  Ann Hulbert, author of Slate's urlLink Sandbox column, writes about literary precocity and sort of reviews a few books written by teenagers and makes references to works written a century ago by children as young as nine.
One of these teenagers is Christopher Paolini, who wrote a fantasy novel called Eragon . I've not read it, but he's from Montana, so I feel a bit of pride that he's become a bestselling novelist while only 19 (he wrote the book when he was 15.
) Hulbert's problem comes in when she chooses to lump Mattie Stepanek in with "precocious writers. " Precocity implies, by its very nature, talent and maturity beyond one's years. Mattie's poems did mature as he grew older (the truly vile pieces I published when he died were from his first collection), but they were never better that what other kids his age were writing. Mr. Paolini self-published his novel until a real publisher found it. That requires at least some degree of talent. Paolini, after all, does not suffer from a sympathetic illness. Lumping an obvious no-talent hack in a wheelchair with real prodigies is demeaning to those with actual talent.
And don't try to say that I just think people with illnesses get special treatment. Flannery O'Connor is the greatest writer of short fiction in the English language. She was a young and precocious (though not teenaged) talent. She suffered an agonizing and long death from lupus.
But the fact is, her illness was never a benefit to her popularity. People didn't fawn over her, because she was grown up and not that pretty and because her writing was so bleak and vicious that her German publisher thought it was "too brutal" for German tastes. She became a great writer in spite of her illness, not a best-selling writer because of it. The fact that the American reading public has such an undying taste for shitty writing and heartwarming pap is just a testament to our centuries-long love affair with sentiment.
Mattie Stepanek is the literary equivalent of five dollar red wine. Sure it's sweet and adorable, but wouldn't you rather have something with a little maturity and kick? Now the wine is gone, and with it the metaphor. Mattie is now a shambling zombie-poet, his gnarled, rotty hands reaches out to strangle us into submission. His poetry, even with the poet believed to be safely buried six feet down, cuts off our oxygen and leaves us unable to appreciate real poetry.
Mattie Stepanek wants to eat your brain, so do not sleep, and keep a rusty shovel at your shoulder ready to knock his half-decayed head from his bony shoulders. The touch of the zombie is death, my friends. I hope at least one of us will be alive for the end credits. 
