Readers Want Scary Literature; Feelings? Not So Much

Here are a couple interesting things on the dearth of feelings in literature. except for fear.

The one emotion that's seemingly on the up-and-up is fear. Fear-based language has become increasingly prevalent in books over the past few decades — a fact that's hard to argue with when you consider just how much of successful literature recently has to do with dystopias, monsters or kids forced to murder one another in giant arenas. (Jezebel )

The article mentions the popularity of dystopian fiction, specifically The Hunger Games, the latest YA series to gain massive crossover appeal with adults and its own, big-budget series of movies and pop-culture tie-ins. Jezebel writes that the prominence of fear-based language is "a fact that's hard to argue with when you consider just how much of successful literature recently has to do with dystopias, monsters or kids forced to murder one another in giant arenas." But before there was The Hunger Games as the top-selling YA series out there, there was Harry Potter, which, while certainly very dark at times, wasn't exactly dystopian – and made it clear that while our heroes were fighting bad guys, they were still ordinary teenagers deep-down, full of ordinary teenager hormones and able to have ordinary teenager relationships and high school drama (see: Half-Blood Prince). (Autostraddle) 

I think it's interesting -- telling? -- that both Jezebel and Autostraddle pointed to the recent popularity of dystopian YA lit, and the "classics" as an example of how far we've fallen from the emotional, "purple," prose, but leaves out a wide swath of literary fiction that isn't fear-based, nor emotionally wrought.