Between my
day job and early mornings spent writing a novel that will rightfully toss To
Kill a Mockingbird from
its perch as the Great American Novel, I don’t have time for much else.
This includes
watching television. TV time is limited to whatever is on while I
exercise in the late afternoon, and that is usually reruns of The Sopranos
which is a well written show).
If I did have the time, though, I would watch episodes of Girls. From what I can tell Lena Dunham has a runaway hit on her hands (besides making it cool to be naked if your body is anything other than stick thin with a huge set of hooters). The dialog is snappy, the stories are good, and the situations are realistic enough to be believed.
That’s because Lena Dunham has tapped into a new genre—new adult fiction. New adult fiction is for those readers who are out of the house—most of the time—but still consider themselves kids. They don’t think in adult terms, at least until they get married, have a kid, buy their first of many SUVs, and sell the bong at a yard sale.
Cora Carmack, author of Losing It, describes new adult fiction this way:
… the turbulent years between adolescence and adulthood, that terrifying in-between. Whether you're at college or moving out on your own or working your first full time job-your life seems to change radically overnight. And yet for most people in that age group (18-25ish), you're still not completely on your own. Your parents are still a large part of your life. You're not a child anymore, but you're also not quite an adult. You may call yourself an adult (as will others), but deep down inside you are petrified because you don't feel like one.
You can read other articles here and here.
New adult themes include college life, first jobs, lots of sex (sometimes), lots of drugs and alcohol (sometimes) and all the other things people do after they move out of their parent’s house, but before they get married.
As for the viability of the genre, it has always been there. Bright Lights, Big City and Fight Club are examples of new adult fiction that were published before the genre was named. Some folks decry new adult as another marketing gimmick (when in doubt, blame it on the marketers). As for me, I think it is always nice to put a name to something. Then you know what you are writing.
Meanwhile, Lena Dunham is laughing all the way to the bank.
See ya’ later.
WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons ating back to 2009 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Photo by David Shankbone (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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