PORN FREE: IS THIS WHAT IT TAKES TO GET BOYS READING?

A controversial new children’s novel is causing consternation in literary circles. This May, Andersen Press, the hardback children’s imprint of Random Century, and Penguin, are publishing ‘Doing It’ by Melvyn Burgess, an explicit account of four teenagers having sex. It has provoked the Children’s Laureate, Anne Fine, into unprecedented public criticism of another author’s work. She is of the view that it is “pornographic and misogynistic” and should be withdrawn before publication.

“I have read the whole thing, every last and poorly-written word and worse-edited page,” she says. “I find it vile, grubby and utterly demeaning to both young women and young men. I’m astounded at the publishers, all of whom should be deeply ashamed of themselves.”

‘Doing It’ appears in the Andersen catologue, (the hardback children’s imprint of Random Century) between Anne Fine’s Ruggles, about a dog, and another picture-book by Emma Chichester Clark called Up in Heaven. Fine, who publically supported Burgess over Junk, his novel about Bristol heroin addicts, is at pains to point out that ‘Doing It’ is radically more graphic than the controversial ‘Lady, My Life as a Bitch.’ While the novel features a condom on the cover, the Random House children’s catalogue describes it as “a knobby book for boys”. Burgess is well aware of the fact that younger children obtain 18 certificate material, and seems to encourage this on his web-site. With his previous book Lady advertised on buses as “the books your parents don’t want you to read,” it is clear that ‘Doing It’ will also be read by children younger than 15.

“Their claim to publish Melvyn “responsibly” only to older children looks deeply hypocritical given the way they advertise him,” says Fine.” This book has no more place in any educational institution than Playboy or Hustler.”

Scenes in the novel include one boy, Ben having a blow-job at school from his teacher, boasting of an erection that “he could have harpooned a walrus with.” Another describes his “knob pulsing like an atomic weapon.” Boys refer to girls as “minge and tits”, and one girl “with her knickers hardly covering her bush and her little titties out”. At one point, a boy puts his fingers up a girl’s vagina then has his hand sniffed by his friends to prove he’s actually had sex. Dedicated to “Mr.Knobby Knobster”, the emotions conveyed are those of anger, contempt, lust and impatience.

Fine has set out her objections to Burgess’s paperback publisher, Puffin, calling the decision to publish “entirely indefensible for a reputable publisher.”

Burgess, who refused to make a statement on ‘Doing It’ through his publishers, has spoken in the past about how “people confuse innocence with ignorance” and claims that “young people have access to material far stronger than this all the time, on film, TV, radio, magazines, books – you name it. The only difference with my work is that it tries to speak to them directly about their own lives instead of hypocritically allowing them to overhear, or eavesdrop stuff supposedly aimed at over-18s.” A former bricklayer who has won both the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Carnegie Medal, he is no stranger to controversy. Last year, Penguin published Lady My Life as a Bitch, an allegory about a teenage girl who turns into a dog and finds she prefers the physical and sexual freedom of her new life. Violently attacked by the Daily Mail as “ghastly”, it was read with enthusiasm by many teenagers. His award-winning Junk, about the life of adolescent heroin addicts, and the violent, futuristic Bloodtide were equally disturbing. He adds, “I’ve never claimed my books represent a generation and I’m well aware that they are not everyone’s cup of tea. The later books are hardly going to end up on a recommended reading list in schools, they are aimed directly at the reader and the reader can read them or not, as they will.”

With a recent study showing that only 32% of boys read for pleasure, it might be argued that a novel that appeals to their sexual curiosity is to be welcomed. It is certainly true that teenagers themselves respond powerfully to his novels, reviewing them with enthusiasm on amazon and calling him “THE most exciting author.”

Yet Doing It is a clear departure from this. Other successful children’s novelists are highly dubious about the integrity of Burgess’s approach, and believe, in the words of one distinguished author, “that it is pornography that is being disguised as children’s fiction.” Anthony Horowitz, whose best-selling series about a reluctant teenage spy, Alex Rider, has now sold over 1 million copies says,

“I find it presumptuous that an adult writer should go on a crusade to share his thoughts on teenage sexuality. It’s not a writer’s job.”

Horowitz’s hero has all the James Bond gadgets but crucially, never has sex. In the fourth novel, Eagle Strike (published by Walker in May) 14-year-old Rider saves the world with the aid of well-concealed gadgets on his trusty bicycle, and finally gets to kiss his gorgeous girlfriend, Sabina Pleasure. It is described in a single sentence, before she “walks out of his life.” Horowitz originally described the kiss in some detail, only to find his own sons, 12 and 14, and their teenage friends were “uncomfortable” at having it described in their imaginations.

“They said they didn’t like sex in books. It was OK in Bond movies but they got quite uptight about a lengthy description of a kiss. So I cut it.”

Another best-selling “crossover” novel, Lian Hearn’s Across The Nightingale Floor published by Macmillan last year, has its sixteen-year-old hero and heroine “rush towards each other with the urgency and madness of youth,” and make love for the first time. Though highly erotic in atmosphere, and very violent, it is completely inexplicit.

Philip Pullman, whose novel The Amber Spyglass became the first children’s novel to win the Whitbread Prize last year, is often credited with having his hero and heroine, Will and Lyra, become lovers at 13. However, he points out that “the novel withdraws its attention before anything genital happens. I wasn’t going to look and neither should anyone else. The trouble with explicit sex is that it’s so distracting. The way to get boys to read, it seems to me, is to tell a good story. If what you want to make them do is wank, then provide lots of explicitity. But they hardly need encouragement to do that.”

The Sunday Times April 2003