Gen X's literary upbringing

[deborah]

I would read the hell out of an academic treatise on those books of the late 1970's and the 1980's (when YA was forming as a discrete genre and was still predominantly problem novels) that were marketed to adults but overwhelmingly read by kids and teens. Think V. C. Andrews, Stephen King, Piers Anthony, Anne McCaffery. Probably a good 50% of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Weird, unashamedly psychosexual drama we mostly hid from our parents. Come to think of it, all four of those authors have written at least one incest story.

Yes, I know there was plenty of adult readership for those authors, but I'd be really curious about the breakdown; I wouldn't be surprised if the teen and child readership numbers dwarfed the adult for some titles.

What changed in genre when people started being able to market a wide variety of genres to older kids and to teens, and sell them successfully? Wither the gleeful psychosexual incest thrillers? What did YA inherit from those books, and what did adult? Do teens still sneak the contemporary equivalent of Valley of the Horses home from the library or is that what porny fanfic is for?

Comments

[grrlpup]

Yessss, I would like to read this as well, and also include
- the miniseries-spawning historical bricks like The Thorn Birds, Shogun, and James Michener novels
- paperback romances (do those get passed around as ebooks?)

[deborah]

Omg the Michener and Shogun and the Thorn Birds, yesssss. And Outlander. And definitely paperback romances, although they at least had a clear large adult readership.

[vass]

MZB and Lackey, too. And David Eddings.

I don't know whether it says something about the genre or the time period or what that two of the three who came to my mind (MZB and Eddings) were child abusers (physical, not sexual abuse, in Eddings' case.)

that were marketed to adults but overwhelmingly read by kids and teens.

It's kind of swapped places now, hasn't it? Instead of teens reading adult books, it's adults continuing to read the YA category after they aged out of it, but one could make the argument that it's still the same category, just marketed differently.

I'm also seeing books that then were published as adult fiction now getting shelved as YA.

I mean, there are definite content differences/sensibilities (way more didactic/moralistic these days, imo), but is this about about changing sensibilities and greater policing of the same genre, or is it rather a case of one genre capturing the market that used to read another, separate genre? I'm honestly not sure.