Generic Considerations

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 09 Dec 2004, 10:06 · from 2004-December.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Thu Dec  9 10:06:13 2004
Subject: (urth) Generic Considerations
In-Reply-To: <20041209005328.EC2BD3956 at sitemail.everyone.net>
References: <20041209005328.EC2BD3956 at sitemail.everyone.net>
Message-ID: <1f76173704120910067d6e341e at mail.gmail.com>

Again, just riffing on something Turin said ...

> I don't know if it makes sense to talk about genre in the sense of
> science fiction, fantasy, horror and "literature" etc. 

It does, but only if you recognize that "genres" of this sort are not 
categories, that is nouns, pigeonholes, but adjectives. Thus one of
my semi-secret vices is Nora Roberts' "Eve Dallas" books, a series of
science fiction - "romance" - police procedural murder mysteries,
all three of which genre labels accurately but insufficiently 
_describe_ the "kind" of books these are. 

> However, I would categorize most books with scifi/fantasy content,
> romances.

Agreed. One of the reasons Stephen R. Donaldson is loved and
loathed by different readers is that he brought the true novelistic
tradition into the "genre" of High Fantasy, and many readers didn't 
want that.

--Dan'l

-- 
www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
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