A Private Letter from Genre to Literature by Daniel Abraham

[JDP]

Great post by Daniel Abraham regarding the tumultuous relationship between 'genre' and 'literature':

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/20...hams_private_letter_from_genre_to_literature/

 

[Boneman]

Brilliant...

 

[alchemist]

Excellent. I wish I'd written this

...and so you skim away my cream and mock me for being only milk.

 

[Dozmonic]

Well written

 

[woodsman]

Sublime, this is getting forward to the English department!

 

[Connavar]

Haha thats brilliant. My fav part was :

You take the best of me, my most glorious moments - Ursula LeGuin and Dashiell Hammet, Mary Shelly and Philip Dick - and you claim them for your own. You say that they "transcend genre". There are no more heartless words than those. You disarm me.


It reminded of the snobby academics in Lit classes. Genre greats stop being genre when they became respected classics hehe.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I've updated the link, as SF Signal appear to have changed their URLs since this was originally posted!

And didn;t Terry Pratchett say something on the lines of all fiction being fantasy?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

all fiction being fantasy?

Of course, if any good. Actually real people written realistically as the characters would be boring.
Art, Sculpture too is a mere copy unless it has a little fantasy. My Artist daughter says scale models, to be convincing, need to be "realer" than real. If that isn't fantasy ...

 

[soulsinging]

I tend to agree with one of the comments:

It’s a non-issue because, what would the proposed reconcilation look like? Quality genre fiction being studied and taught in universities? Already happens. Literary writers writing genresque texts? Already happens. Genre writers writing realistic texts? Already happens. What exactly needs changing?

I think this is pretty moot at this juncture. The only time it has relevance anymore is on the shelves at a bookstore and there it is just helpful to be able to find things I want. Nobody complains that the same store has separate Sports and Gardening sections splitting up its non-fiction.