National Obsession

Published by

Clarissa

July 25, 2023

I know of no other national literature that would be as obsessed with high school sex as American literature is. I’m not talking about YA stuff but serious literature for real adults. It’s one author after another. I can’t think of any Spanish author right now who has written a novel about this topic. There might be somebody but it isn’t a recurring theme. In American literature, I can’t think of an author who hasn’t written at least one book about it.

Right now, I’m reading a novel by Jennifer Egan (probably the most talented US writer of our time). And while I’m doing that, a new novel by Laura Lippmann dropped. And what do you think they are both about?

Exactly.

The brilliant Ohio by Stephen Markley is also obsessively about high-school sex.

And it’s always, ALWAYS depicted in the exact same way: miserable, confused, wallflower girls sexually abused by loud, mean, uncaring boys. Why middle-aged authors would be so into this topic is something I’ll never figure out.

Egan, Lippmann and Markley write extremely well, so I put up with everything else. But the mystery remains.

I could list many more of these books but you get my point.

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13 responses to “National Obsession”

overgrownhobbit

July 25, 2023

We read very different writers. Try one of my favorites, John C. Wright. Particularly one of his short story collections such as Awake in the Night or City Beyond Time.

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Benzion Chinn

July 25, 2023

My assumption is that teenage sexuality is useful as a means to explore the moment that one is able to ignore established social norms in favor of developing one’s personal morality. Granted, for this to work, you need a society in which people actually still object to teenagers, particularly girls, having sex. Perhaps, American authors are at least able to pretend that there is some American prudishness to fight against as opposed to Europeans for whom sex has become so normalized as to be dramatically useless.
https://izgad.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-theology-of-romance-novel.html
This is something I wrote on the logic of romance novels, granted the ones that I was looking at were more along the lines of middle-aged women behaving like teenagers.

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1. Avi
  
  July 26, 2023
  
  “a society in which people actually still object to teenagers, particularly girls, having sex.”
  In which segment of American society is this a thing, apart from the barely significant minority of practising orthodox believers?
  
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  1. Benzion Chinn
    
    July 26, 2023
    
    Correct. Even here in the United States, the Puritans being about to take over and ban dancing (Footloose) is a product of the imagination of liberal writers.
    
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    1. cliff arroyo
      
      July 26, 2023
      
      “the imagination of liberal writers”
      
      Extreme liberals have an atavistic desire for repression… that’s one reason they project so much onto Trump… he’s the dom who’se going to tie them up and humiliate them just the way they want….
      
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xykademiqz

July 25, 2023

Could you comment on why you think YA fiction is as popular as it is now? It’s a best-selling genre, and it couldn’t sell so wildly if it didn’t appeal primarily to adults. I just can’t understand the appeal. Tales of teenagers doing anything aren’t particularly interesting to me; I feel they’re basically all the same, kids finding their footing with the naivete of someone who hasn’t had a lot of experiences. I understand why this stuff is fascinating to those going through the puberty upheaval themselves, but can’t understand what the appeal is to middle-aged adults. I read pretty much every genre under the sun, but need my protagonists to be adults (and preferably a little jaded).

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1. Benzion Chinn
  
  July 25, 2023
  
  An argument that I once heard is that there are relatively few adults left capable of reading adult fiction. Thus, those adults who want to read books need YA fiction. In looking back at the history of publishing, the key book that revolutionized the YA genre was Harry Potter. Part of the charm of the series was that, arguably, while it featured kids, the target audience was never really kids but their parents.
  
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2. Clarissa
  
  July 26, 2023
  
  An average person gets stuck at the psychological age of 12. They keep solving the same adolescent problems in middle age and beyond because they never grow past adolescence. You don’t see yourself in those teenaged characters because you grew up. Many people didn’t. And yes, that’s a disturbing thing.
  
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Ileana

July 26, 2023

Ephenophilia porn? Maybe not. The American teenagers seem to be obsessed with sex (making out) themselves.

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Ileana

July 26, 2023

…sorry, Ephebophilia… there was some predictive text intervention there and I had left my glasses upstairs.

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Demotrash

July 26, 2023

When somebody is deeply unrooted, as in they do a 180 on their political views, religious views, their entire identity on what seems like a weekly basis, what is the cause? Obviously liquid modernity plays a role here, but how does this way of life become possible on a personal, psychological level? Unstable childhood?

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mitchellporter

July 26, 2023

A sufficiently determined investigation would get to the bottom of this, I think. Find when the theme first emerged in American literature… follow the changing nature of high school life… this is a finite task; if you go back far enough, there weren’t any high schools at all.

For my part, I am struck by how often Americans talk about high school as a miserable time – not because you’re studying hard, but because of social cliques and hormonal confusion. And then one has American archetypes like cheerleaders and football teams.

Also, one can pinpoint particular transformations of daily life, that have a specific impact on sensibility. Mid-20th-century sitcoms exposed children to TV depictions of how the adults acted when the children weren’t around. Teenagers having their own cars was another transformative change. (I think I got these examples from the nonfiction of Stephen King, or possibly Timothy Leary.)

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1. cliff arroyo
  
  July 26, 2023
  
  “Find when the theme first emerged in American literature…”
  
  My guess would be after WWII probably around the time the teenager (as a distinct life stage between childhood and adulthood) was created.
  That would put it in the mid to late 1950s….
  Or not…. I dunno….
  Something tells me 1967’s Mr. andMrs. Bo Jones (graduating senior high students getting married after she gets pregnant) plays a part here. Not intended as such it became a template for a new kind of YA book….
  
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