--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "annvon78" <annvon78@...> wrote:
. A lot of Chandler, Cain, Hammett would, I contend, be extremely interesting for middle and high school kids. But it's considered too Old Boy, perhaps?
--Well, the kind of folks who blow their tops over THE CATCHER IN THE RYE aren't going to sit still for much of the content of the novels and short stories of those three.
> Is there a publishing industry "young adult" category for the subject matter this list encompasses? I'd vote to include, for one, S.E. Hinton's tremendous "The Outsiders," on most eighth grade or above reading lists.
--I never liked Hinton, thought she wrote poorly. She was a kid, but that didn't make the prose any easier to take.
I read Faulkner's Sanctuary in high school, Wister's The Virginian too. But I might never have heard of some of the core "rara avis" writers except through curiosity whetted by out-of-school movie and television viewing.
--Well, not too surprising...albeit not a few RA-style folk made serious careers as YA writers, such as William Campbell Gault (albeit most of his YA work is sports fiction, probably the adult mode he'sd most excelled at in the pulp years), Frank Bohham (perhaps even better known as a western writer, till books like the contemporary urban YA DURANGO STREET were picked up and kept in print forever by Scholastic), Kin Platt (whose YA career has all but eclipsed his adult work) amd certainly Marijane Meaker (almost likewise--at least, "M. E. Kerr" has sold a Lot more YA books over the last three decades+ than "Vin Packer" has adult novels, albeit VP and her other adult pseuds haven't been forgotten) and not a few others (and Steve Frazee and a slew of others have at least dabbled with YA and younger-audience books, for the likes of Whitman and others, as completist collectors have enjoyed reminding us).
Todd Mason
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