Authors Behaving Badly: Scott Bergstrom

Scott Bergstrom is the author of the novel The Cruelty. Originally self published, it has since been sold into 16 markets, and had its rights purchases by Paramount with Jerry Bruckheimer attached. In USA, the book is set to be published by Macmillan's Feiwel and Friends. The description "YA Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meets The Bourne Identity, with a dash of Homeland" certainly sounds like a potential blockbuster.

Based on this, I think it is fair to say that Bergstrom is a big success. The problem that many people have with Bergstrom is that he shows little respect for existing YA fiction, those who write it, and especially those who write YA fiction that is SFF.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Bergstrom began with:

“The morality of the book is more complicated than a lot of YA so I wanted to try doing it on my own,” Bergstrom said. “In a lot of YA, the conflict takes place inside a walled garden, set up by outside adult forces. If you think of those stories as a metaphor for high school, they start to make a lot more sense, but that was one thing I wanted to depart from.”

This obviously distressed those already writing morally ambiguous YA fiction, which includes pretty much every famous YA offering from Twilight to The Hunger Games to Divergent.

Later, in an interview published on The Pen & Muse, Bergstrom went on to say the following:

I’m inspired by the world around me. What troubles me about so much of today’s fiction aimed at young adults is that its set in an imaginary time and place.

This is, at least, a slight against the SFF genre.

YA author Victoria Aveyard responded to each of the above statements in the following way:

I’m not going to waste breath listing the literal hundreds of morally complicated YA novels out there. And there’s not much excuse for to think there isn’t any. The big hitters (Twilight, The Hunger Games, Divergent) are all exceedingly complex in their morals. As another person on Twitter mentioned, pretty much everything is a metaphor for high school. I’m actually going to venture a guess and figure “dumpy girl becomes a slick warrior” is a metaphor for growing up and coming into your own, a major high school trope. But that’s just my opinion.

and, on the second quote:

This reads as a knock against genre fiction, which I write, which I think is worthy of as much merit and praise as any literary or contemporary fiction. This is a trend in most media though. Genre is usually written off come award season in fiction, film, and television. Of course, Bergstrom is entitled to his personal tastes, and I’m not saying he has to change tastes and start liking genre fiction. But you know, he doesn’t have to kick it in the dirt, not to mention ignore the great strengths of genre fiction. I don’t see anything “troubling” about the upswing in fantasy and honestly, it sucks to think another writer looks down on you so much.

Again, one need only look at the heavy hitter (The Hunger Games) to realize how important genre fiction is, particularly in raising tough questions that other genres can’t get away with asking so easily.

She summed it up with:

Overall, it’s disheartening, largely because this is not an isolated incident, and will not be the last time a guy wades in and claims to be doing what no one else is, while hundreds of women have already walked the path before him. Mr. Bergstrom could’ve taken a week, read 5 YA genre books written by women (I’d suggest Collins, Roth, Bardugo, Lu, and Tahir to start), and known that both violent and morally gray books already exist, and have existed, for a long ass time.

I know it feels like a pile on with the combined weight of the YA community up in arms over this, but we’re angry, offended, and quite frankly, sad. This is a very welcoming community, as I’ve learned firsthand during the last year, and Mr. Bergstrom basically walked in the door and sneered at us. He might not know he did, and I truly believe he did not intend to say things so harmful. Hopefully in the future he reads a few more YA books and quits knocking things to get ahead.  

I think this is the real issue---insiders are angry that an outsider, especially a man, feels free to criticize the huge YA literature, much written by women, without first becoming well informed about the area.

Laura Tims makes similar comments:

The thing that annoys me is how he makes this character out to be some groundbreaking feminist revolution. The “action girl” is not new. There’s a TVTropes page to prove it. YA is spilling over with Katniss Everdeens, Triss Priors, Meadow Woodsons, and a bazillion other kill-em-dead lady warriors who abhor pink, avoid dresses at all costs, and shoot first, ask questions later.

The thing that confuses me is that these male authors always seem convinced that theirs is the first.

Once, in a writing group populated mainly by older males, I listened to a thriller author explain that his protagonist was not like other girls. “She’s tough,” he explained. “She’s not into girly things.”

What I don’t think these male authors realize is that when they reassure us constantly that their female characters would never deign to touch anything pink-Barbie-cheerleading-related, is that it’s pretty clear that this disdain for femininity doesn’t just belong to their characters. It belongs to them. And they’re telling us that the only way a female character can be strong is if she acts, in every way possible, like a man.

See, these male authors are going to save us from traditional feminity by daring to write a female character who rejects it with the scorn it deserves. They often cite their daughters as inspiration for their rescue mission. They’re going to provide a positive example for the poor young girls drowning in pink.

Comments like these are all over twitter associated with the hashtag #MorallyComplicatedYA.

Even Chuck Wendig has weighed in, from the perspective of all of us living on "Hetero White Dude Mountain." Essentially, he argues that this is just another manifestation of white male privilege:

It also would seem to give us license to saunter boldly into a space that’s new to us and pretend like it’s new to everybody. We take a shit in it and pretend we’re planting a flag instead of, y’know, taking a giant shit where other people are already hanging out. “I claim this space in the name of me!” you scream, hauling up your drawers and leaving behind a steaming present while ignoring everyone else standing around gaping at the horror-struck literal shit-show you just performed.

You must unlearn what you have learned, Jedi.

This isn’t your manifest destiny. You’re entering into spaces that have already been built and shaped by people who aren’t you. You’re not colonizing it — except maybe only in the grossest ongoing historical sense, where you invade territory and overpower those who dwell there already. And you damn sure shouldn’t come into a space with the desire to “fix” it, either. I wrote a YA novel about a teen girl and crime-flavored moral complications. I was not the first to do it and I will not be the one to put the capstone on it. Neither will you, rando. I didn’t fix it. I didn’t make it better. I don’t own it. I’m sharing it. And I’m sharing it by the grace of those who came before me. (And I don’t shit on genre work, or teenagers, or Twilight or Hunger Games or any of it, because I don’t get to exist as I do without them.)

You do not honor or create your own success by ignoring or crapping on the successes of those who came before. That is gross and weird. Don’t do that. Be humble. Look back and point others to look that way. Look all around you at the present and look ahead, too. See that you are not alone — you are not the peak of this mountain and you are not the owner of this house nor its sole occupant.

It’s like borrowing a ladder from your neighbor and then pretending that you built it. Or worse, pretending that you invented the concept of the ladder, or that the mere act of you ascending its rungs has improved it in some incalculable, cosmic way. (Then you kick the ladder away to make sure nobody else ever climbs to the same height. Jerk.)

Don’t be crappy.

Give respect to others.

Admire and acknowledge their success.

Do not overtake their achievements and claim them for yourself.

Whoever you are, see yourself as part of a whole and not the sum of it.

You owe them. They don’t owe you.

I've had my disagreements with Wendig in the past, but I agree with him here. I'd go even further and say that any new entrant to a field (of science or literature), whether hetero white male or not, should pay respect to those who went before them. But they should not show not too much deference; it often takes an outsider to come in and challenge the implicit assumptions of a field in order for that field to progress.

The remarkable thing to me is that this seems to conflict with the recent brouhaha in SFF about whether modern readers are reading (and if not, whether they should read) the classics of the genre. Note that I am not criticizing Wendig for this---as far as I know, he did not weigh in on that debate on either side. But I suspect that many of the people who seem to think its is OK not to pay respect to the giants of the SFF genre would agree with Wendig when he says we need to pay respect to existing writers of YA fiction. It is this hypocrisy that I find repellant.