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"The binary between children’s and adult fiction is a false one, based on a limited conception of the self. I have not ceased to be the person I was when I was an adolescent; in fact, to think so seems to me like a kind of dissociation from a crucial aspect of one’s self. And the critic should be concerned with what is good and what is bad, what is art and what is not—not with what’s ‘appropriate.’"

—Weve been following the YA debate quite attentively – I wrote about it just last week – but Sarah Burnes‘s addition to the YA conversation, a blog post for the Paris Review in defense of reading YA fiction as a “grown-up,” is one of the most eloquent we’ve read. (via millionsmillions)

So, I totally agree that the separation between YA and adult literature can be completely arbitrary.  And, anecdotally, at least, it seems like women’s coming of age stories get pushed into YA, which is “genre” and not “literature.”

But, I also think there are absolutely books that don’t work when you’re an adult.  I LOVED LOVED LOVED Catcher in the Rye when I was 13, but I cannot read it now.  How did I not realize how annoying Holden is? And more broadly, Salinger’s obsession with teenagers (especially in Nine Stories) is actually kind of creepy.

Weetzie Bat also doesn’t stand up to adult re-reading, even though it was absolutely the book I needed when I was 15.

On the Road is a book that first I was too young for, and then totally loved, and then got pissed off at.

And I read a lot of genre fiction, and slash, and other “low-brow” “guilty pleasure” stuff, and it’s actually kind of fun reading the first three books of Harry Potter to my daughter.  But I don’t think all YA books need to be accessible to adults.