Monster by Walter Dean Myers

Walter Dean Myers is coming to our library in February.  To be clear, this is a Big Deal.  WDM is basically a titan of teen literature.  Even I had heard of him, if that tells you anything.  Before this project, if an author of teen lit had managed to penetrate my ignorance of the genre then that author must have been famous indeed. But, famous though he was and is, I had of course never read any of his books.  Obviously this needed to be corrected before WDM shows up in February and I manage to completely embarrass myself by not knowing his books, so I assigned myself the novel that put WDM on the map, which is entitled Monster.

Monster is the story of Steve Harmon, a teenager growing up in Myers's own native Harlem.  He's on trial for murder.  During the course of a robbery for which he allegedly acted as a lookout, a shopkeeper was shot and killed.  To cope with the stress of possibly spending the rest of his life in jail, he begins to turn his experience into a screenplay.  The screenplay makes up most of the actual text of the novel, with handwritten excerpts from Steve's journal interspersed throughout.

Like with Harris and Me, I found myself mildly surprised by the quality of the writing.  I would have never copped to this before I started reading young adult lit, but I suppose I expected it to be simplistic.  Not in a bad way!  But I remember reading books in high school where I felt like someone was taking symbolism and beating me over the head with it.  I guess I assumed that when writers write for people who don't have the benefit of a lengthy reading history, they would err on the side of caution.

So before we go any further with this, let me apologize to teen literature:  I misjudged you and I'm sorry.

Ok, now that that's out of the way, Monster is a great book.  The level of introspection of the main character and the amount of existential angst that he wrestles with reminded me of the first 30 pages or so of Crime and Punishment.  (To make yet another confession, this is all that I've ever read, but I've read it like five times in a desperate effort to get momentum on the thing so I can cross it off my list.  Man, this is turning into a real unburdening of my soul...)  The first-person narrative also keeps Steve's actual level of involvement in the crime pretty ambiguous, so I found myself questioning the amount of sympathy that I should really have for him.  One of the main themes of the book is that everyone will tell their own story to suit their own interests; witness after witness in Steve's trial is shown to have self-interest in testifying against him.  The screenplay device further encourages the reader to observe the story from a bit of a distance, I thought, but the fact that it was the narrator himself that was writing it means that you're privy to his innermost thoughts.  At the end of the day, the feeling of the book is of a teenager desperately trying to convince you that he has not earned the label of "monster" that the prosecuting attorney has given him, and you really want to believe him.  All in all, the storytelling is pretty genius.

I can think of two non-fiction books that I think fans of Monster would enjoy.  One is, appropriately enough, entitled Monster, by Sanyika Shakur.  It's the memoir of an L.A. gang member, and it is a truly fascinating glimpse into a world that most of us will thankfully never come into contact with.  Some of the periphery characters in WDM's Monster would most likely have lived lives of crime and violence like Shakur if they existed in real life.  It's a terrifying, enlightening book.

Another is Newjack by Ted Conover.  Conover is an investigative reporter who went undercover for a year as a guard at Sing Sing prison, a notorious New York facility that ends up housing many of New York City's violent offenders.  If Steve Harmon had been convicted, chances are that he would have wound up here.  Again, this is an extremely compelling visit to a world that I am truly glad that I do not have to live in.  It's extremely readable, educational, often funny book.  The first-person recounting of his experience guarding Sing Sing is harrowing and nerve-wracking, the bits of the history of American prisons and their philosophies are educational and depressing.  It's almost ten years old now, so much of the data may (or may not) no longer be accurate, but it holds up as an excellent, accessible piece of non-fiction writing.

So far I have to say that I am enjoying this project much more than I thought I would.  I envisioned slogging through teen literature the same way I slogged through lots of stuff I hated reading in college:  with a grim focus on completion that completely cheated the book.  But I assure you, reader, that teen literature is well worth your time.  As a dedicated reader of almost nothing but non-fiction, I think you can take my word for it.