James K.A. Smith posts an extended passage from The Guardian which takes genre writing to ask, quite harshly. A sample:
One doesn’t wants to decry authors who are certainly outstanding in their field (constructing a page-turner requires narrative skill); neither does one want to sneer at the tastes of book-buyers, for whom reading at all in this age of distraction is an increasingly fought-for pleasure. …. But genre fiction is, by definition, generic. Mina’s disdain, in her comments, for pushing boundaries of form is palpable. The genre writer’s first responsibility is to the genre itself: they must fulfil readers’ expectations for convention, or they have failed. It’s easy to see how this becomes part of a capitalist enterprise, which requires market ‘product’ and fears innovation as a ‘risky sell’. At a time when capitalism is scouring livelihoods, however, we must empower writers such as Kelman to speak out against it, and put forth new ways of expressing and thinking about ourselves. This is far from being just a Scottish issue.
Austin should hopefully have more to contribute here, but I wanted to jump in and offer a few comments first.
To begin, I don’t really understand how writing, say, a fantasy novel is any different than writing a sonnet. Both forms are bound by a set of rules that may be bent but not truly broken. And since both forms are “abstract” (to a degree), they can be easily abused by bad writers. (We’ve all seen trashy novels and heard terrible poetry.) But in the hands of a skilled writer, both forms can be used to illuminate something new and something beautiful in our world.
Moving on, my experience with “literary fiction” has been anything but “empowering” and “illuminating.” Aside from the acclaimed “great authors” (i.e. Alice Munro, Marilynne Robinson, etc.), the literary fiction I’ve encountered has tended to be liveless, dull, and far too heady. I say this not to knock literary fiction: there are many great writers in that scene, and I know that my experience does not speak to the whole. However, I do take issue with the assumption that “literary” writing is by definition superior to genre writing. Could it be, for example, that J.K. Rowling is better at speaking to the human condition than James Kalman? Does being a “fantasy” writer limit Rowling’s abilities? Does being a “literary” writer enhance Kalman’s?
Finally, and what I always come back to, is the historical record of “classic” authors whose works could be fairly slotted into genres. The list is a very long one, but all I really need to do is throw out the name “Jane Austen” and my case is made. Could it be that dismissing others’ writing as “genre writing” is merely a capitulation to our times? To a modernistic impulse to categorize everything?