Genre blurring, literature slumming? Help me understand! - CrimeSpace2024-03-29T00:16:17Zhttps://crimespace.ning.com/forum/topics/genre-blurring-literature?commentId=537324%3AComment%3A166801&feed=yes&xn_auth=noI read Denis Johnson's Angels…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2008-11-23:537324:Comment:1682152008-11-23T23:45:36.203ZBill Criderhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/macavityabc
I read Denis Johnson's <i>Angels</i> not long ago, after a high recommendation on Ed Gorman's blog. I figure if Ed thinks it's great, it is. In this case, though, I didn't entirely agree with Ed. The book was pretty much like your description of literary fiction, lots of angst and character development, but not much action. The style was a bit more dense than pulp fiction, if that matters. I found after reading about a hundred pages that I didn't much care about the characters being developed,…
I read Denis Johnson's <i>Angels</i> not long ago, after a high recommendation on Ed Gorman's blog. I figure if Ed thinks it's great, it is. In this case, though, I didn't entirely agree with Ed. The book was pretty much like your description of literary fiction, lots of angst and character development, but not much action. The style was a bit more dense than pulp fiction, if that matters. I found after reading about a hundred pages that I didn't much care about the characters being developed, and that didn't change by the end of the book. Well, they did in my case and…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2008-11-21:537324:Comment:1676932008-11-21T15:15:20.893ZJohn McFetridgehttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JohnMcF
Well, they did in my case and in hindsight I think they were right. Mostly. Calling my books "mysteries" got me into this community I may not have otherwise joined.<br />
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I am still sometimes disappointed that my books are rarely mentioned in literary discussions in Canada, because, I find few of the literary novels we do celebrate in Canada resonate much with the world I see around me. Very few books in Canada deal with the kinds of things that are going on everyday - big changes in our cities and…
Well, they did in my case and in hindsight I think they were right. Mostly. Calling my books "mysteries" got me into this community I may not have otherwise joined.<br />
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I am still sometimes disappointed that my books are rarely mentioned in literary discussions in Canada, because, I find few of the literary novels we do celebrate in Canada resonate much with the world I see around me. Very few books in Canada deal with the kinds of things that are going on everyday - big changes in our cities and so on. Toronto has become this huge multi-cultural city and the literary novels still divide it up; we have the books set in the Indo-Pakistani community or the South Asian community or the Caribbean community but very few that mix it up. I suppose that's because the reality is the people of our city very rarely mix it up. We're multi-cultural but still live parallel lives for the most part.<br />
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Then I saw a line in the newspaper when some gangs got busted, one of the cops said, "If everybody in this city could work together the way these gangs do, we'd have a lot less trouble," and I thought, yeah, this stuff can be explored through crime, it's always the front lines of society, where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. The cops were sort of forced to become multi-cultural and the gangs really don't care about ethnicity it's all about the money. So, I fictionalized all kinds of real events in my city and went into the background of the characters and the events in ways that I thought only literature could.<br />
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So, on the one hand I'm very happy to be part of this big crime fiction familiy, on the other hand I'm disappointed my books have been marginalized in Canada as "genre fiction," and not taken as seriously.<br />
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This stuff may be more extreme in Canada, we're about the most insecure people in the world ;) Once a publisher makes an off…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2008-11-21:537324:Comment:1676802008-11-21T15:01:12.633ZI. J. Parkerhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/Ingpark
Once a publisher makes an offer, they decide a lot of things for the book, including how best to market it. Yes, they do assign genre (title, cover, promotional blurb, and print run) without consulting the author.
Once a publisher makes an offer, they decide a lot of things for the book, including how best to market it. Yes, they do assign genre (title, cover, promotional blurb, and print run) without consulting the author. Who is this Matt Lewis joker?tag:crimespace.ning.com,2008-11-21:537324:Comment:1676422008-11-21T05:25:14.848ZGutter Bookshttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/MatthewLouis
Who is this Matt Lewis joker?
Who is this Matt Lewis joker? I don't want to be a jerk abo…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2008-11-19:537324:Comment:1671922008-11-19T19:21:01.739ZJohn McFetridgehttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JohnMcF
I don't want to be a jerk about this (well, more of a jerk, I guess) but the publisher only decides what gets published.<br />
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There are plenty of people who write what they want and don't publish or self-publish. POD and online sales of e-books and things like that might someday even make it possible for them to make a few bucks.
I don't want to be a jerk about this (well, more of a jerk, I guess) but the publisher only decides what gets published.<br />
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There are plenty of people who write what they want and don't publish or self-publish. POD and online sales of e-books and things like that might someday even make it possible for them to make a few bucks. It may well be that it's alwa…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2008-11-19:537324:Comment:1671692008-11-19T18:39:12.811ZI. J. Parkerhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/Ingpark
It may well be that it's always the publisher who decides what genre to put a novel into. And surely that decision is made in tems of where most sales are. Margaret Atwood had already established a literary following. All that illustrates once again is that you only need that one bestseller and then you can write what you want.
It may well be that it's always the publisher who decides what genre to put a novel into. And surely that decision is made in tems of where most sales are. Margaret Atwood had already established a literary following. All that illustrates once again is that you only need that one bestseller and then you can write what you want. I read DIRTY SWEET a couple o…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2008-11-19:537324:Comment:1671562008-11-19T16:28:42.193ZDana Kinghttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/DanaKing
I read DIRTY SWEET a couple of months ago, and it just now occurred to me the killing that launches the story doesn't get solved, but, now that you mention it...<br />
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I guess that proves you did your job with the rest of the book, that the initial premise is never consummated and it doesn't detract from the book.<br />
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Too bad about that guy's blow job in EKTIN. That doesn't get consummated, either.
I read DIRTY SWEET a couple of months ago, and it just now occurred to me the killing that launches the story doesn't get solved, but, now that you mention it...<br />
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I guess that proves you did your job with the rest of the book, that the initial premise is never consummated and it doesn't detract from the book.<br />
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Too bad about that guy's blow job in EKTIN. That doesn't get consummated, either. I read that in Connolly's blo…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2008-11-19:537324:Comment:1671542008-11-19T16:22:43.495ZDana Kinghttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/DanaKing
I read that in Connolly's blog. What I took away from that most was that it was the "literary" writers who seemed to be most defensive.
I read that in Connolly's blog. What I took away from that most was that it was the "literary" writers who seemed to be most defensive. Okay, I gotta say, that passa…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2008-11-19:537324:Comment:1671522008-11-19T15:18:43.267ZJohn McFetridgehttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JohnMcF
Okay, I gotta say, that passage does interest me. I'm going to check out this Baxter guy...
Okay, I gotta say, that passage does interest me. I'm going to check out this Baxter guy... Yeah, but when Margaret Atwoo…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2008-11-19:537324:Comment:1671502008-11-19T15:17:20.569ZJohn McFetridgehttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JohnMcF
Yeah, but when Margaret Atwood writes <i>Oryx and Crake</i> or Michel Houllebecg writes <i>Platform</i> they aren't sci fi novels - somehow <i>Oryx and Crake</i> got nomintaed for a Booker. I guess academia and the arts world can make mistakes, but when the mistakes are so consistent ' "Written by a literary novelist so it must be literature" we get kind of tired of it. (I should say, I loved <i>Platform</i> but <i>Oryx and Crake</i> was just mid-level sci-fi, no better than average Tom Disch…
Yeah, but when Margaret Atwood writes <i>Oryx and Crake</i> or Michel Houllebecg writes <i>Platform</i> they aren't sci fi novels - somehow <i>Oryx and Crake</i> got nomintaed for a Booker. I guess academia and the arts world can make mistakes, but when the mistakes are so consistent ' "Written by a literary novelist so it must be literature" we get kind of tired of it. (I should say, I loved <i>Platform</i> but <i>Oryx and Crake</i> was just mid-level sci-fi, no better than average Tom Disch or Ursula K. Leguin and nowhere near as good as their best).<br />
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So is it really the text we're talking about or is it reputation and marketing?<br />
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I know when I write I have never once made a choice based on conventions of a genre. In my first novel the book opens with a murder in a public place - and that murder never gets solved (oh, um, spoiler alert, sorry). So far, no one complained (okay, one Amazon review hated the book, but not because it failed to hold true to the genre).<br />
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I didn't know I was writing a genre novel until the publisher put the words, "a mystery" on the cover. I was worried about that because I thought people who love mystery novels would hate my book, there's no mystery, no clues no heroic but flawed detective.<br />
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But the publisher was right. My experience has been that the 'mystery community' is a lot more open to things that don't fit the narrow definitions of genre. It's possible the publisher could have tried to market my books as non-genre or even literary but it was too big a business risk. For all the reasons that John Connolly talks about.<br />
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And now, of course, I'm glad. The mystery community is terrific. Or, I guess I should say the mystery community is where I feel most comfortable. I also attended that festival in Toronto a couple years ago (I gave a reading along with Jim Crace, who's <i>Pesthouse</i> is also mid-range sci-fi marketed as literature to peeople who've never read sci-fi) and let's just say it's a fifteen minute streetcar ride from my house but I'd much rather take another ten hour drive to Bouchercon.