Literary vs Genre, Defining the Debate

 A debate I often see on various websites is the value/worthiness of genre novels in comparison to literary fiction. Usually, it’s genre writers fighting back at what they perceive as a slight against what they write.  Unfortunately, most don’t have a clue about the difference between popular genre and literary fiction so their arguments make little sense.  I thought I’d rectify that problem.  

The simplest comparison between literary fiction and popular/genre fiction is that literary fiction is about the telling of the story, popular fiction is about the story itself. 

In literary fiction, the author is always evident through the flashy style and the use of complex structure.  Plot isn’t important. A common technique found in literary fiction is the frame story where someone in the present is looking into the past, or the end of the novel is revealed at the beginning.  In other words, time in most stories isn't linear, and the reader doesn't read primarily to know what happens next and how it turns out in the end.  This technique emphasizes character over plot.

In genre fiction, the writer should be invisible, and the reader should be part of the story and not really aware of the writer and the way he's putting the story together.  Anything that breaks this "dream state" is a failure on the writer's part.  

In literary fiction, the opposite is true.  The language draws attention to itself, and the reader pauses to think, "My, what an excellent use of metaphor and language!  I think I'll reread that again."  This is what the literary writer aims for.

In recent years, since the big publishers now demand decent sales from literary writers, authors have been using genre techniques in literary fiction or vice versa in order to widen their audiences. 

On Literary Greatness

Until the last sixty years, literary permanence wasn't bestowed, it was earned by an author and a work still being read and admired after many years of being published.  

In the Sixties and beyond, critics and scholars started labeling current books as great and part of the literary canon.  Not surprisingly, the books declared great have mostly disappeared into obscurity and only those of us forced to read these "masterpieces" in graduate school still remember them.  In my fortunate case, they vanished into the aether years ago.  

One major criteria of a work lasting is that one generation passes the book to another.  If the book continues to speak to that next generation, it will continue to survive. THE LORD OF THE RINGS and the Harry Potter series are two obvious generational favorites, but no one in academia or literary circles would have said so. 

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On a side note, I've collected a few review quotes which have proven to be really wrong.  Here are a few:

"Sentimental rubbish... Show me one page that contains an idea.”-- Odessa Courier on Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, 1877.

"Shakespeare's name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down.”-- Lord Byron, 1814.

"His fame is gone out like a candle in a snuff and his memory will always stink.” -- Wm. Winstanley on Milton, 1687.

"Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer.” -- La Figaro, 1857.

"This is a book of the season only.”-- NY Herald Tribune on The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"We do not believe in the permanence of his reputation.  Our children will wonder what their ancestors could have meant by putting Dickens at the head of the novelists of today."-- Saturday Review, 1858.

"Nothing odd will do long.  Tristam Shandy did not last.” -- Samuel Johnson in 1776 on a novel that has never gone out of print.

"The only consolation which we have in reflecting upon it is that it will never be generally read.” --J. Lorimer reviewing Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, 1847.

 

The Creation of Copyright

 "As for the myth that people wouldn’t create if they didn’t have control over their copyright,  I’ll just point out thousands of years of culture before copyright was invented. Not that anyone can be bothered to remember about… oh I don’t know… Shakespeare when it comes to the ‘necessity’ of copyright. Too inconvenient an example I guess."  A comment from someone on the copyright debate.

You were obviously listening to pirated music when you should have  been paying attention in class.

Shakespeare made his living as an actor, an administrator for a number of acting companies, and as the playwright for his company.  The writing fueled the income for the company, and Shakespeare got a larger chunk of the income because of his writing.  His acting companies also had very rich and influential sponsors.   

Despite the fact that ideas were stolen right and left by Shakespeare and every other playwright from each other and famous works from the past, the language of the plays was strictly those of the individual writers.  Ideas can't be copyrighted, but the expression/language of the idea can so, surprisingly, our concept of copyright was followed.  Without copyright and print production, a vast majority of other playwrights' works have disappeared.  Shakespeare's still exists because of the folios.

Before the invention of the Gutenberg press, creators of plays depended on rich sponsors and performance to make their living.  The rich sponsors controlled the content and the political and social aspects of the works.

Novels came into being in the perfect storm of cheap printing, a growing, educated middle class with the income and time to read, and writers who were willing to produce those novels for the income.  The writers depended upon the income, but some had sponsors or a publishing house willing to fork over enough money (advances) to keep the writer eating while he created.

Copyright came into being, not because writers were greedy parasites, but because that period's version of large-scale content pirates who were greedy parasites began to devastate the publishing industry and its writers so the publishers, writers, and various governments had no choice but to create copyright.

If someone could wave a magic wand and make copyright disappear, many writers who need income so they can write would again be forced to go back to rich sponsors.  Would you really want Donald Trump, the Kardashians, and various political and social groups to control what you could read?

If the Kickstart model were followed, only the most popular ideas and types of books would be created so you'd be forced to read what the vast majority of people want to read.  Again, would you like to spend your life reading what now passes as bestsellers?

Copyright protects readers as much as it protects authors, and it is the greed of the pirates and their readers that makes such things as DRM and copyright necessary, NOT the greed of authors.

The Literary Roots of Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy

The paranormal romance's roots come from the Gothic romance and science fiction/fantasy.

GOTHIC INFLUENCES

Most scholars consider Smollett's FERDINAND COUNT FATHOM (1753) to be a precursor, and the first true Gothic was Horace Walpole's CASTLE OF OTRANTO (1764).

The true element of romance, at least our definition of it, didn't appear until a woman started writing Gothics. Her name was Ann Radcliff, and her first book was called THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO (1789). She set the stage for the Bronte sisters and their books years later.

The Gothic began to lose its respectability during the time of the Brontes because the authors were predominately women. The flowering of the pulp Gothics in the early to mid-Twentieth century finished what little respectability the form still had. These pulps are the ones you may remember with covers with the heroine in a wispy nightgown fleeing from a distant castle.

Ghosts and other supernatural creatures in these books were dangers or spooky atmosphere.

The supernatural creature as a romantic partner first appeared in a category (Harlequin/Silhouete) romance -- THE IVORY KEY by Rita Clay Estrada, (1987). The hero was a ghost. The book was wildly popular and a few paranormals with a supernatural hero/heroine crept into the Harlequin lines after that as well as the single titles of other publishers, but they quickly disappeared because the numbers weren't high enough to please the publishers, and the more traditional readers complained loudly about these books.

The paranormal in romance had a small but loyal following, and about every seven years, the NY market would produce PNR in a large way, but these surges were very short-lived, and the market would vanish again.

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY ROOTS

If you consider fantasy as part of science fiction or vice versa, I'd say that Andre Norton was the first sf/fantasy author to include romance. She never used the word "love," and there was almost no mush, but it was about a man and woman who face danger together and work as a team, physically and emotionally, and there was always a sense of a permanent relationship at the end of the book. Anne McCaffrey followed her with even more emphasis on romantic relationships and the partnership between men and women.

The first futuristic from a NY romance publisher was Janelle Taylor's MOONDUST AND MADNESS (1992). It had a "Mars Needs Women" plot, and the sf elements were horrifyingly wrong. Taylor and most futuristic authors of the period derive more from media sf than literary sf.

An exception to this was Jayne Castle (Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick) and a few other writers who actually understood literary sf.

Unfortunately, the futuristic/sf romance failed to survive. Until recently, the sf romance has made an appearance every seven years or so, lasted about a year in popularity then faded out of sight.

In recent years, the sf romance with sf literary roots has begun to find some respectability because of authors like Catherine Asaro who writes for the sf market.

From the romance side, Susan Grant's shift from having the sf romance about space to having the sf elements on contemporary Earth has gained fans for the genre as well as giving it new life.

The fantasy romance followed a similar path. One of its early and most popular practitioners in the eighties was Rebecca Brandewyne who used the traditional elements of fantasy and fairy tale. Fantasy romance had as little luck as the sf romance in gaining fans.

Then Anne Rice started writing vampire novels, and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER hit TV. The contemporary fantasy romance and urban fantasy was born soon after and has become so popular that we are now in the Golden Age of paranormal romance.

SCHEDULE NOTE: I've decided to write this blog Monday through Friday so I'll be back again on Monday.

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