Guest Post: Katharine Kerr on "Boys' Books"

Boys’ Books

by Katharine Kerr

I was lucky enough to grow up in a family of readers.  Admittedly, on my mother’s side of the family, some of them mostly read the Bible or religious works.  Others, like my mother and grandmother, loved the “sweet” Romances of the period.  My uncles loved Westerns and police thrillers.  My father’s parents, on the other hand, were serious Leftists and read serious Leftist books, like DAS KAPITAL in the original German.  Both sides, however, believed in reading aloud to children.  They also believed in public libraries.

From the time I was big enough to walk the ten blocks or so to our local branch, my grandmother and I made a weekly trip to the library.  She loaded up on genre reading for her, and I loaded up on books from the children’s section, mostly animal stories, which I particularly loved.  As soon as I could read, I read a lot, well beyond that illusory category, “grade level”.  That’s when the trouble started.  Not from my grandparents, I hasten to add, but from the other adults around me.

When I was an older child and young teen-ager, back in the 1950s, I began to hear entirely too often, “You shouldn’t be reading that book.  It’s not for you.”  No, I hadn’t picked out a book with too many big words or too much sex, nothing from the “Adult” section of our public library, no Leftist tracts, either.  I had committed the sin of liking Boys’ Books.

It may be hard to imagine now, but there used to be fixed categories of Boys’ Books and Girls’ Books.  Boys got science fiction, adventure stories, historical stories of battles and exploration.  Girls got junior Romances, stories of girls helping others or setting up their own homes, horse stories, and . . . well, I never found much else in that section of the library.  Some were well written, like the “Anne of Green Gables” books or the “Flicka” horse stories.  Most struck me as utter crap, even at thirteen, particularly the junior Romances, such as the Rosamund de Jardin “Marcy” series.  Oh yes, I can’t forget the forerunners of “self help” books.  Those available for girls in the 1950s centered around “how to look pretty and get a boyfriend.”  I never noticed any self help in the Boys’ section.  They, apparently, didn’t need advice.

What I wanted were the adventures, the battles, and the science fiction.  Among the Boys’ Books, I discovered Roy Chapman Andrews and Robert Heinlein’s YA novels, along with a lot of lesser writers whose names, alas, I have forgotten but whom I loved at the time.  When I went to the library desk to check these books out, the voices started.  “Are you getting those for your brother?  No?  Why do you want to read those?  They’re for boys.  You should look in the Girls’ section.”  No librarian actually prevented me from taking the books home, mind.  That was reserved for my mother.  “Why are you reading that junk?” was one of her favorite phrases.  “It’s not for girls.  Take those back.  Get some good books.”

I read most of Heinlein’s YA books while sitting in the library.  Why risk taking them home and getting nagged?  When as a teen, I graduated to SF for grown-ups, the disapproval escalated, too.  My mother helpfully tried to get me to read proper female literature by checking out books for me.  I dutifully read them -- hell, I’d read anything at that age, from cereal boxes on up -- but I never liked them.  Finally, she gave up.

GUEST BLOG: Katharine Kerr on "The Obligatory Scene"

There are some scenes in a movie, play, or story that the readers want to see and will feel disappointed if they don=t see them. Sometimes these scenes are not strictly necessary to that elusive beast, The Plot, but that doesn=t matter. Readers will feel cheated if they=re not there.

Consider the end of THE RETURN OF THE KING. It would have been possible for Tolkien to leave out the bit where the ring goes into Mt. Doom. He could have kept the point of view on the battlefield with the other main characters, waiting and hoping C until suddenly, off in the distance, the volcano blows. Someone could cry AFrodo=s done it, he=s destroyed the ring!@ I suspect a great many readers, myself included, would have muttered something most unflattering to the author at that point and perhaps even flung the book across the room.

Obligatory scenes can occur at other places in a book than the end, of course. Another example from a fantasy novel: two characters are riding toward an important destination. Alas, the only road runs through the mountains in a pass known to be infested by bandits. What=s more, the enemies of the two characters are probably waiting there to ambush them. They head into the pass. Chapter Break! They are riding out of the pass, quite beaten up, to be sure, and talking about what a stiff fight they had, there in the pass. Why the editor allowed this writer to get away with this lapse, I don=t know. I sure wasn=t impressed enough to read another book in that series.

Nor does the obligatory scene have to be a large or violent confrontation or action sequence. It can be a simple emotional moment or a conversation. For instance, in real life history, Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I never met. On stage (Sardou, I think) and in many movies, they have met, because hell, they really should have, and the audience wants to see it.

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Katharine Kerr spent her childhood in a Great Lakes industrial city and her adolescence in Southern California, whence she fled to the San Francisco Bay Area just in time to join a number of the Revolutions then in progress. After fleeing those in turn, she became a professional story-teller and an amateur skeptic, who regards all True Believers with a jaundiced eye, even those who true-believe in Science. An inveterate loafer, baseball addict, and rock and roll fan, she begrudgingly spares time to write novels, including the Deverry series of historical fantasies or fantastical histories, depending on your point of view. She lives near San Francisco with her husband of many years and some cats.

SPECIAL GUEST BLOG: Katharine Kerr on Good Prose

Writers and readers both love to discuss, and maybe argue about, what constitutes "good" prose. From the readers' points of view, the definition really comes down to a matter of taste -- at least, that’s the conclusion I usually end up drawing from these discussions.

Some people enjoy complex sentences and unusual words. Some people hate them. Some people hate short sentences and basic vocabulary. Others like them. And so on.

It occurred to me that we might look at the problem from the other side: the writer's point of view. What constitutes good prose? Prose that has the effect upon the reader that the writer intended it to have.

Does the writer want the reader to zip through the story and enjoy it as an entertainment? That will require one style of prose. Does the writer want the reader to experience the story as an immersion into a strange and foreign place and time? That will require another. Is an incident supposed to be funny? Humor demands a certain choice of words. Is the incident supposed to make the reader get all teary-eyed? Then the writer had better avoid that distanced, ironic humor.