From an optimist, a bit of negativity. Followed by optimism.

Negativity—especially of the churlish variety—is not my scene. After a brilliant eureka moment in my early undergraduate life, I put away the majority of my haughty, ironic, suspicious-of-optimism, Judgy McJudgerson teenage legacy and moved on to a much happier existence. The idea of Bronies (which I just read about today) tickles my heart; the sheer joy and exuberance exploding from Jimmy Fallon at every turn on his late late show is my bread and butter.

Not for its cynicism did I spend six years studying Russian lit, nor do I inhabit the young adult and kidlit world in order to have a ready supply of lesser-than things to make fun of. Rather, I did both for the wit and humanism and fantastic use of language so often employed therein. Sincerity and optimism, that's my game.

So you can understand why I have mixed emotions taking time to write about a series of things I've come across thus far in 2012 that, well, I am feeling really negative and judgy about. Even though—or maybe especially because—the negativity comes from a place of optimism. But these things are so tied to what I hold near and dear to my heart that, well, I just want to say something. So I will say my something, and then I will move on. And we will make Mondays days of love and sincerity from here on out.

CASE THE FIRST
The first thing that rankled me I saw last week, and was the bizarrely visceral lit-snob reaction to the appointment of Walter Dean Myers as National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. I didn't take the editorial very seriously—I think it was intentionally incendiary (and willfully self-serving), and anyone even a bit clever can understand that the argument doesn't even correspond with the meaning of the actual appointment (an ambassador is not a laureate, or an instructor, or a mirror, for example).

However, I do dislike it when anyone claims that a) literature's only goal is to elevate, and b) that "to entertain, to problematize, or to instruct" cannot simultaneously elevate. I am not claiming that all —hell, I'm not even claiming that literature's only goal should be to elevate. But I do think that anytime a person chooses to read something for their own edification, they are doing themselves a service. All exercises in reading are transformative:

Psychologists from Washington University used brain scans to see what happens inside our heads when we read stories. They found that "readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative". The brain weaves these situations together with experiences from its own life to create a new mental synthesis. Reading a book leaves us with new neural pathways. (Washington Univ. in St. Louis, via The Guardian)

…so even if Myers' work is "insipid" (which, whatever. Opinions are opinions.), the act of reading his work can do good just as well as Homer (or any number of increasingly ill-judged bawdy Old English bits) can. Either/or paradigms are harmful, especially if the result is keeping kids from actively engaging, on their own time, with literature, whatever that may be.

In any case, the guy is zany, which comes a dime a dozen, and Myers is still the one with the prestigious appointment, so, again, whatever. Also, I recognize that cultural snobbery is the Achilles Heel that brings out my cynicism. Okay. Water under the bridge.

However, today I came across two more things, in quick succession, that bit at me, and a series of three is always stronger, so. Here we are.

CASE THE SECOND
TEDtalks! Why are you doing me wrong?

For some reason, an economist got on stage to talk about his suspicion of stories. Yes, stories. That video is sixteen long minutes of your life, and I don't necessarily recommend anyone watch it, but there it is for those interested.

The takeaway is, humankind's tendency to frame everything—memories, lives, advertising—into stories is somehow…reductive? Constricting? Bad? Honestly, I'm a clever person, able to read literary criticism in Russian, but I could barely follow his argument. It was very…personal, I think. And yes, maybe I was feeling a bit ornery, my very avocation being called to task, but. Please.

Stories are used because framing the chaos and mess (which Cowen wants us to instead embrace, yet somehow not try to frame for better understanding) is how we make sense of life, how we can find meaning and move forward from the things that happen to us. I can understand the desire to be suspicious of stories people tell when selling something—obviously. Sales is a game, and you should always look outside the pitch's box. But just being human and telling stories? Being suspicious of that just promises exhaustion.

CASE THE THIRD
Being (and using) awesome.

This was highlighted in today's Shelf Talker, and it totally caught me off-guard. A bookselling dude in California has made it his mission to cull the word "awesome" from everyday English, citing its ubiquity and utter lack of real meaning as a source of physical pain.

"Saying the word in my presence is like waving a crucifix in a vampire's face," Tottenham says. "It's boiled down to one catchall superlative that's completely meaningless."

I am all for linguistic flexibility and creative oral latitude, but MAN OH MAN can you be a bigger Grinch? Hating people who use and believe in the word awesome is like hating puppies for tugging on each other's ears. Nerdfighteria's DFTBA mantra is the precise opposite of a cliché, and the precise example of people loving language and creativity and intelligence to BE BETTER. Or, as Tottenham would hate to hear it, more awesome.

This guy is a bookseller. I don't even. I hope he learns to spend more of his time enjoying things.

ANYWAY
There ends my wind of negativity. I just didn't like seeing 2012 get off to such a cynical start. Because 2012 is going to be a year of AWESOME. STORIES. And optimism.

You know how I know? Because today, right after being bombarded by cases the second and the third, I opened a birthday package from a dear college friend, and found THIS:

Yes, that IS Minnesota running at you with HUGS.

So. 2012. Be awesome. Tell stories. Hug people. Be optimistic.

GO.

Kinetic (Saturdays): [dot dot dot]ting a troll

On the heels of the bananacakes WSJ business about too much darkness in modern YA literature and its subsequent fallout in the YA community and beyond, it seems like an apropos time to trot out this little gem of a kinetic typography video. Not because it's about darkness or YA literature, but because it so cleverly converses with culture of internet comments.

Happily, all of what I read regarding the WSJ article was considered and well-written – although I will admit that I consciously ignored most of the in-site comments to any of the articles in question, so I am sure my view has some skew. All the same, the vehemence with which the internet rose up in response to this issue is a good reminder (for those of us who might forget) of the sheer number of individuals out there in the world. AND THEY ALL HAVE OPINIONS.

Some are more reasonable than others.

Some, conversely, are so unreasonable that they fall in the "I couldn't make this up if I tried" category. And we creative types have field days with those.

This video falls under the second category. The author of this text, a dear soul going by the moniker Axman13, took umbrage with pretty much every aspect of a Newgrounds game called Super PSTW Action RPG, and in 2010 brought his complaints to the comment boards. What resulted was so heinously, patently bad that one of the voice actors for the game dramatized the rant, and a designer added the kinetic typography text. And the rant became golden.

So this immediately makes me think of two things.

First is the Stephen Fry speech which I posted for the inaugural Kinetic Thursday, in which he rallies against verbal snobbery, chides those "semi-educated losers" who go around sharpieing missing apostrophes onto signs and writing letters to grocery stores about "less" and "fewer," shakes his head at the idea that all that haughtiness is done for the sake of clarity. This last argument, Fry claims, "almost never holds water."

"I think," he continues, "what offends examiners and employers when confronted with extremely informal, unpunctuated and haywire language is the implication of NOT CARING that underlies it." And yet, Axman13 (and all the commenters to WSJ kershnuffle) obviously cares. He obviously cares. Cares beyond the point of "right" or "wrong" language. And his point is made! I might wince and sigh and judge at all the "resons" and "pepoles" and "blaaaaaaaam!s" used, but I still get what he means.

Proper language is wonderful, and often necessary for many kinds of clarity, but Not. Always. Communication is much more forgiving than we usage sticklers and spelling queens would like to admit.

The second thing I think of is how integrative our contemporary creative culture is, and how lucky we are for it. Just as Axman13 gave an actor and a designer the opportunity to create something bigger than the component parts on hand, the WSJ article kicked a snowball downhill that gave tens of dozens of authors a fantastic platform from which to make thoughtful, useful counterpoints. It gave a forum for tweeters – readers, writers, publishing industry folk, librarians, teens and former teens – to weave into visibility a previously invisible web of what YA literature means (#YAsaves, in particular). It created a fascinating, mostly supportive intellectual and academic dialogue in a very immediate and very public sphere.

And if that isn't what communication is really about…

Anyway, Axman13 "liked" the video.

Maybe Gurdon will end up "liking" the dialogue her odd editorial engendered, too.