writerly ways
Mar. 13th, 2011 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadnessI am a genre writer. Honestly, I see no other future as far as my writing is concerned. “Mainstream” books tend to hold no interest for me. They never have. However, I’m noticing that the old prejudices still exist and oddly not in the circles you would expect them to.
I had friends who attended Emerson’s English program back in the 1980’s, several in fact, all of whom love genre fiction. This was ridiculed over and over again, even in classes where there were no reasons for it to even come up as a topic. Now, you can take genre studies, you can even get your Ph. D in it. I have a handful of coworkers and colleagues who have made genre studies their specialty. I’ve taken genre classes recently, like my vampire course.
And yet, as a member of Goodreads – read 50 books in a year group, I hear these prejudices loud and clear. I didn’t join the 100 books in a year group because they wouldn’t count so many things I read. You keep hearing, I better go read something worthwhile now after they post a genre story. I’m so embarrassed to be reading this stuff. Maybe I ought to read something less light that has meaning.
What the hell? In what way does genre fiction not tackle bigger problems? How is it not meaningful? On a whole the genre fiction realm has been around for over a century. Is it because it’s been so popular that it can’t mean anything to a ‘serious’ reader? Did Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein not have some serious thoughts about overreaching in the scientific realm? How about Stoker’s Dracula? Mina depicted the modern female starting to work on her own and support herself (which my vampire professor argued with me and pointed out I was just like another professor, the one who specializes in Horror, as the vampire prof preferred not to see Mina as feminist). Did she not take control every time the men started flailing around, showing women as capable beings? Jules Verne and HG Wells both wrote fantastical fiction for their time, the SF of their day, and proved to have an almost uncanny insight into the future.
Maybe it’s the schlock of 1930’s horror movies/radio programs that put the dimmer on genre. Maybe it was the pulp fiction. I really don’t know. But let’s fast forward a few decades. Can there be any doubt that Star Trek reflected the turbulence of the 60’s, sometimes with the subtly of a sledgehammer? Let This Be Your Last Battlefield tackled the idea of hating someone just for the color of their skin. Hell, Roddenberry fought hard to get women in lead roles (he lost that when he couldn’t make the second in command female) and minorities in roles that were something other than servants. For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky took on the idea that if we made our world too clean we’d create killer diseases and lo and behold we have with antibacterial soaps and improper use of antibiotics. I could go on like this forever. Check out the latest two-parter Castle where they take on how forgotten the war has become versus how we perceived Viet Nam or WWII.
Even in my own writing, one of the most political things I have ever written (or plan to write) is a fantasy, which at its very heart is a statement that women and GLBT people deserve all the same rights and respect as anyone else. Tolkien’s LoTR trilogy was a bitter statement about war. Le Guin’s The Word for the World is Forest was a green book decades before the idea of being green became popular.
My contention is and will always be that just because something is genre fiction doesn’t make it any less weighty than mainstream fiction. It can and often does carry with it the weight of the world’s problems just translated into future events or into different cultures. People shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed about reading it and that colleges are now teaching these genres with the respect they deserve makes me happier than you know.
Other comments pro genre? Or for that matter, con? If you don’t think it’s as meaty as other forms of writing, I would really like to know why.
As for my own writing I wrote zero words of original fiction since the week before so I’m not going to bother with a counter. I do need to get off my butt and start that space pirate story in earnest especially after abandoning the steampunk idea since I can manage a short story in two months but a decent novella probably not.
I did finish the FMA big bang but not the Saiyuki. I haven’t given up on it but it’s future is grim.
I had friends who attended Emerson’s English program back in the 1980’s, several in fact, all of whom love genre fiction. This was ridiculed over and over again, even in classes where there were no reasons for it to even come up as a topic. Now, you can take genre studies, you can even get your Ph. D in it. I have a handful of coworkers and colleagues who have made genre studies their specialty. I’ve taken genre classes recently, like my vampire course.
And yet, as a member of Goodreads – read 50 books in a year group, I hear these prejudices loud and clear. I didn’t join the 100 books in a year group because they wouldn’t count so many things I read. You keep hearing, I better go read something worthwhile now after they post a genre story. I’m so embarrassed to be reading this stuff. Maybe I ought to read something less light that has meaning.
What the hell? In what way does genre fiction not tackle bigger problems? How is it not meaningful? On a whole the genre fiction realm has been around for over a century. Is it because it’s been so popular that it can’t mean anything to a ‘serious’ reader? Did Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein not have some serious thoughts about overreaching in the scientific realm? How about Stoker’s Dracula? Mina depicted the modern female starting to work on her own and support herself (which my vampire professor argued with me and pointed out I was just like another professor, the one who specializes in Horror, as the vampire prof preferred not to see Mina as feminist). Did she not take control every time the men started flailing around, showing women as capable beings? Jules Verne and HG Wells both wrote fantastical fiction for their time, the SF of their day, and proved to have an almost uncanny insight into the future.
Maybe it’s the schlock of 1930’s horror movies/radio programs that put the dimmer on genre. Maybe it was the pulp fiction. I really don’t know. But let’s fast forward a few decades. Can there be any doubt that Star Trek reflected the turbulence of the 60’s, sometimes with the subtly of a sledgehammer? Let This Be Your Last Battlefield tackled the idea of hating someone just for the color of their skin. Hell, Roddenberry fought hard to get women in lead roles (he lost that when he couldn’t make the second in command female) and minorities in roles that were something other than servants. For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky took on the idea that if we made our world too clean we’d create killer diseases and lo and behold we have with antibacterial soaps and improper use of antibiotics. I could go on like this forever. Check out the latest two-parter Castle where they take on how forgotten the war has become versus how we perceived Viet Nam or WWII.
Even in my own writing, one of the most political things I have ever written (or plan to write) is a fantasy, which at its very heart is a statement that women and GLBT people deserve all the same rights and respect as anyone else. Tolkien’s LoTR trilogy was a bitter statement about war. Le Guin’s The Word for the World is Forest was a green book decades before the idea of being green became popular.
My contention is and will always be that just because something is genre fiction doesn’t make it any less weighty than mainstream fiction. It can and often does carry with it the weight of the world’s problems just translated into future events or into different cultures. People shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed about reading it and that colleges are now teaching these genres with the respect they deserve makes me happier than you know.
Other comments pro genre? Or for that matter, con? If you don’t think it’s as meaty as other forms of writing, I would really like to know why.
As for my own writing I wrote zero words of original fiction since the week before so I’m not going to bother with a counter. I do need to get off my butt and start that space pirate story in earnest especially after abandoning the steampunk idea since I can manage a short story in two months but a decent novella probably not.
I did finish the FMA big bang but not the Saiyuki. I haven’t given up on it but it’s future is grim.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 06:19 pm (UTC)I read a political statement on feminism when I was around 13 because it was SF. The absolutely sexist world of GOR made me want to read other things - and I directed others who picked those books up to read other things. You can't tell me the novels I read don't have something to say about the world I live in.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 08:05 pm (UTC)I doubt i'll have many con people peeking in on this. I doubt there is a genre hater on my flist
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 07:54 pm (UTC)by all means, feel free
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 07:36 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure everything I write is Genre Fiction. Since I'm not sure what would actually qualify as NOT genre fiction, I couldn't tell you if I had ever written a non genre fiction piece. Hrm...
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 10:00 pm (UTC)I think I recognise Nicholas Spark's name... I couldn't tell you anything he's ever written. Jodi Picoult? I don't even recognise the name. She writes fiction? I doubt very many average joes (that reads mind you) will know either. But ask them to name a Stephen King title and most can they'll name you 5 maybe 10, give you a favorite, and maybe even recommend one you have never heard of. I agree with ELD too. It's not like we don't incorporate 'weighty' important subjects into our stories either.
I can draw a correlation in music. The sense I get about that is that it's like the pop music of books. Okay... I'm good with that. In music, I'd like to write stuff that gets airplay and that MORE PEOPLE LIKE. That's what a record label is looking for, is stuff that more people are going to want to hear. They won't sign someone that they think is too lofty or too political, or too controversial or too anything else.
I also get that attitude from 'serious' musicians and composers who in my opinion 100% limit themselves when they look down their noses at pop music, even worse they look down their noses at POPULAR orchestral composers like John Williams, Danny Elfman and Klause Badelt for writing intensely popular classical style scores that regular people often recognize instantly. What rational person doesn't instantly recognise the Imperial March from StarWars by John Williams, or the Close Encounters theme by the same?
I'd rather write stuff that gets the most airplay so to speak. I often wonder what composers like that thought Mozart was doing when he wrote a score to turn a play or libretto into an insanely popular opera? And Mozart's most widely accepted work was in fact his work that was designed more for the appreciation of the common people.
So yah... I'm good with being a genre writer. I would feel MORE pigeon holed if I were trying to write
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 10:07 pm (UTC)Meh Whatever. The difference is, his stories sounds a lot more boring.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 10:52 pm (UTC)it's not that the serious stuff is unpopular, quite the contrary. That wasn't my point. IT is popular. It's just anything that has an elf in it, an alien, a police detective or a vampire and ghost isn't worth the reading. That is the point
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 11:55 pm (UTC)I actually find it offensive that genre fiction is somehow considered to be less worthy of readership than other stuff. Some how it has to come off as a true story before it can be viewed as something that could possibly have a message of any importance. That's offensive, just as much as dismissing real artistry in music just because it's popular, or came from a movie, or any other number of ridiculous reasons that separated it from 'real' culture. One of my best friends is a composer of classical music and is guilty of sometimes sneering at modern score composers in this way, as somehow lesser in value, just as genre fictions writers are sometimes sneered at as somehow lesser in value than mainstream writers. And yes, obviously, based on my very narrow analysis, this is true even when the mainstream writer is obviously writing in a specific genre exclusively or almost exclusively despite being touted as mainstream.
My thoughts on this are that the genre writers are the mainstream, and not the other way around. In music if you don't fit into a genre you are EXTREMELY lucky if you can get any airplay anywhere. I think that's true is fiction writing too, just that the publishers and critics don't acknowledge it.
I'm perfectly happy to be a genre writer. I expect that's where I am most likely to sell books.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 01:24 am (UTC)this is my point. I'm rather annoyed that so very many people think this way. I hear it constantly and this reading group has less than 3 thousand readers in it so slice that by all the readers out there
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 08:51 pm (UTC)great writing is great writing, whether or not it is genre.. although funnily enough it often is. and if it is original or forward looking it almost always is..
~For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky` is genius.... ~I have no mouth and I must scream ``was inventive forward looking scary fiction, as are almost all of Harlen Ellisen`s stories. As well as anything writren by PK Dick, which still are being mined by the mainstream who are looking for weighty complicated stories.
I can only speak of the genre that I know best but it Seems to me there is no lack of weighty genre writing out there.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 09:27 pm (UTC)you did give other great examples. These stories are still popular for the very reason that they DO have important things to say and are not just mindless fluff better suited for young teens and not serious adult minds which seems to be the attitude of many
*focuses on the important stuff*
Date: 2011-03-13 09:37 pm (UTC)Now turn it in so I can mark you off.I still vote for an orgy, or at least some unbridled monkey on monk action. You can do it!
Re: *focuses on the important stuff*
Date: 2011-03-13 10:47 pm (UTC)Re: *focuses on the important stuff*
Date: 2011-03-14 01:18 am (UTC)Re: *focuses on the important stuff*
Date: 2011-03-14 02:31 am (UTC)Re: *focuses on the important stuff*
Date: 2011-03-14 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 10:01 pm (UTC)The split between genre fiction and 'literary fiction' is a relatively modern one, and I think not very helpful for literature in many ways. As you've pointed out in the thread, it can become a relatively meaningless marketing/prestige distinction when 'literary' authors like Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Atwood write SF that isn't marketed as SF.
If it's any comfort, genre stuff is becoming much more valued within academia. Study of horror and the gothic is a particularly trendy area at the moment. In my experience, it tends to be more ordinary readers, particularly those who are a tad insecure about looking intelligent, who will publically denigrate genre fiction, TV, etc.
Oh, and Bride of Frankenstein, schlocky? Tsk. Wash your mouth out, it's ONE OF THE GREATEST FILMS OF THE 1930s. *obsessed, manic glare*
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 10:49 pm (UTC)you've pointed out in the thread, it can become a relatively meaningless marketing/prestige distinction when 'literary' authors like Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Atwood write SF that isn't marketed as SF.
this is exactly that I'm talking about
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 10:06 pm (UTC)Some people can't look past the word "vampire."
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 02:17 am (UTC)To be honest, I think it's the poison of ANYTHING which is popular popular culture is usually considered "beneath" these people who believe themselves to be intellectual superiors (those who give the rest of us smart people the bad name with the red part of the country, to be honest). They're pretentious and intolerant of anything that a lot of people like -- like genre.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 03:24 am (UTC)you said it perfectly here. That's what I think it is too
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 01:21 am (UTC)and that is how it should be. I'm not sure why genre fiction gets such a horrible rap