This is a business, interview with JA Jance

[Fishbowl Helmet]

She's a mystery writer, but makes some good points about writers, writing, and literary snobbery.

http://www.thestranger.com/books/feature/2015/09/09/22838503/this-is-a-business

 

[Brian G Turner]

Literary fiction is where not much happens to people you don’t like very much

 

[Phyrebrat]

Very defensive. I can understand her opinion totally and she doesn't have to be likeable with such good sales figures.

I wonder in what spirit the interviewer was asking some of the questions. Was it a genuine interest or more Jeremy Kyle?

I'm not published or a woman and have not dreamt of being a writer all my life but I've never cared in any way for anyone's opinion about the horror genre, any more than I care for what people think of the amount of chilli I like in my food.

pH

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I liked it. I particularly liked her using the university that rejected her as a writer in residence as a sort of placeholder for the bad guy! That was good! Aren't there a few agents and reviewers most of us would like to give similar treatment to?!!!

She's also right - what is the difference between genre fiction and literary fiction? That a bunch of guys in prestigious circles decided some was and some wasn't? The one that always gets me is Bill Shakespear. Yes, great, talented writer / playwrite. But he wasn't creating literature. He was writing what sold, what was popular, what would fill the theatres. He was writing the genres that were commercial in his day - and since. But at some point someone decided he wasn't a genre writer at all. He was literature. On what basis? Simply that his writing was good?

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

She's also right - what is the difference between genre fiction and literary fiction? That a bunch of guys in prestigious circles decided some was and some wasn't? The one that always gets me is Bill Shakespear. Yes, great, talented writer / playwrite. But he wasn't creating literature. He was writing what sold, what was popular, what would fill the theatres. He was writing the genres that were commercial in his day - and since. But at some point someone decided he wasn't a genre writer at all. He was literature. On what basis? Simply that his writing was good?

Indeed. And in fact plays like the Tempest were pure Fantasy genre!

 

[MWagner]

I honestly don't understand the resentment popular commercial writers have for the literary establishment. It reminds me of the Mad Men episode where Peggy complains that she isn't getting any recognition or respect, and Don barks "That's what the money is for!"

Literary writers are being just as daft when they complain they don't have commercial success. Of course you don't. You write about families in suburban Milwaukee undergoing existential crisis over Thanksgiving weekend.

The first step in writing anything for public consumption is to determine who your audience is. Literary writers write for an audience of other literary writers and the critical establishment. Their reward is critical praise, status within that community, and literary awards. Commercial writers write for a broad, commercial audience. Their reward is money and fans.

So writers of all stripes: don't complain if you fail to earn the recognition of an audience you aren't writing for.

 

[Ursa major]

So writers of all stripes: don't complain if you fail to earn the recognition of an audience you aren't writing for.

While I agree, isn't one issue that of what comes across in the general media? If the literary genre is not only far more represented there but also wears its distain for other genres on its sleeve while being there, this could very well put off potential readers of other genres. And I worry that SFF and Horror probably suffer more from this than some others.

What I mean is that, in terms of fictional representation (as opposed to criticism), TV and film seem to provide a lot of thrillers, mysteries and romances that do not veer too far from the sort of stuff one might find in books (albeit being simplified for single films or one-episode TV programmes). SFF and horror, by contrast, are not so accurately represented, with SF morphing into Sci-Fi, and a lot of the bigger-impact horror seemingly drawn towards (not to say quartered in ) the gorier end of the market. And the less said about a lot of the hammy fantasy that people see on screen, the better.

This means that there are a lot of people out there that don't think SFF can be thoughtful (or can't be other than big and brash), and might be surprised to find that a lot of written horror is not designed solely to reacquaint them with their previous meal.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Shakespear. Yes, great, talented writer / playwrite. But he wasn't creating literature. He was writing what sold

And all apart from maybe "A Midsummer night's dream", adaptations of earlier books, myths, legends, history into plays. He wasn't even trying to create literature, but to have popular plays that didn't upset Elizabeth I and her Police state. Some other playwrights and authors did fall foul of the authorities.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

SFF and horror, by contrast, are different, with SF being represented by Sci-Fi, and a lot of the bigger-impact horror seeming to be drawn towards (not to say quartered in ) the gorier end of the market. (And the less said about a lot of the hammy fantasy that people see on screen, the better.)

I do think Cinema and TV, especially today is totally unrepresentative of SF and only a very narrow distorted view of Fantasy. It is mostly Horror in Space or Space Opera / Soap (Alien, Star Wars, Star Trek Next Gen and DS9). Fantasy in Cinema/TV concentrates on battles (Hobbit III and Prince Caspian) distorting the books. SF & F on BBC R4 is much wider.

I think people wanting to write good SF&F should purge their minds of Cinema and TV and Computer games.

 

[Ursa major]

I think people wanting to write good SF&F should purge their minds of Cinema and TV and Computer games.

Unfortunately**, it's far harder to purge the minds of people who might be potential readers but are put off by all that.


** - Not that we should be purging anyone else's minds... not until we've perfected the process....

 

[Phyrebrat]

I had the same thoughts about the ubiquity of SFF & horror in other media. I think it's because we've become largely passive and lazy in 21st Century Living; it's easier to spend a tenner and sit on your Harris for two hours to get a story main lined into you, than to spend that tenner on a book, quiet your mind - and your mobile - not to mention kids if you have them.

pH

 

[MWagner]

While I agree, isn't one issue that of what comes across in the general media? If the literary genre is not only far more represented there but also wears its distain for other genres on its sleeve while being there, this could very well put off potential readers of other genres.

The literary genre is far more represented in the kinds of media patronized by literary readers. Keep in mind that the more high-brow newspapers have very small readerships. As for the general media, I don't see interviews with Richard Ford or Kazuo Ishiguro on the Conan O'Brian Show. It's the commercial authors who already have popularity. Literary writers are the ones who feel pop culture has turned its back on them.

However, I do agree that cultural gatekeepers pretend genre doesn't exist. In Canada, the CBC has an annual radio program called Canada Reads. Small-c Canadian celebrities champion their favourite book of recent years, debate their merits, and then listeners vote and a winner is announced. There have been dozens of books presented since the program was launched 14 years ago. None of them genre or popular fiction. The CBC has always maintained that its role is to champion 'Canadian culture'. Genre fiction doesn't fit the bill, being neither distinctly Canadian, nor meeting the CBC's narrow notions of cultural significance. But that kind of self-conscious parochialism is inherent in everything the CBC does.

What I mean is that, in terms of fictional representation (as opposed to criticism), TV and film seem to provide a lot of thrillers, mysteries and romances that do not veer too far from the sort of stuff one might find in books (albeit being simplified for single films or one-episode TV programmes). SFF and horror, by contrast, are not so accurately represented, with SF morphing into Sci-Fi, and a lot of the bigger-impact horror seemingly drawn towards (not to say quartered in ) the gorier end of the market. And the less said about a lot of the hammy fantasy that people see on screen, the better.

But aren't producers simply being smart with their money and catering to the larger audience? I hate to say it, but most popular fantasy is hackneyed schlock that provides wish fulfillment for 19-year-old guys, or readers in touch with their inner 19-year-old guys. So if you're asked to front $8 million dollars for a TV show, would you really turn your back on that audience and take a risk on a sub-genre within a genre?

And there have been a lot of fantastic-themed TV shows in recent years. But they're mostly fairy-tale and supernatural stories set in a recognizable modern or historical world. The reason being many viewers don't have the patience to learn about a wholly new secondary-world fantasy setting. It's just too risky, takes too much work. Furthermore, the kinds of sets and costumes and special effects a fantasy or SF show require costs lots and lots of money. Again, it's all about risk management. Mysteries and crime procedurals can be produced with relatively little money up front.

Then there's A Game of Thrones. It has proven massively popular, so I'm sure there are a lot of fantasy authors out there who have seen TV rights to their works bought up in the last few years. The problem is A Game of Thrones already had a massive audience before the TV show. There's really no comparable existing fanbase to built an audience for a new show from.

It's also worth noting that Bradley Cooper is trying to get a miniseries of Hyperion made. It probably wouldn't get done without an A-list Hollywood start attached, but it's a small victory for those who want to see thoughtful, top-flight SFF presented on TV or film.

This means that there are a lot of people out there that don't think SFF can be thoughtful (or can't be other than big and brash), and might be surprised to find that a lot of written horror is not designed solely to reacquaint them with their previous meal.

You could say the same about everything that doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator, from books to movies to games to food. Mass culture, by its nature, appeals to the basest tastes.

 

[Ursa major]

The literary genre is far more represented in the kinds of media patronized by literary readers. Keep in mind that the more high-brow newspapers have very small readerships. As for the general media, I don't see interviews with Richard Ford or Kazuo Ishiguro on the Conan O'Brian Show. It's the commercial authors who already have popularity. Literary writers are the ones who feel pop culture has turned its back on them.

Living, as I do, on the other side of the Pond from you, I have no idea how often SFF writers appear on that show (or, indeed, have any idea what that show is about).

However, I do agree that cultural gatekeepers pretend genre doesn't exist. In Canada, the CBC has an annual radio program called Canada Reads. Small-c Canadian celebrities champion their favourite book of recent years, debate their merits, and then listeners vote and a winner is announced. There have been dozens of books presented since the program was launched 14 years ago. None of them genre or popular fiction. The CBC has always maintained that its role is to champion 'Canadian culture'. Genre fiction doesn't fit the bill, being neither distinctly Canadian, nor meeting the CBC's narrow notions of cultural significance. But that kind of self-conscious parochialism is inherent in everything the CBC does.

Sadly, CBC does not stand out in his regard. Certainly, I recognise the parochialism, as it's often displayed over here in our media.

But aren't producers simply being smart with their money and catering to the larger audience? I hate to say it, but most popular fantasy is hackneyed schlock that provides wish fulfillment for 19-year-old guys, or readers in touch with their inner 19-year-old guys. So if you're asked to front $8 million dollars for a TV show, would you really turn your back on that audience and take a risk on a sub-genre within a genre?

Of course producers spend their money in a way that they hope will garner the most return, and I can't see them ever changing, though what they do spend their money will, over time, vary (not to the extent of focusing on anything thoughtful, of course). But that's really only the inevitable background to what we're discussing, one which makes the literary genre's attitude to other genres so pernicious when those genres are SFF and Horror.

And there have been a lot of fantastic-themed TV shows in recent years. But they're mostly fairy-tale and supernatural stories set in a recognizable modern or historical world. The reason being many viewers don't have the patience to learn about a wholly new secondary-world fantasy setting. It's just too risky, takes too much work. Furthermore, the kinds of sets and costumes and special effects a fantasy or SF show require costs lots and lots of money. Again, it's all about risk management. Mysteries and crime procedurals can be produced with relatively little money up front.

As it happens, I think there may be something of a movement towards Urban Fantasy. For instance, Charles Stross declared on his blog:

I'm just not that interested in writing science fiction this decade. Nope: instead, I'm veering more and more in the direction of urban fantasy.

Note that Charles Stross has been writing in a number of genres/sub-genres, including Urban Fantasy (in particular, the Laundry Series, of which I'm a big fan).

Then there's A Game of Thrones. It has proven massively popular, so I'm sure there are a lot of fantasy authors out there who have seen TV rights to their works bought up in the last few years. The problem is A Game of Thrones already had a massive audience before the TV show. There's really no comparable existing fanbase to built an audience for a new show from.

The problem we're considering is not the absence of SFF in media other than books, but that by accident (blockbusters) and ignorance (which is what a lot of us suspect is what drives the stated opinions of literary genre critics), a lot** of SFF is being mischaracterised unfairly to the extent that lots of readers think they won't enjoy reading SFF books.

It's also worth noting that Bradley Cooper is trying to get a miniseries of Hyperion made. It probably wouldn't get done without an A-list Hollywood start attached, but it's a small victory for those who want to see thoughtful, top-flight SFF presented on TV or film.

As long as the sky is always Lapis-blue.... (I'm not a fan of Hyperion, by the way, but that's another story.)

You could say the same about everything that doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator, from books to movies to games to food. Mass culture, by its nature, appeals to the basest tastes.

...which it's why it's so sad that those readers who are seeking something more thoughtful are unlikely to think of picking up an SFF novel except by accident (and when they do, are not persuaded, by what they've see on the screen or been told in the media, to put it down before they've discovered what it might have to offer).


** - Obviously, SFF is a wide-ranging genre, and contains its fair share of novels aiming for entertainment over other factors.

 

[Toby Frost]

A summary for anyone who hasn't clicked on the link:

Q: Can I ask you about writing fiction?
A: **** off and stop asking me questions.

 

[Vaz]

I wonder in what spirit the interviewer was asking some of the questions. Was it a genuine interest or more Jeremy Kyle?

I imagine her answering hooked up to a lie detector

 

[psychotick]

Hey guys,

Lets back up the bus here a little. There is no such genre as the Literary Genre. If I may quote the wiki:

"Literary fiction is a term used to distinguish certain fictional works that possess commonly held qualities to readers outside genre fiction. Literary fiction has been defined as any fiction that attempts to engage with one or more truths or questions, hence relevant to a broad scope of humanity as a form of expression. There are many sources that help readers find and define literary fiction and genre fiction."

Any work in any genre may be literary. Thus many people regard Philip K Dick's work as literary. The problem we have here and which the author rails against, is that many of those who decide what is literary and what is not, also try to separate the work out fromthe rest by pretending (and I use that word intentionally) that what they're examining is somehow completely different. Thus in the article the U of A says we don't look at genre fiction only literary. Unfortunately they were full of crap. Everything they looked at and considered as literary is in fact genre fiction. All literature falls within some sort of genre. There's no escaping that.

There's also no escaping the fact that most writing / works touch on important themes of the human condition. Life and death, love, politics, religion etc etc. Thus to an extent even the most pulpy works are literary fiction.

So for the people who decide these things to sort of separate the commercial / popular from the deep and meaningful is a sham. Some things can easily be both. And using the very nature of popularity as a sort of yardstick to exclude some books as literary fiction is a travesty.

Look I don't like sparkly vampires. I'm fairly upfront about that. But does that mean that it does or doesn't have anything important to say about fundamental truths and the human condition? No. For all I know it may be the most important work of literature in the last century - and I may have to go and be sick! It may also have nothing to say about these things. I don't know. But I do know that to decide it is or isn't based on what particular genre it falls into or how many people read it is flat out wrong.

That's why the U of A if they did as described in the article, should be rightly lampooned for making that statement. It shows a complete lack of understanding of what literature is and makes a mockery of their entire writing programme. It smacks of the entire elitist attitude of "I know what's good and you should just listen to me."

Well bad luck guys. I'm an adult with a reasonable reading ability and I am completely capable of making up my own mind about what I think is good, and what I think is important literarily speaking. For example to take Heinlein as I ocasionally do, he has three works in the same genre - sci fi - that I would consider as being of literary merit. Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough For love. The first I dislike. The second I really enjoyed. And the third I think was soppy. The first was a huge commercial success. The second was a moderate commercial success. The third fairly much bombed after its initial release. And none of that - genre, enjoyment, commercial success - has anything to do with whether they merely dip their toes in the hot mess of the human condition and fundamental truths, or whether they dive in. None of it relates to the importance / insight of the work.

This is why I used old Bill Shakespear as an example. He wasn't writing literature. He wasn't trying to. He was trying to write what would keep his theatre running and his stomach full. He was the height of crass commercialism of his day. He just happened to be very good at it. And he knew enough to use those human conditions as a way of connecting with an audience to make them enjoy it. That's the power of Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. So for the literary snobs to come across his work and then raise it up as a standard of literary merit centuries later while at the same time decrying other works like sparkly vampires simply because they are crassly commercial is hippocritical in the extreme. It is a double standard.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Ursa major]

Not that this has much relevance to the thread, but I used the term, the literary genre, because I see it being used as such. Let me hint at why this is.

Sometimes we have to accept that things are defined by what they are not as much as what they are. So, if an author (or agent or publisher or critic) says that a work of speculative fiction specifically isn't a duck SFF (even though it's waddling about, quacking happily plainly fantasy or SF) but is, instead, a literary work, I think I see that what is happening is the partitioning of a shared, two-dimensional space, not the additional elevation of a work based on those certain qualities. Such elevation would leave the work as being, say, "a work of Fantasy that easily shows its literary mettle." So if said author, agent, publisher and critics said, "Of course it's SFF, but its qualities mark it out as a literary gem," the Wiki definition might be seen to be working in practice rather than just in theory.

And let's face it, the clue is in that Wiki quote:

held qualities to readers outside genre fiction

which seems to assume that the world must inevitably divided into genre fiction (of various types) and something else, the latter of which is the preserve of a self-defined elite**that, by definition, does not contain those with a wider (though not necessarily shallower) experience of reading fiction***.

Anyway, here's a question: when a piece of fiction has taken on the guise of a literary work, is indeed presented as such by its creator, but signally fails "to engage with one or more truths or questions, hence relevant to a broad scope of humanity as a form of expression", what is it? Is there a genre for these aspiring literary works that don't make the grade? In the criticism of such a work, is it ever stated that, "though attempting to be literary, and eschewing any of the tropes of <pick a genre>, it remains a work of..." Well, what, exactly? "Literary fiction", perhaps...?


** - Elitism by self-definition/election is not the same as elitism won by the attainment of admired qualities.

*** - Fiction because, let's face it, SFF isn't the genre that most people would select if they were engaged in writing an autobiography.

 

[MWagner]

Literary genre is a real thing, just as mystery genre is a real thing. Books are written by, marketed to, and read by people who tend to fall into recognizable groupings. Someone whose most recently read books were by Brent Weeks, Michael J. Sullivan, and Brandon Sanderson has low odds of buying and enjoying Donna Tartt's latest, but pretty high odds of buying and enjoying Anthony Ryan. And someone whose shelves are full of Jonathan Franzen, Ian McEwan, and Beryl Bainbridge is a bad bet to buy the next Joe Abercrombie, but likely to appreciate something by Alice McDermott. People who sell books know this. It's their job to know. Heck, the algorithm that tracks Amazon purchases and Goodreads ratings in order to come up with recommendations knowns this. It's not perfect, and of course there is overlap and divergence. But both authors and readers tend to cluster according to what they like and expect from fiction. It's perfectly legitimate to recognize those clusters.

 

[Droflet]

This says it all, for me.
'It’s my job. It’s what I do. It’s what I am. I am a writer. I am a storyteller. The pleasure of a job well done is the pleasure of a job well done.'

 

[Michael Coorlim]

Genre is marketing, developed by and for publishing companies to make their products easier to locate in bookstores (electronic or brick and mortar). The concept of genre has been (successfully) sold to the reading public to make them easier to market to.

Adopting the trappings of genre (in covers, titles, and other marketing material) creates expectation in the mind of the reader. If a writer fulfills those genre expectations, they are rewarded by "having provided a positive reading experience" and thus, in esteem from that reader.

Set Expectation -> Reader has expectation -> Meet expectation -> Reader is predisposed to purchase from you in the future.

"Literary" fiction, on the other hand, functions within this system by departing from it. The expectation it sets is one of a focus on prose over plot, on style over familiar genre elements. Unfortunately the market for these works is relatively small, so Literary works are perpetually (with some exceptions) small earners. Their nurturing and production is subsidized by the publisher's vastly more profitable genre work.

Sparkly Vampires pay for Great Art.