curriculum. I didn’t think this was done reasonably when I was in high school in Hungary. Here’s a recent list of required (“kötelezÅ‘”) and optional (“ajánlott”) readings, very similar to what it was when I was in school. It’s in Hungarian, but you’ll understand the non-Hungarian authors and even the titles of some of their works. Way too much and some of them introduced too early if you ask me. (There’s a chronological method to the madness, but it’s still a bit of madness.)

For an eleven-year-old girl, you might try the novels of Elizabeth Enright, or Meindert DeJong’s The Wheel On the School (or indeed any of the first thirty years of Newberry Award winners). Or Burnford’s The Incredible Journey. or Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf, or Louisa May Alcott.

“is it really necessary to give pre-teens a diet of child-abuse, divorce, gore, death, and suicide?”

I’m a bit conflicted about this question, as I am a fan of young adult fiction, and because I have sometimes, though not very frequently, organized freshman composition courses based on young adult readings. I also have the benefit of having taught public high school for some time, so I’m familiar with the required readings on that level too.

So in that spirit, I’ll respond to Harry’s question by asking the following: What’s the alternative?

Here’s a list of the standard “classic” required readings that abound in middle schools and in high schools across the US. These readings seem to tread the same thematic territory as the young adult texts to which we are objecting.

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”–child-abuse

“Their Eyes Were Watching God”–divorce

“Lord of the Flies,” “All Quiet on the Western Front”–gore

“Death of a Salesman,” “The Things They Carried”–death

“Richard Cory,” “A Tale of Two Cities,” “The Bell Jar,” “The Sound and the Fury,” etc.–suicide

So, again, what’s the alternative?

Murray Jay Siskind
http://www.carburetordungtoo.blogspot.com

I don’t think it’s really so much a problem with the subject matter as it just with plain ol’ bad writing. The books in this genre I remember where all horribly written, like Dan Brown for 11yr olds – beat you over the head with metaphors, the plot line of a day time tv soap, adjective abuse in descriptive passages, heavy reliance on stupid cliches, lame attempts at imitating “authentic dialects” and “street talk” and so on.

The books on Murray’s list, while they may deal with similar topics have the virtue that they’re all well written (well, never cared much for Arthur Miller).

“Richard Cory,”

Incidentally, we first read that poem in . . . 4th? 5th? grade, and my reaction, as I remember it, was more or less along the lines of ‘[jaw drops] how , how , how does it do this, this . . . words-singing-and-crying-thing? – it’s called poetry? There’s more?’

But granted, I was a somewhat grim child – the first story I can recall coming up with, a few years earlier, was about a man who asks a fairy the date he would die, is told a date and time not very soon but not tremendously far off (although nothing about how), and (of course) becomes more and more anxious until at that hour he expires of fright – so I’m not sure if some of my classmates might not have found it distasteful or confusing or etc. instead.

I came across a really good essay on YA “problem novels” online a bit ago, but of course can’t find it now . . . .<a href = “http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/winter04-05/problemnovel.htmhere’s a piece by Barbara Feinberg, from her book on the subject, that I think you and your daughter might relate very well – what she says about the loss of magic, of imagination, fantasy is very, very interesting, especially thinking about exceptions – she mentions The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 . . . . perhaps the Weetzie Bat books, for example (NOT what I’d suggest for most 11 year olds, though); on rather the other end of things books like Spinelli’s Maniac Magee, or Stargirl Lowry’s The Giver, Philbrick’s Freak the Mighty, or even Sachar’s marvelous Holes . . . (many of which are not problem novels, but could very easily be imagined as becoming such).

Oh, give me a break. Is there good literature, age-appropriate literature, important young adult and youth literature, filled with “child-abuse, divorce, gore, death, and suicide”? Of course there is. And it’s possible–amazing, but true–to responsibly tell the difference (and sometimes even, when you’re involved enough and take the time make your case thoroughly enough, to get school boards to recognize the difference) between those good books of horror and sadness and perplexity and frustration and wonder–like Roald Dahl, since his name was brought up–on the one hand, and, oh, say, The Gossip Girls on the other.

The last few years have been unkind to Radio 4, first Linda Smith then Alan Coren, who always managed to brighten up any Friday evening they were on, and then Humphry Littleton, earlier this year.

The last few years have been unkind to Radio 4

No, the last few years have shown us how we ought to value those bits of Radio 4 they graced. Coren and especially Lyttleton had decent innings, Linda Smith less so. (And let’s not forget Debbie Barham in the obit list.)

(Of the Coren-spawn: Vicki has more talent than she generally displays; Giles, probably less so.)