Unapologetically Genre
Mark Twain has often been attributed as having said, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” It seems that every member of the Story Week panel entitled “Genre Bending—The Faces of Fiction” can make the same boast. Mort Castle, Maggie Estep, and David Morrell are all unapologetically writers of genre fiction, in the categories of horror, mystery, and thriller, respectively, and Kevin Nance, while not a creative writer himself but, rather, a contributing editor at Poets & Writers, preserved his childhood love of comic books, Lord of the Rings, science fiction, and mystery, even though, as he puts it in tonight’s discussion, “When I went to college, I learned that everything I thought I knew about writing was wrong.”
Like Nance, I, too, grew up blissfully unaware of the distinctions regularly made between “high brow” and “low brow” literature. Those who taught in the low-income neighborhoods where I was raised would have been happy to see us reading just about anything. It wasn’t until I took an education course at the college level that I heard teachers and future teachers debating about whether or not teenagers should be allowed to read genre fiction or even young adult fiction in their classes. Many believed in a strict adherence to the “classics” and were particularly averse to popular series books such as Harry Potter, Cirque du Freak, Twilight, and Midnighters. Even The Hobbit was called into question, a book that, according to Nance, is a “gateway drug for a lot of boys.” Quoting Ron Hansen, Castle says, “As a writer, my job is to educate and entertain, and I cannot educate if I don’t entertain.” Shouldn’t the same be true of teachers? Why, then, would many of them want to deny this kind of drug to their students?
David Morrell offers a somewhat surprising answer to this question. While some may argue that genre fiction is denigrated because it’s poorly written, or plot-driven, or formulaic, or calculating, or commercial, Morrell says it’s because we Americans are a bunch of Calvinists at heart. When he describes the deeply-ingrained American belief that “if we enjoy ourselves, it’s wrong,” I am reminded of H.L. Mencken’s definition of Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” (After the event, I would wonder whether or not writers and critics in other countries shared our attitudes towards genre fiction. Any thoughts on this, dear readers???)
Although, as Joe Meno, the event’s moderator, mentions in his opening statements, the American literary establishment was “rending its garments” in reaction to the news that Stephen King had been awarded the National Book Award in 2003, and thereby joined the ranks of John Updike, Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, and Philip Roth, it seems that the tide is turning in favor of genre fiction. In “Invasion of the Genre Snatchers,” an article originally published in Poets & Writers, Nance says, “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 quotation marks, in works of literary fiction.” Among the writers he cites as examples are Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Cormac McCarthy, and Joyce Carol Oates. If what Morrell says about Calvinist sensibilities being at the root of our distaste for popular literature is true, then maybe we’re having a collective religious awakening of sorts.
No one on the panel suggests that there isn’t bad writing out there, or that a lot of it isn’t genre, per se. Morrell even goes so far as to name names (David Baldacci). But he and his fellow panelists seem to agree that what distinguishes a good story from a bad one has nothing to do with genre and almost everything to do with honesty. (Almost.) They all warn against “chasing the market” as opposed to being true to your own voice and vision. Meno says “follow your curiosity” like it’s something he’s repeated a million times in the classroom. And Castle advises each of the aspiring writers in the audience to “be a first-rate version of yourself and not a second-rate version of someone else.” It’s advice well worth heeding, both in fiction writing and in life.
EVENT: GENRE BENDING-THE FACES OF FICTION PANEL DISCUSSION | WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17, 2010 AT 2:30PM | HAROLD WASHINGTON LIBRARY | AN EVENT OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO’S STORY WEEK FESTIVAL OF WRITERS
