Not-so-wasted youth

Writing this column for the Back to School issue of the Women’s Post has put me in mind of my own not-so-tender youth. I gravitated toward other misfits who, like me, felt most alive when performing random acts of rebellion. Quite a time was had by all until parents and the authorities were called in.

Back then, disaffected youth wasn’t the name of an industrial rock band from Killeen, Texas. The handle fit my merry band of reprobates in my hometown of Montreal to a dysfunctional T. We were little barbarians at the gate — sullen, glowering teens carrying the weight of the world on our slender shoulders. We sighed at invisible ironies and sneered at exhortations to lighten up and be happy. The world was heavy; we wore black. We listened to punk rock and death metal and hated you before you could hate us. We railed against an uptight world and were probably the most uptight of them all. We refused to conform and tried desperately not to stand out.

That was then; this is now. Adolescence is — with great gratitude from all those involved — grown out of, for many of us by turns both gracious and gracefully clumsy. Ideally, we learn a thing or two through the prism of adolescent angst that helps us evolve, become more comfortable in our own skin, and interact more civilly with the rest of the human race.

In literature as in life, coming of age seems to be in everyone’s best interest. Both the bildungsroman and coming-of-age novel, while not exactly the same, depict the protagonist — invariably an outsider — facing challenges that offer him or her the opportunity to test the waters of adulthood. Typically, the central character undergoes a transformation, ultimately discovering a place in the world.

One of the most frequently cited coming-of-age books is J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield epitomizes teen rage and alienation, scary stuff in ostensibly idyllic America, circa 1951. The novel went on to become the most censored book of the next two decades. Clearly, it had hit a nerve. Like Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, where the nameless fury plaguing a generation of women was finally given voice and shape, so too was teen angst in Salinger’s book. It wasn’t pretty, but it was real.

S. E. Hinton, herself a teenager of 15 when she began writing Outsiders, captured a slice of American life with her 1967 portrayal of damaged youth struggling against class, poverty, and violence. The central characters find escape routes from their past with small acts of heroism that transform them from boys to men.

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was banned in parts of the U.S. in 1885, condemned as vulgar and crude. Twain appropriates the voice of the ragamuffin Huck to wondrous effect, showing how attempts to “sivilize” him backfire as Huck develops a strong sense of conscience in direct conflict with the prevailing bigotry of the time.

A young girl on the cusp of adolescence struggles with religion and sexuality in Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. The book so upset Ronald Reagan’s America, it became one of the 100 most frequently challenged (targeted for banning) titles at American libraries.

These books are only a few that depict young people grappling with the treacheries of adulthood and the frailty of human nature. They emerge matured, bruised but unbowed. All struck the establishment nerve at their time of publication. All have since become classics.

Youth may be wasted on the young, but as grist for the creative mill, it’s irresistibly fertile ground.

Elana Rabinovitch runs Propaganda Ink and is the administrator of the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

REVIEW

The child who never grows up

by Alidë Kohlhaas

Sailor Girl
By Sheree-Lee Olson
The Porcupine’s Quill
285 pages, $27.95

Long ago, I travelled from Vancouver to Boston to board a Royal Mail ship that sailed routinely from Liverpool to Halifax, St. John’s, Boston, and back to carry mail. This little steamship, her name now forgotten, gave me the best of three Atlantic Ocean crossings. It brought me closer to the sea than any of the cruises since taken on both sides and on top of this continent. Hence, I understand the attraction the Great Lakes hold for 19-year-old Kate, the protagonist in Sheree-Lee Olson’s debut novel, Sailor Girl. These sweetwater lakes behave much like the oceans. Becalmed or stormy, these inland seas are as dazzling and as terrifying as their saltwater cousins.

Oh, but now, riding the bus west toward the Welland Canal, the lake came roaring back, the wilderness of it, the huge beauty. This was the thing she couldn’t explain, the pull of the water, as if it were calling her blood.
-Sailor Girl

These thoughts run through Kate’s mind on her way to her second ship in the summer of 1981. She has served as a relief porter on a laker. Now, she has been assigned to the last steamship plying the ports along the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Upper Lakes.

Kate, a photography student, earns her tuition in the summer on such freighters despite her parents’ disapproval. Unlike her MBA-bound sister, Kate lacks conventional, middle class ambitions and has proved a bit of a disappointment to her family.

Her reckless disregard for her own well-being and safety appears to stem from sibling rivalry and youthful rebellion, though Olson leaves the character’s pathology almost entirely up to the reader. The author paints a vivid and candid picture of the hard life lived on ship and off by the ordinary seamen — and seawomen — Kate meets. It is a harsh and largely lawless existence, filled with booze, drugs, cigarettes, and squalid sexual encounters.

While Olson chooses not to fully explicate Kate’s inward-directed anger, it is this self-destructiveness that colours the novel. Kate is a hard worker but refuses to abide by the ship’s rules, and takes risks that constantly jeopardize her safety. Her steady stream of unwise choices — coupled with an apparently life-changing event — suggests that Kate fails to make the transition from foolish child to responsible adult. By the end of the novel, she still seems stuck in the same groove of careless self-disregard, still drawn to an anarchic life. It seems Olson is wrestling with the adage that “all children must grow up,” choosing instead to give the reader pause as to whether all youth-focused novels must really be about coming of age. Kate manages to find a life that precludes learning many of the hard lessons most of us have to learn and live by.

As a reporter, my territory once included the eight locks of the Welland Canal that lift ships from Lake Ontario above Niagara Falls onto Lake Erie. Olson captures exceptionally well the places and the people who dwell and work there. Some of the tragedies I encountered there remain vivid. Avoidable accidents, murder-suicides, foreign sailors jumping ship to seek asylum; all are stories woven into the fabric of deceptively sleepy places along the canal. I was able to experience personally how life aboard a ship was a difficult means of making one’s way in the world.

Olson’s Kate is a vivid example of how such a choice can exact a huge toll. Her fast-paced, attention-holding story is a remarkably good, honest tale.

Alidë Kohlhaas is a writer, designer, and translator based in Milton, Ont.