Tohu Bohu

So, here’s the thing about E.L. Konigsburg: her first two books were Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, which was a Newbury Honor book, and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil Frankweiler, which won the Newbury Medal. In the same year. The third book was About the Bnai Bagels, which was one of my favorites as a little-un. The fourth was (George).

There’s a way in which these books feel very modern. The language is very seventies, and the setting, of course, is very sixties, but the kids are fucked-up, and they are fucked-up in much the same way that kids in current YA books are fucked-up. Oh, it’s perhaps a little tamer, but one of the things that feels very modern to me is the way in which these kids, tweens we would call them now, have quirks and eccentricities that seem to the people around them to be just, you know, quirks and eccentricities, but which are symptoms of deep fucked-upness. It reminds me a bit of Robert Cormier’s stuff, only where Mr. Cormier’s stuff is deeply depressing, Ms. Konigsberg’s stuff is largely redemptive.

Or at least the earlier stuff. I haven’t read any of the late stuff. This is the other thing about E.L. Konigsberg: she’s been continuing to write and continuing to win awards and stuff, and I haven’t come across any of her things. And as Gentle Readers will be aware, I do come across a lot of YA books. Maybe it’s just me.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.