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The whole YA argument is so fraught because it cuts across a billion different arguments and different people are on different sides of them in unpredictable ways
So for example here's one debate that gets mixed up in this: are *stories* of primary importance in prose literature? I agree with Tolkien, Lewis, Card, Pullman (!) on this one.
Pullman actually speaks well about this: "[I]n adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness. But stories are vital."
"Stories never fail us, because, as Isaac Bashevis Singer says, "events never grow stale." There's more wisdom in a story than in volumes of philosophy. [Contemporary writers, however,] take up their stories as with a pair of tongs. They're embarrassed by them."
"If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do.” Most people who don't think stories are primary hate YA. But then so do a lot of people who do think they're primary, but for completely different reasons.
Other debates that confusingly interweave with the 'is YA good' one:
* Does a story have to be 'about ideas' to be good?
* How good can a book be while remaining narratively simple?
* What exactly constitutes good writing (perhaps as distinct from good storytelling?)
* Does a story have to be 'about ideas' to be good?
* How good can a book be while remaining narratively simple?
* What exactly constitutes good writing (perhaps as distinct from good storytelling?)
* Can fantasy literature be Great Literature?
* Can fantasy literature not written by Tolkien be Great Literature?
* Can fantasy literature not written by Tolkien or Susanna Clarke be Great Literature?
* Etc.
* Can fantasy literature not written by Tolkien be Great Literature?
* Can fantasy literature not written by Tolkien or Susanna Clarke be Great Literature?
* Etc.
