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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