Octavian Nothing: Really Something

Most adult readers assume that "young adult" fiction consists of smarmy high school romances full of stereotypical teens learning Hallmark life lessons while indulging heavily in sex, booze, drugs, and hip-hop, or whatever's the latest pop-culture flavor-of-the-month. The best YA literature--and I do not use the term loosely--may indeed include such ingredients (just as Shakespeare and Jane Austen did), but it can also transcend the age and cultural limitations of teens to entertain and enlighten readers of any age. M. T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1, which won the National Book Award last year, is such a novel.

Set in the Boston area in the early days of the American Revolution, Octavian tells the story of an African boy who was born a prince and then sold into slavery with his mother. His bondage is an unusual one: he is raised in a College of philosophers and scientists who provide him a classical education and a refined life while scrupulously documenting everything from his intellectual achievements to his feces, all as part of an experiment to determine the relative abilities of different races. Octavian's realization of his ironic dilemma comes amidst a minor smallpox epidemic and a major revolution, one in which he gladly participates even though he knows the freedom he is fighting for will never be his.

Anderson manages to suggest just about every issue of the history of race in America in the experiences of this one boy. The tragic facts he portrays and the terrible questions he raises challenge readers of every age to become newly aware of the horrors of both slavery and war. Octavian is disempowered at every turn, and when he is finally shackled and made to wear an iron mask that prevents him from speaking, we understand in our guts why he must cancel out the emperor's name bestowed on him by his "benefactors" with the surname "Nothing."

And then there is the style. Some writers for teens adopt a simple, pared-down style, or resort to the teenspeak of the day--nothing dates a book faster--or pepper their dialogue with "edgy" invective and sarcasm. I suppose a whole novel will soon be written, if it hasn't been already, in the truncated language of texting. Anderson instead chooses to challenge his young readers by adopting the lofty, lengthy, multi-syllabic, formal, abstract, semicolon-sprinkled and sometimes beautiful language of the eighteenth century Rationalists he castigates. It's intimidating to all but the most erudite reader. It almost lost me, and it will, I regret to say, keep the vast majority of young readers from getting very far into his book--just as the YA marketing will keep adult readers who would love the book from finding it. And while I admire both the work it must have required and the results, I wish he had made a different choice. It's as if he brought into a classroom a young man with a moving, intense, life-changing story to tell, but he dressed him up in a powdered wig and silk hose and expected the kids to take him seriously. A few will listen, but most will be too busy giggling at the foppery to hear the message.

And yet I would love to teach this book to kids who could handle the style. There is so much here to think and talk about: the language itself, the values and practices of the time, the questions felt in the revolutionary hearts of all adolescents, the horrors echoed in our own unsettled day. The reader of any age who can stick with it will be hugely rewarded.