What is Deep?
Kate Elliott June 16th, 2006
I’m briefly staying over at Sherwood Smith’s, on my way to Israel, and she offers this definition of deep genre:
I don’t recognize genre as a boundary. And I don’t invest any superiority in the self-named literary writing.
For me the bottom line is:
Do I want to re-read it?
And when I do re-read it, do I get something different out of it?
Hey! Sherwood!
Hmmmm.
Who was speaking to ‘literary value’?
This humph stuff re ‘literary’ frequently turns up in the commentary, and that’s confusing to me, because nobody is discussing ‘literary’ value.
Unless yours truly missed something.
Which would be all too like me: lousy vision, lousy memory, and distracted, ah, I mean, busy!
Love, C.
Kate, when you get back could you give me a list of your works that are not firmly entrenched within the confines of genre? Because I’ve read the Jaran books, and the Crown of Stars series, and neither gives the impression of ‘not recognizing’ the boundaries of genre.
Not to be contrary; I’m just curious!
Constance: When I say self-named, I mean the writers who say, “Oh, but my work might have fantastic elements, but it is literary, not merely genre.
Or, critical divisions between ‘literary’ (implying value) and ‘genre’ (implying no value beyond entertainment). Genre on my internal map means marketing. It’s the supposition that literary somehow means quality (implying anything non-literary has little or no value) that I just cannot accept. There is interesting, subversite, idea-rich, insightful, subtle, fabulous work all over the literary landscape. And there is stuff that by my own internal measure has no quality, however much it’s praised by those who think they are arbiters of brilliance and lasting viture.
Nobody, not even Henry James, could accurately predict a ‘classic’.
Gabe,
Everything I’ve written sits well within the recognized boundaries of genre. I don’t think I’ve ever said otherwise.
That’s why I like the term ‘deep genre,’ as in, given the kinds of things I tend to explore beneath the narrative surface, why do I prefer to write in “deep genre” (that is, well within those “recognized bounds”)?
I’ve allways enjoyed “Deep Genre” and fantasy including your (Kate Eliiott’s) work because it is an escape. While I am reading I am in a different world where anything is possible. I enjoy distancing myself from our defined reality and exploring another. The only books that create this situation for me are SFF. Although I will occasionaly read other fiction, it feels like more of a chore and I want to finish the book just to get it over with and move on.
TLR