At a university presentation last week, I was asked “What’s due out next after Headlong?” and once again we run up against the genre wall, adult fiction vs. YA/children’s literature, that I leaped rather lamely with a little joke about “adult” writing not being porn.

But that begs the question, yet again, about which books are meant for whom and why, and who decides?  Is Under the Poppy absolutely off limits to the under-18 set?  I don’t think so.  Maybe your mom disagrees. I’ve had this discussion recently about Arthur Rimbaud’s work, about the hilarious Please Kill Me, about – well, insert your own example here.  I never know what to tell people because every book (or movie, piece of music, whatever) is such a case-by-case choice that, geez, what’s apropos for your sensitive 14-year-old cousin would maybe terminally freak out your best 40-year-old friend.  Or vice versa.  So do as you see fit with my puppets, please.

…And speaking of Legs McNeil and the downtown scene, the great Penny Arcade is at Dixon Place, so if you are too you ought to go.  I sure would if I could.