On literary vs genre fiction

[delphipsmith]

The New York Times recently ran a feature piece on Justin Cronin's The Passage (which I read and liked VERY much, except for the last page where I suddenly found out IT WAS ONLY BOOK 1). Cronin started out as an author of what many people would probably call literary fiction (e.g., Mary and O'Neil, also very good).

Then he wrote a behemoth of a vampire novel (oh, and two sequels) and sold it for a gazillion bucks, so of course people started saying he'd sold out. But really, what is this artificial distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction? There are tremendously talented and literate authors writing horror, science fiction, fantasy; there are appalling hacks who still get billed and sold as lit fi. Isn't what matters that it's a great story well told?

From the article:

the difference between a literary novel and a genre-oriented one is not usually of much consequence to readers — nor is it particularly apparent to most writers, who tend to see the same blank page no matter what kind of book they sit down to work on. “You write how you write,” Cronin told me. “If I were a calculating careerist, I would not be a novelist.” When I contacted Colson Whitehead, the MacArthur-genius-award-winning author who last year released “Zone One,” a literary novel about a zombie takeover of Manhattan — my message to him included the words “literary” and “genre” — he replied politely that he’d “rather shoot myself in the face” than have another discussion about the difference between one category of literature and another.

On a related (i.e., zombie) note, I'm on Letter 8 of Ora et Labora et Vampires and am quite enjoying it.

Comments

[squibstress.livejournal.com]

Isn't what matters that it's a great story well told?

Indeed. It seems to me that it's a distinction that's useful primarily to marketers and not much of anyone else.

If there's a difference in the work itself, I'd say off the top of my head that "genre" fiction tends to start off with slightly more outlandish (not the right word, but I'm too busy to find another) "what-ifs" than "literary" fiction. (To borrow from the aforementioneded Zone One: "What if Zombies took over Manhattan?" rather than "What if there's this disaffected guy who has to work his way through a difficult job in a military zone?")

[kellychambliss.livejournal.com]

I'm of two minds about this distinction -- on the one hand, it's artificial, and as squibstress says, as much a marketing ploy as anything else. And if course, it has the problems of all binaries in that it can create a false either/or situation, and we inevitably end up privileging one category over the other.

But on the other hand, I think there *are* differences in writing -- broader vs. narrower audiences, different expectations, different topics -- and it can be useful to have a vocabulary that allows for distinctions. If only we could do it without the automatic assumption that one form is better than another, of higher writing quality, etc.