Bitchery Reader MplsGirl sent me a link to a NY Times article about highbrow literary fiction authors slumming in ‘genre fiction’, which has led me to proclaim Charles McGrath “Awesome Dude of the Day”:
…the assumption [is] that genre fiction — mysteries, thrillers, romances, horror stories — is a form of literary slumming. These kinds of books are easier to read, we tend to think, and so they must be easier to write, and to the degree that they’re entertaining, they can’t possibly be “serious….â€
What we look for in genre writing… is exactly what the critics sometimes complain about; the predictableness of a formula successfully executed. We know exactly what we’re going to get, and that’s a seductive part of the appeal. It’s why we can read genre books so quickly and in such quantity, and happily come back for more of the same by the very same author. Such books are reassuring in a way that some other novels are not.
Does that make them lesser, or just different? Probably both on occasion. But it doesn’t necessarily make them easier or less worthwhile to write.
Hold up now, a Times writer gets that genre fiction is satisfying, worthwhile, and as difficult to create as any other work of writing? That it’s not lowbrow plebian dreck? That it is very odd that the best of the genre writers aren’t more often promoted into mainstream fame?
Holy shit.
I’m especially tickled by the idea posited by McGrath’s interpretation of Updike that literary authors wish for the success of genre fiction authors, while assuming that genre authors wish for the respectability of literary fiction.
Funny enough, back when I aspired to write fiction (which I shamelessly now acknowledge is not at all my strength), I never wanted to write literary fiction. Only genre. Love me some genre fiction.
Wow! I usually read everything in the NY Times, but I sure missed that piece. Thanks, MplsGirl and SB Sarah, for sharing it.
Now I’m thinking I should move next to a shoe factory, in hopes that the fumes will turn me into a genre fiction writer.
As an aspiring category romance author, I’ve learned any writing is damn hard work. The more I get into it, the more I’m amazed any writer sticks with it long enough to get published. But at the same time, that’s what gives me hope. (Cuz I ain’t giving up!)
Thanks for sharing the positive article on genre books/writing.
Alison Stone
Worth quoting what Brady said about it herself:
“I haven’t dumbed down. I never said it. That’s the pure invention of the Times. They have decided that this effete literary woman has become so stupid that she can no longer write boring literary fiction and writes poorly selling thrillers instead. My mental faculties haven’t deteriorated. And anyway, what an insult it would be to thriller writers to suggest that you need to be stupid to write them. It seems to me so irritating that you would denigrate a remarkable genre where much of the best writing is done.”
from the Guardian:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,2248542,00.html
I’m a creative writing student. Some of the stuff I write is genre, which gets me sent to the kiddie table in my class. Some of the stuff I write, however, is not genre, and pretty much all I’m hearing is that I’m going to have trouble getting published if I dont pick one and work the market. I’m very determined to write what I want to write, but I’ll admit I have major concerns about finding an agent willing to shlep my stuff all over the place since I doubt one house’ll stick with me when I keep changing my category
I’m especially tickled by the idea posited by McGrath’s interpretation of Updike that literary authors wish for the success of genre fiction authors, while assuming that genre authors wish for the respectability of literary fiction.
—>That’s kind of like the cool kids assuming that the geeks want to be like them, when meanwhile the geeks have zero desire for such, but are having a blast being themselves.
Which only proves that even very educated people can be utter idiots when it comes to understanding other people.
Having been dropped on my head too often as a child I was briefly involved with the local open-mic poetry scene.
(O’ writing gods ex toto corde poenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum…)
Talking about reading and writing is big in those circles. (Surprise!) When I said that I read and was attempting to write romance it was as if I’d pooped on the bar. Annoyed at the pretension, I argued that writing genre fiction isn’t easy. To write well within its strict confines demands more creativity from authors—not less.
I’m so tired of the idealization of literary fiction. A good story is a good story is a good story—I don’t care where it comes from.
Gracious.
Hmm. I would not say that I’ve detected in any genre author’s writing the distinct yearning for higher accolades rooted in an insecurity. (Not that I find that to be an improbable occurrence.) What I would say is that there are genre authors, across the board, who wish for the critical regard and the print and award attention that literary fiction currently enjoys, for simply doing what they do. Which, on some points, is very fair, and on others, is a bit like wanting to eat the cake and have it too.
Great piece, great comments. I disagree with only one thing: Jane Austen wrote ROMANCE, not chick lit!
area51—where they imprison the aliens who really write all the science fiction
Thanks for posting this link. I may have to print this article out and frame it!
PS – actually I’m going to print out YOUR blog post and frame it – it’s got all “the good parts” 🙂
Funny enough, back when I aspired to write fiction (which I shamelessly now acknowledge is not at all my strength), I never wanted to write literary fiction. Only genre. Love me some genre fiction.
So glad to see that I’m not the only one. I read literary fiction; I’ve just never aspired to writing it. Not even in college, when all my friends were working on the next Bright Lights, Big City or Less Than Zero. I think I was working on a novel about an Oklahoma rancher and the feisty city manager who’s after his water rights. You can see why I didn’t pursue a career as a romance novelist. 🙂
I totally sympathize with Peaches, above. When I brought fiction into my creative writing classes, it was usually fantasy-inspired, or straight up fantasy. My classmates were not impressed. They wanted literachoooor, not fun.
Ugh. In retrospect, I’m still kind of annoyed by that.
Thanks for the link to the Brady article, Marianne. That’s one bad-ass woman. 🙂
Same here, Snarkhunter. Only I wasn’t annoyed in retrospect. I was annoyed at the time, too.
Sadly, at the time I don’t think I had the confidence to be annoyed.
I have to throw my lot in with the creative writing class members—I gave up creative writing classes (though I’d intended to specialise in it as an undergrad) because nobody there was willing to let me write what I wanted to write, which was a bizarre mix of historical and Gothic with a pinch of fantasy.
I ran into similar issues wanting to write about popular novels in an academic context, but I think I’m slowly winning people over. Very, very slowly. You know you’ve got a problem when the first question at your masters’ dissertation viva is ‘Why on earth are you studying Dumas?’
What really annoys me is the implication that it’s somehow easier to write a genre novel than it is to write a literary novel. All novels are equally difficult to write; just for different reasons.
There was a recent article (can’t remember where, found it on Galley Cat) that posited that the only philosophical discussions taking place in fiction these days are all happening in sci fi.
Seems to me that genre fiction is where all the interesting ideas are happening and literary work is where the prettiest sentences occur. I’d take an interesting idea and/or good story over a pretty sentence any day.
I do know that when mainstream authors try their hands at SF (usually dystopic fiction) they tend to make a mess of it.
large33—I TOLD you! No personal comments!
1st I love this site!
>>>>I ran into similar issues wanting to write about popular novels in an academic context, but I think I’’m slowly winning people over.
Oh please! Lit departments aren’t for studying popular novels or (in general) genre fiction. They are for studying LITERATURE. There’s room to argue about what deserves inclusion, but most popular genre fiction (of any era)won’t fit into that mandate. If you want to study popular literature, there is a department for you. In my neighbourhood it’s called Cultural Studies. That’s where they study cultural movements and the popular arts. Join the right department and you can study what you want.
I ran into the same problem when I wanted to study children’s literature. English literature departments wouldn’t let me study it from the perspective I wanted. I realized I was in the wrong department. When I transferred to library school, I found myself studying children’s literature in the way I wanted. I wanted to know what made a successful children’s book – not explore the themes and elements of great children’s lit.
>>>Great piece, great comments. I disagree with only one thing: Jane Austen wrote ROMANCE, not chick lit!
Oh please not this again! She wrote neither! Her work has romantic (in the colloquial sense) elements. Most novels from that period did and most still do. Romance is the great adventure of most out lives. But Austen’s work is more accurately described as domestic or drawing room comedies than romance novels. They are about women fall in love and marry, but at their heart they are about the inevitable conflict between the demands of polite society and the heroine’s internal moral dialouge and personal development. She’s as far from being a romance author as Mary Shelley is from Anne Rice. There is a reason Austen is studied by Lit departments all over the world and Nora Roberts is not.
I respect genre fiction and what it does so well. Certainly any romance author can learn a great deal from reading Austen (and really any author could learn from her). But Austen is not a romance author. Sorry, but she’s just not. Her work is not comparable to the current romance genre other than the simple fact that people do fall in love and marry in her novels.
Find me another romance novelist that displays Austen’s wit, insight and fluid examination of our modern lives and I will change my opinion.
Still, very few novelists (literary or genre writers) since have been her equal.