[dropcap2]W[/dropcap2]hich would be better, being a freshly born bull calf who gets his nuts chopped off and a year later slaughtered to feed man’s hunger for beef? Or, as a bull calf you get your nuts chopped off just in time to find out that the world has suddenly gone vegetarian? Surely you can see the dilemma. On the one hand, you get to go on living a considerably less purposeful life. On the other you are used for what you were forced to become.
This is how I’m beginning to see the creative industry. Novelists are streaming to young adult literature (YA) because readers appear to be youngening even as they get older. (It’s not because 16 year-olds are suddenly reading more. It’s because their parents are raiding their bookshelves.) Why read at the eighth grade level when one can find books for adults written at the fifth grade level? It just wastes brain energy one could use for sudoku or for understanding the witty quips on Castle.
Read moreA Steer in a World of Vegetarians (or Damn you YA!)