One day, one of my friends asked me about my novel collection. She wanted to borrow one from me. Then I asked her about what kind of novel she wanted. She answered she loved anything except teen lit. I asked again why she did not like teen lit. Then she told me that reading teen lit was just like guessing the content of a sealed mineral water’s bottle. We know exactly what will be going on, and how the story is ended. And the story of a teen lit novel is not more than just giving a high dream about living happily ever after in the real world, especially in teenagers’ life.
After that, I tried to look up my novel collection and classified it into several parts based on the quality and the value of the story, also based on the characters involved in the story. Here is the result. I found that novels, especially the Indonesian one, can be classified into, at least, four categories based on several criteria mentioned above. And those categories are kids’ literature, teenagers’ literature, common literature, and chic’s literature.
Kids’ literature, as the word suggests, is obviously known as a written literature work for children, particularly between 7 up to 13 years old. This kind of novel, of course, tells about a wonderful childhood. Most of them consist of adventures, challenges, and games. The main characters of such novels are, of course, children. The other supporting characters can be friends, teachers, parents, and sometimes relatives. We can find this kind of story in several novels published by DAR!Mizan. For example, there is a novel titled The Summer Camp[1]. It tells about the Lala, an Indonesian student in Australia, who really wanted to be a participant of International Islamic Children Conference. During the story, she met some problems related to her friendship. Furthermore, those problems could be solved very well. By this example you know that the value of this kind of story is always the same, and you can take at least three biggest values. First, the truth will always be the winner; second, children have to be nice to others; and the last, only the brave kid will catch his dreams.
Now let us talk about the second kind of novel we are talking about, teens’ literature. This kind of novel is very much popular around teenagers’ life. As its name—teen lit—this novel tells us about love life, friendship, and other things related to teenagers’ life. The characters of this kind of story are mostly senior high school’s students with the similar personality and story plot between one story and others (Ahira, 2011)[2]. One example we can find is Honey Money[3]. This novel tells about a girl named Dee who was looking for a handsome-rich-guy as her boyfriend. As she found that boy, she knew that the boy had got bad tracks of his love life. She was brokenhearted. In the end of the story she was told many secrets of her life, and she could reach her love again because that boy loved her very much. If we are talking about the value, the biggest one we can get from this story is never underestimated someone at the first sight because we do not know what will happen between us later.
Common literature, which is also known as metro pop, is almost similar to the previous kind of novel, teen lit. However, there are several differences between them in terms of characters, conflict, and the value. The characters involved are not only senior high students, but also college students, and young adult. Then the conflict, this novel does not always talk about love life or friendship. Sometimes we are invited to see how a family life is running, how someone is sacrificing, and many others. About the value, we almost cannot generalize it because the story is more various and colorful. You can find this kind of story in several novels published by GagasMedia. One good story you can find is Infinitely Yours[4] which tells about a journey of two strangers going around South Korea and found their love through the journey.
The last one, chic’s literature. We know that the word chic refers to an adult life. We also know how adult life is refers to the nowadays life. It is about night life, work life, and of course sex life. The characters are mostly 20-something up to 30-something. No matter how the story is begun, in the middle of the story we can find “on-bed” scene with the clear description, from both the woman’s or man’s point of view. You can find this kind of description in a novel by Christian Simamora, Pillow Talk[5] as follows: “Ciuman mereka semakin dalam dan dia meletakkan sebelah kakinya di atas tempat tidur. Emi berada di atas pangkuan Jo, merasakan sesuatu mengeras di balik celana jeans-nya”. You can see from the example how the writer describes that “hot” situation clearly. Similar to the metro pop one, we cannot generalize the value of this chic story because the story is more and more various, and sometimes confusing.
I have explained the classifications of Indonesian novels based on the quality and the value of the story, also based on the characters involved. It is good to know what kind of literature we will read in order to be more selective, not only to ourselves but also to another. By knowing the characteristics of each novel, we are able to decide which one is the best for us. A good knowledge about reading material, in this case novel, will prevent us from choosing the wrong story which can affect our mindset and view about our life. The good literature will lead us to the better personality development, and the bad one will lead us to the worse.
[1] Chrisna, Anna. 2009. The Summer Camp. Bandung: DAR!Mizan
[2] “Teenlit, Novel Populer yang Banyak Disuka” n.d. Retrieved on December 28, 2011 from http://www.anneahira.com/novel-populer.htm
[3] Debbie. 2010. Honey Money. Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama
[4] Orizuka. 2011. Infinitely Yours. Jakarta: GagasMedia
[5] Simamora, Christian. 2010. Pillow Talk. Jakarta: GagasMedia
