So, over on Twitter dot com recently, Hannah Moskowitz wrote a very smart thread about how publishing should oughta take some lessons from fanfic. And then Max Gladstone wrote an also very smart thread in response to say that mainstream publishing maybe already does take those lessons. And then a bunch more people said a bunch more things about fanfiction and genre fiction and literary fiction; and my friend Maureen (she blogs at By Singing Light and is the best!) and I decided to sit down and thrash it all out.
(The title is a joke. We don’t really crack the case w/r/t genre. I don’t want y’all to get all excited now and then be disappointed at the end.)
Jenny: I think one of the H U G E elements to the genre/fanfic/literary conversation is that terms are being defined inconsistently across the conversation. Often when people say that [genre] isn’t doing this thing or that thing, they have a set of genre boundaries in mind that don’t necessarily line up with the boundaries other folks have in mind for that genre. So when we’re talking about literary fiction, the interlocutors are often referencing very different things, including:
- books shelved in the Fiction section (rather than YA, romance, SF, etc) at Barnes & Noble or your local library
- books that are considered part of the Canon
- books likely to receive attention from outlets like the New York Times Book Review or The Millions
- books by white dudes with author proxy protagonists, especially ones where the author insert character is a creative writing professor with a boner for one of his students
(I’m being slightly facetious on that last one, but that’s a category of book that I often see used as a stand-in for litfic and its problems.) Each of these genre definitions might be what people mean when they say “litfic.” Each one (and all the others I haven’t thought of) comes with its own set of complications, and each is a slightly-to-very different circle in the Venn diagram.
Another problem is that even within an agreed-upon set of genre definitions, there’s so many subsets! I live in corners of the internet where romance fans are really really hype for consent and SF fans want All the Diverse Books, and I would bristle if someone told me that romance was full of alpha jerk heroes and SF was all white dudes — even if they were able, and they would be, to trot out numerous examples to prove their points. So part of it also has to be a discoverability issue. When someone goes to dip their toes into a new genre, the things they happen to be handed first is inevitably going to have a lot of impact on how they view the genre, because they don’t necessarily have access to intra-community discussions or knowledge of changing trends.
Maureen: SO, I definitely agree with all of your above points! I mean, both of these genres are so huge and individual readers have had such enormously different experiences within them. It’s hard to find a way to talk about both lived experiences and overall trends and issues in a way that doesn’t feel invalidating to someone. I think people are making great points about the porousness of genre boundaries, and overall I think pushing back a bit against SFF’s identity policing is a really good thing.
That being said, one of my concerns is that the current discussion seems to somehow be flattening both readers who love books at the margins of genre boundaries and readers who love books at the center of genre boundaries. I strongly suspect that none of us are as far apart as we think, but there’s also a lot to unpack when it comes to personal identities as a reader. I always say I’m a genre reader, by which I mean almost everything except litfic; what does it mean for my sense of self when people say that doing that is limiting and wrong? They’re not wrong, exactly, but also not exactly right.
And all of these discussions take place within a history of past discussions and arguments and hurts. Some people are seeing SFF defined by the white guys who like space ships and big guns, but that’s never all the genre has been. And some people are seeing litfic defined by the white guys who like navel-gazing and banging their students, but again, that’s never all the genre has been. So how to move beyond those limiting definitions in a way that’s challenging but at the same time respectful of what people do actually love about these particular genres? I don’t know the answer to that exactly but I think that’s the question.
I do think there is more SFnal stuff in litfic than people often realise. But by the same token, the authors of those books can be absolute jerks about SFF in interviews (“Oh this isn’t REALLY fantasy, I just use dragons as METAPHORS”/”This is SF for GROWN UPS”) and that turns me right off their books instantly (Atwood & Ishiguro, I’m looking at you). Don’t be a jerk about the genre you’re writing in! I promise that you are not saving SF from dull extinction with your brilliance. And I think that legacy of condescension, real or perceived, creates a reflexive antagonism within SFF fans, who are tired of hearing that they have to be saved from their juvenile enthusiasm.
Jenny: YES it’s very true that the literary establishment — the guys who write the big reviews and win the big awards, and I do say “guys” advisedly — has historically turned up its nose at genre fiction. To a large extent that’s still true, though it’s changing. So yeah, that’s definitely informing the conversation.
I love your main question about challenging (crappy, exclusionary) genre conventions while still respecting the strengths of those genres — I think you’re exactly right that it’s the central question. And one of my big answers to that question is to avoid the construction “X doesn’t do Y well,” especially but not exclusively in cases where X is a genre that’s not one’s home turf. Because what I’ve found, as a person who has massively expanded her genre horizons over the past (say) seven years, and a person who doesn’t necessarily feel she even has a home turf genre, is that constructions like that are almost invariably wrong unless preceded with the word “Some.”
Some litfic doesn’t do slice-of-life well. Some romance doesn’t do consent well. Or better yet, “I’ve had a hard time finding romance novels that do consent well.” To approach it in a spirit of inquiry and collegiality, rather than opposition. I KNOW THAT PROBABLY SOUNDS DOUCHEY. But it’s something I’ve really struggled with myself, the recognition that there’s no moral valence to liking one thing versus another thing.
(Please know that I’m resisting with all my might making a joke at my own expense about the moral valence of liking Bukowski.)
Maureen: (But why resist?)
You are spot on about approaching it in a spirit of inquiry and collegiality! It gets super messy because there are such deep emotions about reading and identities and who we are; the stories we love inform us, and the stories we tell ourselves about those stories can have a lot of emotional weight. I know for myself, I had kind of the opposite experience of Cecily Kane, in that I was so alienated by realistic/contemporary fiction for YEARS, and fantasy felt like coming home. But I still struggle with litfic as a genre; it’s hard for me to parse what I will like and what I won’t, even with reviewers I trust. Given that individualized recommendations for every reader are probably not a realistic option (but visit your local library and ask, friends!) how do we work to open these fields to each other?
(And of course it gets more complicated when we start to go into the histories and experiences of marginalized people within both genres, and who has chosen which one and why.)
Second–look, I love the spirit of Max Gladstone’s Twitter thread; I think he’s attempting to do exactly what you were talking about in the sense of “Here’s this cool thing that you don’t think you like but you probably will!” At the same time, the three things being discussed (quiet litfic/SFF slice of life/quiet fanfic) often have really different end goals and tones. I would actually be super fascinated if someone picked up on that and dove into the similarities and differences, where the projects converge and where they separate. But I’m not entirely convinced that it’s as simple as his Twitter thread makes it out to be. You start having to get extremely specific about the literary tone and the emotional objective of the work, which of course is why people keep bringing up fanfic style tagging! But, like, if you want a coffeeshop AU where it’s just two characters you love having quiet & intense moments together, I’m not sure, say, Woolf is going to satisfy that particular itch.
Anyway, if you are willing to give me a recommendation or two for a litfic book you think I would like, that would be neat!
Jenny: Tell the Wolves I’m Home, oh Maureen, I choose Tell the Wolves I’m Home. I think you would love it.
Agree, agree, agree that there’s no simple answer. Romance is a good example for me because that was not an organic thing: I decided in early 2012 that I was going to start liking romance, and then I set about doing it, and it was hard — not to find one book that matched up to my interests, but to set in place a structure that would allow me to continue finding books that matched up to my interests. Six years later, I have a few auto-buy authors and a few pals I can go to for recommendations, but I still feel like a relative newbie to the field. Six years later.
As much as I think we should resist sweeping statements about there being nothing like this in X genre, we equally should resist the (alluring, I agree) idea that it’s easy to start doing or reading or being a new thing. The barrier to entry of learning how to parse a whole new community of readers or set of genre conventions or type of marketing material is a considerable one. It’s not illegitimate for a reader to say “that’s too much work for something I didn’t want that badly in the first place.”
I’d love to see more people talking across genre boundaries — and I’m probably failing at this myself! I read a ton of literary fiction, but most of my Twitter pals are genre people, which means I talk a lot more on Twitter about genre books that I’m excited about. Basically I expect that people who don’t commonly read in a given genre won’t have any interest in books in that genre, and then that probably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So hey, we’ve found an action item for me! I can try this when I talk about books going forward: relating elements of books in one genre to things people might already like about another genre. If you like coffee shop AUs, try out Annabeth Albert’s Portland Heat series. (I punted. I never read slice-of-life literary fiction. I have no litfic ideas for coffee shop AU likers.)
HOORAY. WE SOLVED GENRE.