I recently finished reading Nick And Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Shut up, I can read what I want, New York Times) and as I recently became a GoodReads nut, I came across a review.
A review that I found so annoying, and exemplary of things I find annoying in reviews of things, that I am going to write a rebuttal to it. Now of course, I’m not an asshole and I will notify the original writer on her blog and on GoodReads of my reply. Now, before continuing reading this post, please read her review of Nick and Norah.
Done? Okay. I will pull some quotes that irked me the most and reply to them. And I will do it in paragraphs, unlike how the original author (Snorkle?) did.
Your Definition of What a Book (Literature) Should Be
I did not finish this book. I cannot respect authors who degrade the name of literature by peppering their novels with filth and immorality.
I’m going to ignore the fact that a couple of high school kids would not be saying “fuck” every other word and look at this assertion. This attitude really bothers me. Are you saying that books (nay, literature?) should only concern themselves with “moral” stories and clean, happy plot lines?
I might be pulling the literary equivalent of a Godwin here, but with this kind of attitude we would have never gotten a book like Lolita. If you’re going to be talking about Literature, you are talking about Authors and they should be making a Statement with their Art. And to do that, they need to go the dark places, to the evil and depravity that men do. And this book just refers to a lot of sex. Underage, extramarital sex, I grant you that, but that stuff happens. And you know, that might be something that you put in a book. About teenagers.
Have You Ever Met a Teenager?
I was disgusted with their methods of kissing random strangers so they could keep their “pride” in front of people who weren’t even worth caring about.
The teenage years is all about your peers and your standing among them. Is it really that weird to think that they would go to crazy lengths to preserve that? Also, if you had completed the book, you would’ve found out that this was the beginning of their character arc. It’s what books have. Characters start out in one place and end up in another.
Also, I’m annoyed at the implication that the protagonists of a novel need to be empathetic and relatable to the reader. As if they should just be some kind of surrogate. That is the laziest and most uninteresting writing one could do. Isn’t it far more interesting to read a character wildly different from yourself and see what makes them tick? You can think about it and examine why you would not make the same choices. You might learn something about yourself or get a new perspective on things.
Won’t Someone Think of the CHILDREN
With novels like this gracing our bookstore shelves it’s no wonder teenagers act the way they do. When they read books like this with no morals and a “feels good so do it” attitude how can you expect them to make good choices?
First of all, I find the argument that teenagers get the cues for how they act from books (media has an influence, no doubt) extremely weak. Secondly, (and once again) why do books to have morals? They’re pieces of fiction, not instruction manuals. And you know, I’d expect their parents to have been raising them those dozen years or so before their teenage ones so they have a good foundation on how to act? Maybe?
The Book
I actually liked reading it (because secretly I am a 16-year old hipster girl) and the movie is pretty good too. It has Kat Dennings and Michael Cera in it.
