Next verse, same as the first ...

[truepenny]

The evidence of the latest Ansible indicates that the mainstream is feeling threatened by genre fiction again (still).

I'd like to write something thoughtful and chewy about this trend, but I can't. I'm just baffled by it. And the most completely mystifying bit, to me, is the lengths mainstream reviewers will go to in order to disassociate books they admire from genres they scorn. Wouldn't it be easier just to admit that a genre is not defined by the lowest common denominator?

I know I oughtn't to try to apply common sense to this, but sometimes I just can't help myself.

Comments

[persimmon.livejournal.com]

See, you're tackling this with logic and common sense. As I said to someone else earlier today, that's two strikes right there.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I'm still stuck trying to figure out why "The Turn of the Screw" isn't a ghost story.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yeah. You and me both.

[space-parasite.livejournal.com]

For many many people, including most of those who define themselves by intellectualism or literariness, changing one's mind is not easier than anything. Not even easier than dying, sometimes.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

That's exactly the thing. If you applied the same standard to mainstream literary fiction that these reviewers apply to genre fiction, you'd end up with an equally misleading and unsatisfying picture of mainstream literary fiction. Sturgeon's Law applies across the board.

I wonder, now that I'm thinking about it, whether part of what's going on is that mainstream lit. fiction is still trying to pretend it is the mainstream, rather than just one genre among many. I'm not convinced, really, that it ever has been the "mainstream," but decades of brainwashing have taken their toll on Anglo-American culture, and we do tend to accept that the realistic novel, with all its thematic and metaphorical significances carefully layered in, is the norm. What novels should be.

Which, of course, is nonsense. Tenacious nonsense, but nonsense all the same. There is nothing inherently more artistic or virtuous or anything about that particular kind of realism; we've just been taught to take it seriously and to consider genre fiction as "escapism" or "light reading" or "pulp." And the fact that a lot of up and coming writers, even nominally mainstream ones, have a highly pop-culture sensibility means that they take genre fiction (including movies, comic books, TV shows, and other things aside from the plain printed word) as part of the world they have to draw on.

I don't know, and I'm getting a little pontifical. But it does seem to me that the shrill and defensive note in some of these "it's not science fictionh because it's good" reviews is the Emperor insisting that of course he's wearing clothes.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I didn't exactly finish my thought in that second-to-last paragraph--a sure sign I'm getting too tangled in my own thought processes to make sense.

Postmodernism and poststructuralism have their flaws, but they do tend to laugh at the value judgments that created the Canon. Oh, not when carefully contained in the sterile atmosphere of the Academy, but they've escaped into the wilds of popular culture, and I think they're learning slam-dancing.

I don't think that finishes the thought either, but if you put that together with the second-to-last paragraph and the last paragraph of the above post, you should be able to triangulate what I'm trying to say.

[redbird]

I don't know why, but I suspect it's the same mindset that will manage to "forget" that one or two friends are black or Jewish rather than give up prejudice, the approach that redefines a few women as "one of the guys" rather than redefine "competent human" so it doesn't require a penis.

[hhw]

It's reminding me of the fear that somehow a legally married gay or lesbian couple is a threat to a legally married straight couple. or to the very existence of straight marriage. or whatever it is they're afraid of. logic would suggest efforts to "save" straight marriages would be better directed to making divorce illegal instead...

If the reviewers are so afraid of genres, why bring them up AT ALL? again, logic is not the key to understanding such things.

Definition of a gentleman

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I thought it was Noel Coward, and bagpipes rather than banjo.

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

Well, consider your source. "Mainstream reviewers" have quite a bit invested in the concept of the "mainstream," as do self-consciously "mainstream novelists." The rest of us are reading some really excellent books, though. *shrug*

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

one thing that strikes me is how upset we are to have sf misinterpreted. we know what we like; do we need to have others approve it? Yes, they're missing out and yes they're downright wrong, of course!

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Or why travel fiction is an inaccurate description of the Odyssey...

[oracne.livejournal.com]

the motherfucking C.J. Cherryh

Thank you, I am now doomed to say this every time I take one of her books off my shelf...

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

There's more going on there than meets the eye at first glance. PublishAmerica isn't a mainstream press; it's a POD vanity press/publishing scam, and the reason they're complaining about sf/fantasy writers is that one of the groups currently most active in getting the word out about them is the science fiction and fantasy community -- see the Writer Beware (http://www.sfwa.org/beware/) page on the SFWA web site, or the Preditors and Editors (http://www.invirtuo.cc/prededitors/pebp.htm) website, which isn't an official SFWA site but which was formerly hosted by SFWA and has strong ties to the sf writing and publishing community. Those aren't the only places where sf/fantasy writers have tangled with, or discussed extensively, PublishAmerica; there are also long threads on the subject at the Absolute Write Water Cooler Bewares (http://pub43.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11) and Take It Outside (http://pub43.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm32) discussion boards, at the Speculations.com Rumor Mill (the Ask Ann (http://www.speculations.com/rumormill/index.php?t=200&show_all_topics=0) topic in particular has some good stuff), and in the "publishing scams (http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=xover&group=sff.publishing.scams&from=-10)" newsgroup on SFF-Net. Teresa Nielsen Hayden also has an informative discussion (with extensive follow-up commentary) of the underlying mechanism of this particular variety of vanity press in the "follow the money" (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002692.html#002692) thread of her weblog.

These aren't academics feeling snooty; these are con artists feeling threatened.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean the PublishAmerica nonsense. I know what's crawled up PA's butt. Although thank you for giving all those links.

I meant the item about Sharyn McCrumb, and the review of Neal Stephenson in Word, the comments from the Doctor Who books editor, and especially the Prospect review of McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

Ah. That. Still.

I've long been of the opinion that if you're a science fiction or fantasy writer, being told that you've transcended your genre is right up (or down) there with being called a credit to your race.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Ooh, yes. Quite.

I don't want to transcend my genre, thank you. I want to help my genre become something that doesn't need to be transcended.

[libskrat]

You just gotta figure that's what Sir Thomas Malory got told about Le Morte d'Arthur. Don't you?

I mean, you just gotta figure that.

Re: Definition of a gentleman

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I heard it told about the accordion, with no attribution.