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Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 3140
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 - 01:28 pm: | 
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This is courtesy of Nom_de_Plume--thanks again!  I thought it deserved its own post.
...One is high culture, the other low. One is respectable and serious (or, depending on your point of view, elitist and pompous), the other disreputable and shallow (or democratic and entertaining). The general—if somewhat unexamined—feeling is that ne'er the twain shall meet.
But the twain are meeting, more and more, in the books of some of America's most celebrated novelists. Aspects of detective and crime novels, thrillers, science fiction and fantasy, horror, westerns, comics, and other subgenres are increasingly showing up in variously transmogrified forms, with and without ironic quotation marks, in works of literary fiction....
Even eminences such as Philip Roth (The Plot Against America, published by Houghton Mifflin in 2004, is an alternate history) and Cormac McCarthy (The Road, published by Knopf in 2006, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning postapocalyptic thriller complete with zombie-like cannibals) have joined the genre-raiding party, expanding on previous sorties by Margaret Atwood, Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Powers, Alice Sebold, Jeanette Winterson, and others.
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[Jonathan] Lethem insists that when he takes advantage of genre conventions for his own purposes—some of which are clearly subversive—he does so in a spirit of affection, not condescension. "I always loved ‘literary' fiction and genre fiction and comic books and movies and rock and roll, and I found it less than useless—distracting at best—to always be reminded that everything was supposed to divide into high and low, legitimate and illegitimate," he says. "I never felt I was making some kind of loaded or risky move, because I'm embracing materials that thrill me. Pretty much anyone who reads Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye thinks it is one of the great American novels, right up there with The Great Gatsby."
...The pace of this literary eclecticism seems to be quickening, perhaps because it has reached the topmost rungs of the literary ladder. "There's been a burst, I think, with people like Roth and McCarthy, who are making use of the saturation of the popular culture by television, movies, science fiction, and other things," Lethem says. "Roth can use an alternate history idea because it's at hand. Twenty-five years ago, it's possible that he wouldn't seize on that idea, or wouldn't commit to it, because it wasn't familiar enough to be done casually." In turn, the examples of these literary giants may be inspiring young writers to take the genre plunge. "If you're asserting that some forms are less literary than others," Lethem says, "it's really gotten very difficult to put that forward when a McCarthy or a Roth is doing it."
Favorite identifies another factor driving increased experimentation: nostalgia. "Growing up, I loved the Nancy Drew books, which are part of what taught me to love reading, the way comic books did for other writers," she says. "And so you have warm feelings for these things. It's nostalgia for that era in your life when books took you away, let you imagine, dream, escape. They're a part of our consciousness, and a lot of writers are letting those things float up and settle. We're not worrying about categories. We're writing what we want to write."
Kevin Nance
Full article: http://pw.org/content/invasion_genre_snatchers |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 12777
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 - 11:55 pm: |
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I think this is a good sign. Literature suffers when it becomes stagnant. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 7349
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 10:05 am: |
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Yawwwn. Somebody discovering a trend that is hundreds of years old.
Ever hear of Robinson Crusoe? There was at one time a genre of shipwreck and rescue novels and stories. How about Moby Dick? Sea adventure were big. How about Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls? War stories (in fact some have argued that Hemingway was noting but a hi falutin genre writer, with all his big game hunters, and soldiers, and criminals and pugs and horseracers etc.
Next! |
Nom_de_plume
Veteran Poster
Username: Nom_de_plume
Post Number: 134
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 12:46 pm: |
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Chris, knock it off! LOL It's relevant because of what writers TODAY are doing and what books are being published, and the variety within one book readers can enjoy.
Has anyone read Infinite Jest? That's a book I've been curious about for a minute.
Thanks for reposting! |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 3152
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 12:06 pm: |
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Has anyone read Infinite Jest? That's a book I've been curious about for a minute.
No, Nom, but it sounds fascinating! I think it might be in my next library raid.
Chris, OK so there is nothing truly new under the sun. So what? Now, stop yawning and get some sleep--stop staying up so late at night watching old music clips on YouTube or sumpin. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 7362
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 01:10 pm: |
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Chris, OK so there is nothing truly new under the sun. So what? Now, stop yawning and get some sleep--stop staying up so late at night watching old music clips on YouTube or sumpin.
(Say, that's pretty good. I didn't think you had it in you. You got a lot of spunk.
I hate spunk) |
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