View 2: “Deep Genre” & “Genre”
Constance Ash June 13th, 2006
Introduction; Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4;Â Part 5;Â Part 6;
“13 Ways of Looking at Blackbirds” (poet, Wallace Stevens), “7 Types of Ambiguity” (lit crit, William Empson), 6 Blind Men Look at Elephant” (Indian folk tale & poem by John Godfrey Saxe, 1868-1887), — and now, however many we are, here we go, looking at Deep Genre.
My perspective is an attempt to describe how ‘deep genre’ and ‘genre,’ differ. This perspective applies equally to any publishing category: romance, science fiction, fantasy, westerns, mysteries, horror.
Genre
Genre is one of the repetitive, derivative arts, one of expectations fulfilled, not thwarted. A genre work’s appeal is that of safe return to what we already know.
At the start of a story, a man and a woman meet, they hate each other — they will be romantically united at the end. Bad things done to a hero provide the hero license to wreak exuberant havoc on his enemies and innocent bystanders alike without consequence to body or soul. The heroine will be left standing at the end, and will be happy.
Genre is comforting because we can depend upon it to stand and deliver what we come to it for, allowing us to relax. We don’t need re-examination or re-education, for its categorical tropes are reliable signposts along the way, providing the information we need to follow the story and the characters to what we know will be the expected conclusion — our principal characters, those with whom we identify, will win.
We understand our genres so well that we can build entire communities around them: conventions, conferences, award ceremonies, fanfic, websites, reading clubs.
Deep Genre
Deep genre is innovative, imaginative, original fiction organized around an individual vision. Deep genre employs the tropes of its genre to re-examine the genre itself. It does not assume without question. Such a work deepens and builds upon the classical foundation elements that genre fiction is built upon, whether fantasy, science fiction, mysteries, romances, horror or westerns. It surprises us, while we also respond with a gasp, “Of course!” A deep genre work shows us a place we’ve been before but the light on the lake has changed, allowing us to see the lake is deeper than we thought and the shoreline not where it used to be.
Deep genre shakes us out of repetition. We cannot count on what has happened before to be what will happen now. Its pattern is tightly woven out of story, theme, character and voice. When new patterns in the deep genre’s story appear, they are organic in the weave. In a deep genre tale, one lover may kill the other, and this affects the killer’s soul forever. The audience pays attention, brings something of itself to the entertainment, in collaboration with the tale teller.
Though it may be provided, comfort is not deep genre’s purpose.
To contrast ‘deep genre’ with ‘genre’ does not necessarily mean judging one as superior. What is intended by that is one is a ‘begetting work,’ while the other is a consolidation work, deriving from a deep genre work. For instance I would classify Ann Rice’s Lestat and Buffy The Vampire Slayer as deep genre. They employed all the accumulated, classical tropes of gothic/dark fantasy vampire tales, but located them in new landscapes, new times, with new motivation and new consequences, and particularly, new attitude, new narrative and character voice. Other creators followed, such as Laurell K. Hamilton, in her Anita Blake series: “Laurell K. Hamilton began what was to become her vampire franchise, a kind of fast food version of Anne Rice, but with more mouthwatering ingredients.”
The elements of deep genre and genre, the primary, and the new, enthusiastically cross-pollinate. Deep genre re-vitalizes genre, which is why as writers we always re-visit the primary works, just as a prima ballerina will always go back to basic ballet class. Miscegenation is the means by which the genre categories propagate themselves, weaving their seductions, enthralling us with their glamours.
I think I will be visiting this site frequently, as you appear to be touching on something that has been bugging me for some time. Great!
Every review of one of my books starts with a remark along the lines of “this is not comfort fantasy” or “Larke subverts the usual fantasy tropes”. What worries me about this kind of comment is that the implication always seems to be that “comfort” fantasy - or whatever name you want to give it - is in the overwhelming majority. Where newer authors are concerned, I would dispute that. In fact, people who complain about cookie-cutter fantasy often have to go back to writers who have been around a long time for their examples.
I think there is an exciting trend in fantasy writing towards what you are calling deep genre, and that many of us are indeed using the tropes to say something different. To make people think and shake them out of their comfort zone.
As a writer trying to earn a living, though, I must admit that there is a strong reason to write comfortable books. As a general rule, they sell better. I’m still holding out, writing what I feel is right for me…but sometimes in my weak moments, it is tempting to cave in and head towards a comfort zone that will pay better!
Interesting stuff!
Sorry to pick nits, but isn’t _7 Types of Ambiguity_ by William Empson?
Absolutely! Right before uploading, checking on Empson title seemed like a good idea, since the book now is on a shelf long and far away. Then the printer quit working and I forgot. So like me, alas.
Thank you for the correction!
Love, C.
I think you’re on to something, but I think it’s a big mistake to say that “conventions, conferences, award ceremonies, fanfic, websites, reading clubs”, etc., are built around what you call “genre” as opposed to what you call “deep genre.”
I don’t think fandom would exist and thrive if the comfort stuff were all there was.
Yes, exactly. I’m always interested in the phenomenon of people who can divine by the cover illustration, or by selectively understanding the few pages of text they skim, what the underlying elements of the story consist of.
btw, I have your novel The Aware for my upcoming trip airplane reading. I can’t wait!
Communities come together for a variety of reasons, including the ‘comfort’ of being with others who share one’s enthusiasms. However,
Nowhere is it stated that genre communities come together only for comfort. One would never be so presumptuous!
Comfort, however, is a function, if only judging by Dani’s post in response to Kate’s entry
For clarification, the use of ‘art’ in my entry, in connection with derivation and repetition, had hopefully signalled a positive perspective, employed to describe, not a negatively judgmental usage. For example, in the photo arts, there is a category labeled ‘repetitive photography.’ This is what I had in mind by such use.
Love, C.
I very much like most of the definition, though perhaps where discussion might break down is in examples? I haven’t seen Buffy (I would include Firefly, which is another Whedon production, which i have seen) but I can’t get my head round Anne Rice as deep genre–I read the first two books, couldn’t read any of the subsequent ones, and though some scenes had some terrific horror elements, re character, thought, depth, didn’t seem to be any there there.
This article buys into a good many unexamined assumptions: first and foremost, the Late Romantic trope of the artist as a unique solitary creative genius, who transcends boundaries, breaks the status quo, plumbs new depths, etc.
Underlying _that_ is the assumption that “change = good”, and “familiar = bad”, not to mention a certain contempt for the audience, who are to be dragooned into consuming something they don’t like for their own good.
All this appeals to artists, of course, because it strokes their vanity. But few of us are Bethoven, who could get away with it.
Frankly, I think the whole approach is bat guano, and its influence on the arts has been almost wholly pernicious for yea these hundred years and more. It turned poetry from something everyone read into an esoteric cult who write for each other. It resulted in the horrors of Bahaus architecture, where a devil’s alliance of architects, bureaucrats and plutocrats forced inhuman ugliness on generations of people who hated it. Then there’s academic fiction…
And one could go on and on — even SF writers have been wrecked on occasion by whoring after the bitch-goddess of literary respectability.
Only the thoroughly mass-market-dominated areas have been protected from the spread of this meme.
Most art, including the greatest art, has throughout history been aimed at affirmation — to put it crudely, satisfying the expectations of patrons, whoever they happen to be. It is supposed to give pleasure; hopefully, great soul-stirring pleasure, but at the very least, enjoyment.
Or as the late great SF writer Poul Anderson once said, “We’re competing for people’s beer money.”
(Which is why the tyranny of the market is a _good_ thing about genre writing. The surest way to make it all go down the toilet would be to give writers a secure place at some government teat.)
A little humility is in order. Writers aren’t the ‘unacknowledged legislators of humankind’, the guardians of conscience, and so forth and so on.
We’re artisans, much like custom shoemakers, or cooks — in the most exalted cases, like great chefs, in the worst, like burger-flippers.
This is why stylistic innovation is of limited (though real) use. Once you’ve found the most effective way to do something, there’s no point — all wheels are round. Chairs need four legs. How many young writers have wrecked themselves trying to immitate Joyce? The point is not to invent a one-legged novel, but to write a _good_ novel.
Hmm, when it comes to reading, I don’t think I select much that isn’t at least technically on the “deep” side. (whereas,w hen watching, I tend to enjoy “formula.”)
Mr. Stirling, interesting points, and you happen to be one of the new major favorites whom I’ve discovered the past few years. (as was Mr Anderson RIP)
I see as writer-y versus critic-y; a critic must, to some extent, develop and use a ponderous language, in order to accomplish his or her aims. A writer who has the capacity to be profound will accomplish profundity at times. One who doesn’t have the capacity, can’t “fake” it.
Hmmm, Mr Stirling …I think you too are making assumptions. Where is anyone saying that comfort reading is “bad” and change is “good”? I, for one, read and enjoy both types of books. If what I wrote came across as contemptuous of the former, I apologise - it certainly wasn’t intended. Comfort reading is at times exactly what I want and need, as long as it is well written.
I just think there are many new authors who are using very standard tropes to write books that are perhaps less about comfort and more about challenge, and they are mostly very readable as well. “Cookie-cutter fantasy ” is, I agree, a contemptuous term, and it is found in many reviews as if there had never been any other kind of fantasy in the past - but I think that there is actually very little of today’s sff writing that fits the description. Much of today’s comfort reading is far from cookie-cutter. And most of today’s “deep genre” is very readable indeed.
That was a great post at an opportune time. One of those bits of writing you come across which crystallises so many things that you’ve been thinking about for so long.
So many of my friends don’t get genre - especially sci-fi and fantasy. They come from much more literary backgrounds and consider genre to be little more than a lazy skeleton around which to build a hackneyed story. Genre though is incredibly important to the way we tell stories. Fantasy worlds require a suspension of disbelief and having these generic rules makes that possible.
Thanks for a great post.
The other night I did a reading with Peter Beagle. We had a brief discussion afterwards about the rigidity of genre definitions. When he published his first few books, back in the late 1970s-early ’80s, they were shelved and reviewed simply as fiction. Now, everything he writes is treated as genre fantasy, whether it is or not, and definitely, THE INNKEEPER’S DAUGHTER is. He was wondering when classifying books as one genre or another became mandatory. I couldn’t tell him, as everything I’ve published so far is most definitely genre. He said that he’d decided he should learn Spanish, write in that language under a pen name, and then translate himself so he could be labeled “magic realism” and get bigger advances. Sounds good to me.
Like Glenda, I too write fantasy that doesn’t fulfill the expectations of many readers (which is one reason that I’m always broke.) I really resent it when other writers announce that they know what I write without having to read the books. It’s particularly amusing when people who write hard SF sniff at any trace of magic in a work, and then believe they can tell what’s in a book without reading it. If they really can do that, they should go on the Yuri Geller circuit.
S.M.: Fascinating comments, and very well put.
One might point out in rebuttal that 95% of the art you and I know of that’s survived the test of history was written/composed/performed at the behest of (and funding from) some government or church or wealthy patron. Hardly a free market system.
I’m not sure that a pasta dish by Wolfgang Puck has ever inspired anyone to start a war, or change spiritual philosophies, or sacrifice one’s life for one’s ideals, or rebel against a government, or even change careers. Works of fiction have done all that, and still do.
Looking at it from a more cynical point of view… If artists didn’t think their works were going to Fundamentally Change the World and Be Remembered for All Eternity as a Shining Beacon of Blah Blah Blah, they would be shoemakers. Shoemakers make more money.
Shoemakers get sore hands, but then again, so do I from typing. Man, we just can’t win!
Steve, yet surely by the above definition you are writing deep genre - I think so, anyway. My definition of ‘deep genre’ is different, but I like a range of interpretations.
Heh.
Isn’t magic realism a genre in terms of marketing?
I believe that Orbit has had some success in the UK market with packaging sff novels to look “non-genre” and thus reach a wider audience - that is, people who assume based on the look of the cover that what’s inside is something they don’t read.
In this context, I always think of Bach, my all-time favorite Western concert music composer.
In a way, one might argue that he transcended the system he wrote within - yet meanwhile by his old age he and his music had fallen out of fashion while his sons and other composers in the new style were considered to be the trendsetters many of whom thought of him as a hopeless reactionary stuck in the old style. But he stuck to his guns (and didn’t give it up to become a shoemaker).
I could be wrong, but I think Rice was given as an example in context of when Interview With The Vampire was published, in 1976. While there’s plenty of vampire fiction — or rather, fiction where vampires aren’t necessarily “monsters” — on the market nowadays, there wasn’t back then.
Rice has her flaws, but I don’t think it can be denied that she approached the subject from a new angle and had a definite influence on the genre.
[...] Constance says in “View 2″: The elements of deep genre and genre, the primary, and the new, enthusiastically cross-pollinate. Deep genre re-vitalizes genre, which is why as writers we always re-visit the primary works, just as a prima ballerina will always go back to basic ballet class. Miscegenation is the means by which the genre categories propagate themselves, weaving their seductions, enthralling us with their glamours. [...]
Um, ‘magical realism’ is a term borrowed here in the United States by critics who don’t read Spanish and had no contact with the enormous variety of literature published in that language in the very many cultures that employ the Spanish language.
This term is not employed in Spain, Brasil, Latin America, Mexico or the Caribbean, or in the the Spanish speaking U.S.A.
Love, C.
Except, of course, far more latterly than the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude, because for some, like Allende, etc., they figured out the industry was ready for some version of a label / category to publish these works.
If you have read the Spanish language works available on Marquez, etc. you will understand how this works. If you have read his Living To Tell The Tale , translated by the wonderful Edith Grossman, Knopf, 2003, you will see how he didn’t make this stuff up. It was his life. Life was different where he was growing up, back in those days.
For full disclosure, this house is fully bi-lingual in Spanish — and, um some other latin languages too.
Love, C.
As well, the actual term was invented by the Cuban critic, Alejo Carpentier, long before it was applied to Marquez’s work.
Love, C.
Constance, absolutely you are right about ‘magical realism’ but after all Beagle was telling the story to an American audience with American expectations about genre and marketing. Which is why I found it funny.
Nonny said:
These are good points. I do think if readers find the Rice books deep and rich and special, no problemo. But it’s difficult to point to any one book and declare that this is the living example of “It” because for every person who declares it Teh Greatness, there is someone else who will pop out howling that it’s trash, no-good, yeah.
Kate and I spent a lot of time talking about this matter, not coming to conclusions to much as testing one another’s literary landscape with this or that example. I think this is why I have so much trouble with “equipoise” and “interstitial” and “The New Wave” and so forth. At least, I have trouble if I try to build walls around various books that can stand against various critical or responsive POVs. at least until I mentally translate whatever the New Thing is into “My idea of kewl stuff.”
Well, magic realism has quite a pedigree in English as well, although I don’t know (not familiar with crticial literature) how often the word is used. the first chapter of a novel by Lincoln Kirstein,the title of which I forget, in which the protagonist’s youthful nemesis at boarding school takes on the appearance of an omnicompetent and inescapable evil sorcerer, would classify that way to me. Philp Roth’s _The Ghost writer_ comes close but it cops out at critcal points. In terms of less “lit’r'ry” novels, there’s ELizabeth Goudge’s _The Little White Horse_ or even Finney’s _Circus of Dr. Lao_, in which it’s never clear if the strange creatures are really there physically.
(32 years ago I could have given a much longer list but it’s not an interest which I have kept up.)
And outside of fiction, the term magic realism has been applied to the paintings of Andrew Wyeth.
“Deep genre” just sounds like thoughtful writing to me…all art, of whatever kind, engages in dialogue - sometimes argumentative dialogue - both its traditions and the world in which it is written. This brings all sorts of different pressures to bear, since any serious artist is usually interested mostly in making their work relate to reality in ways that seem truthful to them. Then the arguments start… it has never seemed to me that genre writing should be any different from any other literature in this way. Of course it changes. That is part of the “craft” of it. A cobbler who made shoes all exactly the same size for everybody would be a very bad cobbler.
I’m really not sure what SM Stirling is getting at (or maybe it’s just depressingly familiar). People bash poetry for being unpopular, as if poetry is one thing, instead of the wholly complex phenomenon that it is, which includes - perhaps surprisingly - an abiding popularity. Mostly they blame TS Eliot for this alleged unpopularity, despite the fact that he is one of the most popular modern poets around. And they have very seldom read much of anything after Eliot. Or before. Why poetry doesn’t often hit bestseller lists (though every now and then it does, and the situation is quite different in Spanish-speaking countries) is to do with too many issues to talk about here. But how do you account for the popularity of the Romantic poets in their day, if they were so removed from their audience? Byron was a rock star.
Try reading Milton’s introduction to Paradise Lost and you will find that Milton (who predated the Romantics by a long shot) was the avant garde of his day and most unfussed about being accepted - he was doing something completely new. Aristotle’s Poetics, which examines tragic theatre, is about work that in its time was innovative and new. And as far as patrons and atists go, try also reading - they’re available - the letters between Renaissance painters and their patrons. Their resistances might surprise you. (And so on and so on.)
I am absolutely not into the idea of artist as genius. But great artists have never been the market-driven whores Stirling describes. Mediocre artists, very very often.
Ok, I’ve calmed down now…
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