Monday, November 06, 2006
Literary Vs Genre
I’ve often wondered what exactly separates so called genre fiction from so called literary fiction. Sure, you can read a novel and know that is decidedly one or the other, but just what is it exactly that separates the two? To use a cliché, I suppose it comes down to, I know it when I see it, but I can’t explain it.
Granted, the question that this essay asks is: Why are so many novelists in the modern age drawn to write about the ancient world, especially Rome but also, to a lesser extent, Greece?, but the following piqued my attention:
“Robert Harris may be one of Britain’s most popular novelists, but he remains a victim of literary snobbery, or so he thinks. Interviewed recently in the Observer, he complained that the kind of novels shortlisted for the Booker prize were as much works of genre as any other. Harris is considered to be a genre writer: a writer of the airport thriller and historical saga. As such he is never in contention for the main prizes, and his latest novel, Imperium, was predictably not among the 19 titles on this year’s Man Booker longlist.”
Of course, Harris’s publishers may not have entered it for the prize. But if they did, the novel had two things against it. First, the proof copy came with the boast that it had a publicity budget of £400,000, information guaranteed to offend high-minded judges. Second, it is indeed genre fiction ...
I tend to agree with Robert Harris to some degree, and I’ve often wondered why there exists this elitism, or “snobbery” if you will. I wonder if this phenomenon is—at least partly and perhaps inadvertently—perpetuated by the publishing industry. I’ve read accounts of Editors going to bat, kicking and screaming, to get a particular book published knowing that it will not make money and that it will be an economical bust, but because they feel the work is of such merit, they feel that it needs to be put out there. Doesn’t this attitude, in part, doom a book from the start? After such a book is in print and it’s “out there” do the publishers give it weak promotion, saving the big money for the Clancys and Grishams?
Personally, I read a broad spectrum of genres and styles. I’m as likely to pick up a Faulkner as I am a King. I can be as engrossed in one as much as the other as long as I’m reading a good story.
But, I suppose that most consumers are not like that. Or, perhaps they are, and book publishers are beginning to behave much the same Hollywood. I believe that Hollywood is vastly underestimating the average film viewer. But, that’s a whole other discussion.
I know that in my own work it would be difficult to pin down a specific genre. Sure, on the surface, much of what I write could be pigeon-holed, but I think that deeper down, it’s more broad than that. Perhaps that’s wishful thinking on my part.
