Adultphobia and youth worship in contemporary Scandinavian literature
In Take me to neverland, the author somewhat teasingly presents the cultural diagnosis of "adult phobia". It is something many of us, including herself, suffer from: A mixture of longing for what is fluid, aversion to normative rules and conformity, and at the same time a search for the meaning and stability we believe the so-called adult life must be able to offer anyway.
Camilla Schwartz presents this adult-phobic issue in contemporary literature by using themes such as gender, love, class and feminism - in dialogue with other cultural examples such as film, fashion and television.
The diagnosis of adult phobia is not made to sicken the young writers and others. or for that matter to make us all become much more grown up and sensible - because everything was much better in the old days. On the contrary, the book encourages us to listen to the young literary voices who write about being afraid of adult life, or who both vulnerable, cheeky and courageously insist on remaining in childhood and youth - or who yearn back towards what was lost.
The adult phobia and its implications must most of all be understood as cries that can be read as significant cultural signs of our culture. Signs that might lead to a revision of the terrifying thing we call "adulthood".
