Comment elevated to a post

Michael Blowhard made such an awfully intriguing comment that I want to make sure that it is not missed so I am making this a Michael Blowhard Guest Post. He's commenting on my earlier post on the genre fiction stuff.

He draws an exceedingly interesting connection between literary and architecural forms and the utility, even the desirability, of having firm structures, structures which might appear at first to the uninitiated to pose nasty limitations --- "all action takes place at sea; there must be a bloody death every 3 chapters" --- but in fact aid creativity by offering a tight form within which to work.

Perhaps if I understand his approach, one might say that "just as a building must have a door on the streetfront, so too must a sentence have a verb and a novel have a plot." They all fail to do their job of simultaneously giving pleasure, succor and enlightenment unless they adhere to certain norms. So-called "genre fiction" may have certain expectations which must be met ---I'd still like to know what they are when it comes to, say, "sea stories" except that it must involve water --- but those requirements are not even remotely impediments to "genius."

But Michael says it better:

"Hear, hear. But I'd add a couple of things. One is that the distinction between genre fiction and serious lit is, for better or worse, like it or not, a market reality. That's the way it's divvied up in the publishers' computers as well as the bookstores' computers. And, again like it or not, that counts. It's nothing we have to accept intellectually, but it does affect the making and production of books, let alone (unfortunately) how they're taken and discussed. As a writer, you can choose to do genre book or you can choose to do a serious-lit book, or you can choose (daringly!) to do a hybrid. But you can't really choose to ignore the distinction.

I'd be a little rougher on TT than you are. I see no reason why genre shouldn't be a source of strength, rather than a limitation, in much the same way that the rules and laws of writing formal (ie., patterned according to accepted rules) poetry can be a strength. I think claiming that the no-rules-apply, wide-openness of serious lit leads, or even can lead, to better, deeper literature is buying into a naive belief. "Total freedom" in an absolute sense tends to lead to despair, overambition and collapse rather than blazing, all-guns-firing creativity-- and I'd argue that that's a pretty good description of a lot of what's issued as serious lit in this country. In my experience, the genre fields are much less ego-ridden and much more centered on delivering an enjoyable and comprehensible experience to readers than the serious-lit world is -- and I take that to be a sign of health. The serious-lit world is peddling inspiration, genius, etc. Balls to that. And it ain't healty -
- they're peddling the equivalent of what you call precious-object architecture. Fine, sure, why not. But let's not mistake it for what's really important. (And, a minor sidelight, the serious-lit world has its own subgenres -- multicultural extravaganza, protest novel, po-mo picaresque, etc. Which means that "serious lit" has become every bit as much of a meta-genre as, say, "crime" is.)

I'd argue, with a perfectly earnest and straight face, a couple of things. First, "The Long Goodbye" and "The Maltese Falcon" are every bit the achievements "The Great Gatsby" is (and I say this as someone who loves "Gatsby.") And that it's got to be acknowledged that some of today's very, very best writers are people like Donald Westlake, Ruth Rendell, Patrick O'Brien, P.D. James, George V. Higgins, etc.

I confess I don't know how or why someone like Teachout, who eloquently makes the case for jazz and for the Classic American Songbook, doesn't see that the fiction-book equivalent of that stuff is genre fiction ... But I've run into this before -- movie critics who eloquently make the case for trash and for art, and for the two of them a mutually complementary, yet who fail to accept that the same dynamic might apply in the fiction-book world.

Part of my guess on this is that the serious-lit advocates often haven't read much genre fiction, and that they fail to register that genre fiction writers are playing a different game than serious-lit writers. Would someone who's drunk on Gehry and Hadid even be able to register that much is going on in a pleasant neighborhood that works? Yet that pleasant neighborhood is, in my view, probably the greater achievement than a flashy new Gehry or Hadid...