S.E. Hinton’s classic young adult book The Outsiders is about guys, all guys. No notable parents. No notable girls. No notable teachers. Strictly teenage males. Susan Eloise Hinton wrote its first draft when she was 17 in Oklahoma. What could she possibly know about the male sex, let alone about writing novels? She had a great editor to help finalize  her novel. And she used her first two initials to take care of the doubt over the male sex part. She didn’t want potential readers, particularly the male ones, to shy away from reading her books because she was female. The Outsiders is timeless and probably the most-read book by male and female adolescents. I read Rumblefish, That Was Then, This is Now and Tex. All with male protagonists, all with plots focusing on the struggle to find one’s way in life without guidance by adults. All powerful stories.

Interviews about her work always include the question, “Why write about guys?” But I never recall a backlash remonstrating her for having done so. Why limit a writer’s imagination to her or his personal biography?

In late May 2011, playwright Edward Albee received the Pioneer Award during the Lambda Literary Awards for writers who have broken ground for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) in literature and publishing. His body of work, including the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the novel The Witches of Eastwick, does not reflect gay characters or gay themes because it doesn’t. He said he thought it “deplorable” that he, or any writer, should be expected or limited to writing according to his or her own personal lifestyle.

I agree with Albee, though when I was in my thirties I may not have.

My radical feminist phase occurred in my thirties. Actually how radical it was is debatable. For an obedient Catholic kid in a stoic, modest Slovak family of eight living in steel mill Youngstown, Ohio, I’d say studying for a master’s in women’s studies/American women’s literature at Antioch University and marching in D.C. for women’s freedom of choice is a radical phase.

I read my MS magazine from cover to cover. I attended women’s music festivals. I believed that men had no business using females as their protagonists. What did they know? I was all about Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.

Ah, youth: headstrong, idealistic, anything-for-the-cause youth.

I love Stephen R. Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant series whose protagonist is male with leprosy and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Riders of Pern series about humans who ride dragons. Donaldson is not a leper and McCaffrey has never…you get the idea. Several male writers write darn good romance, though they write under pseudonyms. Unlike Albee, they know most of their readers will not believe men can write about women in love.

Albee stands by his beliefs. I applaud his statements and his defense of them. In this I-must-please-everyone-and-offend-no one society, I am impressed with his firm stance to what sounds true and logical.

But his age is in his favor.

I’d like to think that at one time, maybe during a radical gay phase of his youth, he may have wanted to write about homosexual themes and characters. I don’t know. But then those verbally abusive heterosexual twosome, Martha and George, from Virginia Woolf just wouldn’t shut up.

I just finished reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. It’s been on the best sellers’ list for a long, long time. Have you read it? It’s HUGE. My paperback edition is 644 pages long.

It’s not an easy read, especially in the beginning. The setting contains Swedish place names. The story follows a lengthy Swedish family tree.  The plot offers in-depth reporting of fictitious Swedish financial markets. The subplots are two, maybe three different novellas in themselves.

Why is this book popular?

Scenes of brutality, actions of suspense and titillation, whodunit mysteries, alternative-looking characters aside, what American reader has the attention span to get from Prologue to page 644 (page 650 if you read the prologue and first three pages of S. Larsson’s next novel in the series as a teaser at the end).

This isn’t a movie or a video game. No one’s giving away reward points or rebates for reading it. You have to sit with it, for hours and hours to finish it.

There’s a growing popularity in e-books. Such tech tools may replace hard copy books, they say. Quantity, thus quality, is being dumbed-down. Agents are telling authors to reduce narratives to less than 100,000 words. (Moby Dick-211,000 words; Gone With the Wind-420,787; War and Peace-590,233; Animal Farm-30,000). American readers want simple plot, quick to read books. They say.

Think back on recent hot, hot literary hits. Can you imagine the word-length of the complete Harry Potter series? Twilight series? I’ve talked with ten-year olds who have read both. Whether or not the content is suitable for the age group is not at debate here. My point is the avid readership for these incredibly long, detailed, sub-plotted books.

I was riveted by S. Larsson’s story. In my head, I made up my own pronunciation of the odd sounding and unusual spelling of foreign names. An illustration of a family tree opens the book, but I didn’t refer back to it after the story started. I sort of understood the financial picture, but only enough to appreciate the plot line.

I struggled in lots of places and I’m a good reader. Certainly, not everyone of the thousands of readers who sent this text to the top of the best sellers’ chart is as good at reading as I am.

So what does the popularity of a book like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo have to say about American readers?

Give us a good story. No, give us an excellent story. The longer the better. And we will find our way from the beginning to the ending of it.

And we will ask for more.

We’re not dumb. We just like the best.

I am at the end of a reverse order of evolution or the collective consciousness theory of the hundredth monkey. Thousands, millions of people have gotten it by the time I possess it.

I bought my analog cell phone after everyone had moved on to digital.

Been watching  eight cable channels until a year ago. Now it’s ATT U-verse (Thanks, Mom). Saw my first “Spongebob Square Pants” this past Easter. “Cash Cab” is brand new to me. And that Sy Fy Channel? Never knew it when it was called Sci Fi.

Haven’t caught Toy Story 3 yet.

Sadly, when I arrive at the experience, I want to share it. The result? A lot of yawning and the equivalent of the cliche, “That was so yesterday.” (That phrase is cliched by now, isn’t it?)

So here I am. Finally. My own blog. Getting a more substantial presence on the Internet besides FaceBook (I joined FB last summer).

I hope readers and bloggers will tune in.

Blogs are still popular. Right?

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