I am bothered that the vast majority of MFA programs don't include more genre fiction. There's a notion that genre fiction isn't serious writing, that it lacks literary merit. I am always wary of generalizations like these. If, as many say,(and I'm not sure I agree with this) genre fiction is more plot driven and literary fiction is more character driven...then couldn't these writers learn a lot from one another? I have to say that many literary writers could use a lesson on plot.
Recently I had an instructor say to me, after I'd written several short stories that were, I guess, horror-based, "Leave that [genre horror] for someone who has nothing much else to say." I get what the instructor was saying and, in my personal case, the instructor was right in telling me to just let it go (though not for the reason quoted above). But I think these sweeping generalizations about genre fiction can be really, really damaging to the new Kafkas, Orwells, Atwoods and Le Guin's out there. As Ursula Le Guin points out in an on-line article, our 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner "Cormac McCarthy's writing is remarkably similar to a great many earlier works of science fiction about men crossing the country after a holocaust."
I was expressing my concerns to my writing group this weekend and one person pointed out to me how MFA writing programs have a reputation to maintain. While I agree that, outwardly, a strictly literary reputation is important (you don't want be flooded with applications from every dumb-ass wannabe Rowling in the world) I think that privately, between student and teacher, this is okay. Of course MFA programs should push students to excel, to be the best writer they can be. Doesn't that mean that if the student's passion is to write Sci-Fi that the instructor should help that student be the best Sci-Fi writer they can be? I think there is a lot of genre fiction with literary merit and I happen to think that there are comics, movies and television shows with literary merit as well and each can be of great influence to the other. Don Chaon, who started out as a short-story writer used television to help shape his novel You Remind Me of Me, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Chaon said, "I was interested in what serial TV was doing--The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, ER. How they cut up multiple story lines and juggled, how they create intense suspense by crosscutting." I guess what I'm saying is that there's a lot of ways to tell a good story out there. I once had an editor say to me, "Writers often forget that they are part of the entertainment industry." That editor was an asshole but I get what he was trying to say: Stop being so damn deep and poetic and try to write something entertaining.
On a side note, I looked up Genre Fiction and Literary Fiction on Wikipedia. Here's a quote, "literary fiction focuses more on style, psychological depth, and character, whereas genre fiction focuses more on narrative and plot. In the world of comic writing, graphic novels are considered literary fiction." Hmmmm. Very interesting, sweeping generalizations for me to be even more perplexed by.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
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2 comments:
I'm with you, baby!
When I was starting out in the 1960s the definitions were a little clearer because "literary fiction", in fact, was considered a genre. It was a genre not expected to make the publisher money. You published "literary fiction" because you thought it was good, and the more popular genres supported this. If a literary novel sold 2000 copies, a publisher was thrilled.
So then "literary fiction" might be defined as "powerful novels with a limited audience." There was a great advantage to this definition, of course, with the emphasis being on "being good" (in the eyes of a publisher) and not on selling books. Moreover, "literary fiction" made a publisher's reputation. But all this is before the great corporate buyout and the new standards of the bottom line.
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