Whatever You Want by Rachel Timms and Laurence Hayes is a “pick-your-own-ending escapade” published in 2003 by 10 Regan Books, a division of Harper Collins. Originally published in London, Whatever You Want may be the reading experience that young adults have been waiting for since they outgrew the Choose Your Own Adventure children’s series. I picked it up, hoping that chunky volume would be the more fluid and satisfying read that I’d hoped for but never experienced with the CYOA series. At first glance, this proves to be true. Althought the volume contains a similar warning to not read straight through, it also includes the warning: if the reader finds herself finished the story with any of the endings listed below, she should seek psychatric counseling.
Already, I’m intrigued and I think my teenage students would be too. Some of them will hope to stumble upon romance, others, violent disturbance. With all of the worst possibilities listed before the story has begun, no one has yet to be turned off. I believe they will find this method less offensive than the Prologue of Romeo and Juliet which declares exactly how the characters’ fate will be played out. Some will hope to find themselves on the shortest path to finalizing the assignment. Either way, I think we’ll give it a go.
With my mind full of the heady stuff of curriculum planning, I can’t help but consider the didactic potential of a book like this, especially for young people accustomed to both interactivity and choice. Whatever You Want extends the potential that all literature possesses to enable the reader to try out different life styles, perspectives, moral frameworks, etc… Could choosing a one-night stand that leads to a nasty case of gentital worts prevent a young person from making the same mistake in real life? This seems overly simplistic for a number of reasons (why could a book accomplish what all those after-school specials couldn’t?), but mostly due to the major difference between the Choose Your Own format and traditional fiction: lack of identification with the “other”. Or at least another. Written in the 2nd person, you are the protagonist, and in some ways the author. I’m guessing a book like this is necessarilly plot-driven, and doesn’t spend much time expoloring the inner world of the protagonist – doesn’t need to, because you the reader provide an already established inner world. So while you’re exposed to new situations and face “consequences” based on the way you respond to them, you aren’t exposed to an external psychological perspective, as you are when you read Madame Bovary or The Picture of Dorian Gray. Even though the characters in these books might make some dispicable choices, you learn from them because you grow to know the hopes, joys, fears and torments that led them to act this way. Granted I haven’t read Whatever You Want, and I may be selling its literary value short, but in terms of potential to develop moral reasoning, I must conclude that traditional fiction remains superior.
I enjoyed reading both the posting and the response here. Though I am intrigued by the interactivity (to use Amelia’s coinage) and “agency” allowed to readers (especially because I was deprived of even knowing about CYOA books as a kid), I’d have to agree with Amelia about the superficiality of how “responsibility” is enacted, given the lack of identification with the protagonist (even though it is “you”).
Regardless, though, I do appreciate the humor of the premise/activity of the book, and also how it may be bringing up questions as to what makes an ending satisfying, even if all of the endings here presented bring up this question because they are all very unsatisfying.
Granted I haven’t picked up this book, so all of my hypotheses here are second and third hand, I am intrigued to see how this book opens up further dialogue regarding literary tropes that are dealt with in fiction and non-fiction, but not usually with this delivery.