Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Genre Genera.
Genre. You may have heard the term "genre ghetto." This is the place otherwise lovely books are exiled to because they feature a detective, or a spaceship, or a wizard, or a hunky guy with his shirt off. For instance-- J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the most read authors of the last century, with recent blockbuster Lord of the Rings movies containing some pretty darn good special effects & performances from Oscar caliber actors...but lots of people will discount it as Fantasy. Star Wars is a cultural touchstone of our generation without parallel, an exploration of Campbell's archetypes that verges on Jungian-- but nobody takes it seriously. Heck, if you have a homosexual character in your book you risk being exiled to the "Gay & Lesbian Interests" section, never to be heard from again. & that is the thing-- the genre ghetto is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Science Fiction fans will browse the Sci-Fi section without even looking at general Fiction, while most readers will browse Fiction without looking at the Sci-Fi shelves-- & do you really see a lot of Fantasy fans crossing over to the Romance shelves? Now, some of this is changing. People like Michael Dirda are examining genre critically-- including my personal pet pick, The Book of the New Sun. & places like Shakespeare & Co. mix & match; maybe H.P. Lovecraft (the father of everything modern viewers think of as horror, & half the stuff they think is Sci-fi) is in both SF/Fantasy & Fiction, for instance. & blending-- well blending Romance & Fantasy these days is practically a license to print money. My question is: are there more enduring options?
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2 comments:
If everything is illustrated, it all gets shelved as comics.
Good call; & comics are the new "oh only a comic book-- unless it is a GRAFIQUE NOVEL!"
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