My Life, The Theater, and Other Tragedies/Allen Zadoff: Reflections

Rumor has it that Allen Zadoff is appearing at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books tomorrow afternoon on the YA stage, where he'll be participating in a panel discussion (all right, so, some have called it a smack down) aimed to determine once but never for all what is most powerful, important, life-changing, elucidating, and name-making in the Land of YA:  Fantasy or Realism.

What's that?  You think you know the answer already?  You think you've read somewhere over there that Fantasy rules, Fantasy titillates, Fantasy has it all going on? You think Fantasy gets all the big bucks, the movie deals, the figurines, the very special lunch boxes?

(Okay, you can chill, I'll give you this:  Fantasy really does get all the very special lunch boxes.)

And yet, and but, and forever however:  Hold your horses and your gunfire.  Having just read Allen Zadoff's spanking-new YA novel, his work of Realism art, My Life, The Theater, and Other Tragedies (Egmont USA), I'm thinking this: If anyone can make the eloquent case for YA Realism, it's Mr. Zadoff, who knows kids, knows funny, knows where teenage angst lies, and knows—beyond all else—how to leverage (novelistically speaking) all the eruptions and allegiances and societal reconfigurations that define those awkward, blessed years.

With Life, Zadoff introduces Adam Ziegler (alter ego?), the kind of theater techie of which Tina Fey would be most proud.  Ziegler (you might also call him Ziggy) is a true backstager, a catwalk prowler, a guy who paints the world with light, or at least the stage during Montclair High's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Darkness is deep sadness for Ziegler—the color of nothing, the color of his father's untimely death.  Light is Ziegler's artistry, but as a techie he's not supposed to think; he's supposed to do whatever his arrogant, nemesistic, and British-accent-flecked director says he must.

Girls are involved.  A best friend.  An overweight adult-in-charge who needs some babysitting.  There's a brother gone to Cornell and a mother who drives so slow Ziegler thinks she is driving backwards.  But mostly, you theater lovers out there, this is Theater, capital T, and this is Realism (note the bold, note the red), and this wins my vote in the smackdownistry that is about to kazam in LA.

I'm going to spend some time on this blog, in days to come, talking to Mr. Zadoff.  Send me your questions in advance.

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Writing My Life: Upcoming Talk

In a few weeks, on Tuesday, February 10, 7:30 PM, I'll be participating in the Tredyffrin Public Library Grand Opening Event with a talk called "Writing My Life." With my own photographs as my stage, I'll be musing about the ways my perspective and stories are shaped by the life I live (in a tiny house) on the storied Main Line. Ghosts in the Garden, a memoir, erupted from Chanticleer, of course, but so did Nothing but Ghosts, the young adult novel due out in June. Seeing Past Z, my memoir about teaching young souls the power of stories and words, is saturated with the regional and personal. Undercover was inspired in part by my years at Radnor High School, House of Dance takes place in a modified Ardmore, down the road, and the first long act of The Heart is Not a Size (due out next winter), is touched by the world in which I live. Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River and Forgiveness, that much-discussed novel-in-progress, are both born of the tactile pulse and power of my city, Philadelphia.

I have always loved my home. I have always turned toward it. But this will be the first time that I will be thinking out loud about how my facts conspire with my fiction, or, simply, with language itself.

I hope you'll join me, if you can.

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