The First Something I Gestured At

“The demands of the publishing business are a fetish that must not be allowed to keep us from trying out new forms.”

- Italo Calvino "Six Memos for The Next Millennium"

Every time I write a post like Gestures at Something I get a comment from an old friend and self-avowed “cham-peen” of Genre Fiction telling me that what I’m looking for is being done in the Genre world. It usually annoys the hell out of me because I can’t decide if she’s just not fully reading what I’ve written, or if she thinks I’m denigrating her favorite Genres, or if she somehow thinks I’m closed minded and incurious.

The fact is, if Genre Fiction were doing what I say I want to see done, I’d be reading it already. Despite the ghettoized, insider quality of most Genre fiction, I’m not opposed to its existence, nor opposed to reading it myself. I am a big fan of Genre mixing, blurring, and theft. But, Genre fiction - science fiction, fantasy, even mystery - just doesn’t fill the space I want filled. Sorry, Jenn, but get over it (as an olive branch, however, get in touch with Professor Carol Franko at Kansas State University, she’s a sci-fi scholar. You two can start a movement).

Even if the entire publishing world were to drop this weird fetish for Genre categorization, I still would prefer novels set within my lifetime, or earlier (my parent’s lifetimes, or my grandparent’s lifetimes, and so on), and novels that surprise me with their use of various genre tropes, rather than announcing them from across the room (yes, in the modern publishing world you CAN judge a book by its cover). Aside from the occasional “alternative history” novel, or the “first contact” novels like Carl Sagan’s Contact, science fiction currently, just doesn’t fit for me. Fantasy does it even less so.

In that first “Gestures” post, I mentioned that Young Adult literature represented a middle way - accessible, thoughtful, literature that entertains, wrestles with serious contemporary issues, and respects the reader’s intelligence - but that I wanted this middle way for “grown ups.” I’d like to expand on that idea.

First, the publishing world has fetishized Genre so deeply that, sometimes, it seems publishers are like those anal-retentive kids who pitch a fit if the different foods on their plate touch. If Michael Chabon had started off his career with The Yiddish Policeman’s Union he’d be trapped in Sci-fi land - that is if anyone had found the stones to publish that book. Daring, cross genre work is often baffling to publishers unless the writer has an established reputation they can cling to, like a life-raft in a flood.

However, within this highly fetishized world, the one “Genre” that, in microcosm, presages the potential salvation of the Literary Novel, is Young Adult. As a former bookseller, when it came time to shelve those YA books were almost never shelved by Genre (except sometimes if the subject matter was sex or sexual orientation then they would be called “Teen”), but by the recommended age level of the reader. In that universe, YA teen girl spy stories sit next to YA fantasy stories and to YA western stories. The functional genre of the book doesn’t matter in YA - the story does and story can take place in space or on a ranch or in ancient Rome or any number of places and times.

In the world of “grown-up” Literature, story, at times, seems to take a back seat to Genre conventions, and/or extreme arty-ness. There are times I like arty-ness - love it, in fact. I am a fan of the English language, and of thinking, so I sometimes get off on a well turned phrase, or a devastating, poetic image. But that’s just gravy on top of a meaty, engaging story that trusts me to imagine things for myself, to fill in the purposeful gaps, and to converse with the subtext and context of the story. That kind of story begins with respecting my intelligence and then encouraging me to expand it.

In the kid lit world, if a writer insults the reader’s intelligence, or condescends to the reader, that writer’s book will die a fast and ruthless death. This doesn’t seem to happen in the world of grown-up fiction (this is both a blessing and curse). Dan Brown makes millions of dollars insulting the intelligence of his readers (The house was entirely uninhabited. Upstairs too). David Foster Wallace is revered for cramming more esoteric philosophical concepts into one novel than most average readers are aware of, me included. Jonathan Franzen seems so deeply invested in an ironic tone that I can’t read more than a paragraph without being overwhelmed with disgust for his characters and for him (Great American Novelist my right nut).

Now, I’m not opposed to deeply intelligent writing. I’m not opposed to intellectualism, or to wrestling with ideas and concepts that don’t, at first, make sense to me. I’m also not opposed to avant-garde or experimental literature, or science fiction and fantasy, or mysteries and thrillers, or horror and romance (they are to me, oddly similar). Having at least a passing knowledge of all forms of literature is, to me, essential for doing my job as a novelist. What is also essential for doing my job as a novelist is knowing my audience, and respecting my audience.

As a reader, I am an adult audience, and as a writer, adults are my audience, but there are two major problems: one, by the time my potential audience has finished high school, most have been abused into disliking Literature (with a big L), and two, publishing has so fetishized Genre to the point that the various tropes and conventions of a Genre seem to take precedence over more basic literary mechanics, like plot in Literary novels, or fully developed characters in Thrillers and so, as a reader, I feel my options are limited or uninteresting.

Of course, that’s not an entirely bad thing. One of the many complex and intertwined reasons people become writers is because they have a hard time finding the kinds of stories they want to read.