But what is "genre fiction"?

Google apparently offers no links (so far as I could find) which get to the issue of What is "genre fiction"?

Anyone have any suggestions?

Or is it undefinable and merely something you "recognize when you see it"?

Comments

[back40]

Google discards the what and the is. I tried definition "genre fiction" and seemed to get some relevant hits.

[David Sucher]

I tried "genre fiction" by itself as well and found nothing on point. If you found any thoughtful, useful definitions of "genre fiction," I'd love to see the links. Thanks.

[evariste]

Google has a new keyword, "define:". If you do define:genre, the very first hit has what you want, I think.

[evariste]

That is, " A type of literature or film marked by certain shared features or conventions."

[David Sucher]

Thanks evariste. But...uhh...

If you continue on with the whole definition past ""A type of literature or film marked by certain shared features or conventions" it simply says:
"The three broadest categories of genre include poetry, drama, and fiction. These general genres are often subdivided into more specific genres. For instance, precise examples of genres might include murder mysteries, western films, sonnets, lyric poetry, epics, tragedies, etc.."

"poetry, drama, and fiction." Pretty useful, eh?

I have a suspicion that that's NOT the way people like Hazzard and others, snobs we all know and love, might use the term, rolling off their sneering lips, "genre fiction."

[Michael Jennings]

I think (at least as the word is commonly used today) I would define "genre fiction" as fiction designed at a very specific audience demographically. Certainly that is the way Hollywood uses the term. Hollywood uses the word for horror, teen comedies, "urban" films (which is code for films aimed at black audiences), certain types of thriller, certain types of animated film (ie those aimed specifically at children rather than those aimed at general audiences), certain types of fantasy film (By this definition "Underword" is a genre film, whereas "The Lord of the Rings" isn't).

Interestingly, what Hollywood thinks of as science fiction is (post Star Wars in 1977) not "genre film" but mainstream, as it is aimed at general audiences. Whereas written science fiction is very much a genre market, as only certain types of people read it.

[Michael Jennings]

As an addition to that, in terms of books, I think you might say that "Genre fiction" is anything that is filed in a separate section in a bookshop from the standard "fiction" section. In terms of film, it is anything with a budget under about $25 million. (If Hollywood spends more than that it needs to find a general audience in order to make its money back, so "genre films" are generally not made for more than that).

Some would say that as you quote it above, "genre" is a polite word for "ghetto".

Hmm. I may turn this into a blog posting.

[David Sucher]

Two comments which don't necessarily contradict Michael Jennings':
1. Jennings' approach appears to allow marketing to trump examination of the text (how I love to use that term!) itself. Following your scheme one could put War & Peace next to Tom Clancy and Crime & Punishment next to James Elroy and Moby Dick next to CS Forester.
2. As an aid to judging the worth of a book -- which is what it is all about -- it is circular and ignores the book itself in favor of a categorization. It allows category to trump reading.

•••

Yes, in actuality, most of what is called "genre fiction" may well be junk. But so is most "serious literatiure." The only difference is that the former may very well offer more pleasure.

[Henrik Mintis]

"Genre fiction" is merely a polite term for "formula fiction." Every Stephen King is about a person who is in the middle of a disturbing supernatural situation, and will try to escape it, with horrific consequences all along, more or less. It's all going to follow roughly the same outline with different details. The details might be clever, and the storytelling might be good, but the plots and themes are formulaic.

What makes it "genre fiction" is that entire rafts of writers use the same outline as well. One can go to the "horror" section of a bookstore and see shelf upon shelf of similar work. Some is better than others. But in the ultimate analysis, King's work does little more than add another line item to the list of fiction representing a particular genre.

This is not to say Stephen King is not worthy of recognition, and it is absolutely not to say he his not worthy of success. He has honestly earned every penny in his pocket, and he has every right to be proud of his career and his influence. But when it comes to the definition of "genre fiction," the question about Stephen King's work is, will his literature survive his death?

What makes other fiction "literary" is that it either uses a more unique outline than other words, or it deviates sufficiently from the outline to cause the well-read person to say "this is unique."

The true test of uniqueness is really only evident in retrospect. When a piece of literature has had an influence on culture over long periods of time, i.e., new authors use tools or techniques from that piece of literature in their own, then we know it was an influential and unique work after all.

Again, will Mr King's literature survive his death? Or does it merely go into the enormous bin as another example of horror fiction, albeit a better-quality example than the rest?

[David Sucher]

No, I still don't get it, Henrik. Everything you say can be applied to nicely to "serious literature."

Shakespeare, for instance, was hardly innovative in his plot for MacBeth. And wasn't there a troubling ghost in that oft-told tale of Hamlet? Nor was Homer, going even farther back particularly unique in his "plot." No I am afarid that using the same outline (which I take to mean story-line, plot) just won't work as a dividing line. Taking the exact same even well-known material and adding that "something special" is what separates the forgettable from the memorable.

Yes there is a difference between the hack and the genius but it is not a matter of category but of style, in the broadest sense. So I agree, we will see about King but not because he writes about the supernatural but simply if his stuff holds up.

And btw aren't you limiting the definition of "genre fiction?" Wouldn't many literary snobs say that Patrick O'Brian wrote "genre fiction?" And there's not a ghost aboard anyone of his ships as I remember; the only ones are in Stephen Maturin's unconscious.

No, as I think about this matter, I think that "genre fiction" is merely a tool of social control used by people who have their paws on the organs of established intellectual authority and want to keep them there.

[Michael Jennings]

Perhaps number 2 from David is my point. I don't think dividing books (or movies) into genre at all is a terribly good idea. Ultimately what you want to know is "good" and "bad", and dividing books into any system of categorisation (in which partisans of one can sneer at the other) gets in the way of that. This is precisely why one of the greatest of American novels (Moby Dick) languished in obscurity for a number of decades before being properly appreciated. However, this categorisation is what we are stuck with

And I think that expressions such as "genre fiction" or "genre markets" are fundamentally expressions of the marketing people. Use the word "genre" on its own, then perhaps different people are using the word and in a different way. Or perhaps not.

And no, I don't really agree that "genre fiction means "formula fiction". Just about all fiction is formula fiction. It's how well you do it that is important.

[Henrik Mintis]

I'm not sure I'm prepared to call "genre fiction" a tool for social hegemony by the publishing dictatorship. I'm also not sure every simple thing in life is actually a conspiracy, especially when the publishing market is so sensitive to sales and revenues, i.e., subject to free market conditions.

Such an argument would make more sense if certain books didn't fly off the shelves and make big money, and certain other books didn't collect literary awards but sell almost nothing, and if the two sets of books weren't so mutually exclusive. It's not like Tor or Harlequin books have billion-dollar marketing budgets, either.

What's more interesting to me is how immediately people are willing to impose concrete racial, social, or economic divisions upon society, and give these splits great importance for the sake of "diversity," (museums must be free, cultural events must be racially diverse, city folks must respect country folks) but the mere suggestion of a cultural or intellectual dividing line between two social subgroups is summarily derided as a tool of power, or an artificial classification. I find this sort of thinking blindly ideological at best, and intellectually questionable at least.

Some readers are smarter than others. Period. (For the sake of this discussion I mean more literary. It should go without saying that not all smart people are literary, and not all literary people are otherwise smart).

More literary readers often enjoy different books than non-literary readers. "Smarter" readers are more intellectually curious than "un-smart" readers, and tend to enjoy different types of books. Some books are purchased for the comfort, and some are purchased for the novelty (which is usually marginal), but some are purchased for the challenge.

Is this closer to the definition you're looking for?

As far as I can tell, we've had this sort of intellectual division in society since forever. I don't understand how something as old as earth itself can be a fiction.

I also don't understand the reference to Moby Dick. Every society has its norms, and it obviously didn't fit any of them. Neither did Carmen. So what. Just because it was eventually appreciated by a different society than the one in which it was written means nothing except that nobody's perfect. To hold up one example here and one example there is to do nothing but perhaps demonstrate there are exceptions to every rule, or there are grey zones sometimes between the black and the white.

But to therefore conclude from the existence of grey that black and white do not exist, is to be, forgive me, blind.

[Michael Jennings]

Moby Dick may not have fit the norms, but my point is just that Herman Melville was perceived as a genre writer, due to all of his earlier work. The subdivisions of the marketplace were there, and his perceived place already existed, and this restricted the initial readership of his book.

[Bill Jennings]

The French word "genre" has been used in English for around 200 years, with perhaps its most familiar usage being in the term "genre painting", describing a style of art showing subjects and scenes of ordinary life (e.g., the work of Vermeer in Holland). But applied in recent decades to literature, "genre" was intended to refer to broad categories of composition - novel, comedy, tragedy, short story, epic and so on. These categories break down, though, when writers create hybrids such as tragicomedies, novellas and prose poems. So "genre" has to be used without dogmatism.

My 10 year old Shorter Oxford acknowledges it as a type of painting, as above, but otherwise just defines it as meaning a style, kind or sort, with no particular reference to literature or film. So its use in English Lit. lecture halls has been, at least till recently, perhaps more a term of convenience than one with a formally accepted definition.

There's no doubt, though, that its use has proliferated in very recent years as a term applying especially to kinds of films (horror movies, teen flicks, even teen horror flicks, etc.)and to types of novels and plays in regard to plot and content, and not just "the novel" or "the drama" as genres. What constitutes literature is of course subjective : one person's treasure is another's trash.

But one can't avoid the impression that when many people use it, they are consciously or otherwise implying a judgement or limitation. However much they enjoy a book or film or play, if it fits a "genre" in their opinion then the hint is that it's below or somehow separate from "serious" lit. or "art". The terms "formula" and "lack of originality" are sometimes levelled at it.

Eminent writers, though, have been known to produce genre works for particular purposes - to help pay the bills, to avoid getting in a rut, or to prove a point. William Faulkner wrote his sensational novel Sanctuary - in which, among other lurid and violent scenes, someone uses the rough end of a pineapple for unnatural and painful purposes - to answer critics who thought his work tame and tedious. A genre novel? - maybe, but it's still considered seriously as a part of this Nobel Laureate's work.

Shaw's Pygmalion and Lawrence's The Rainbow were denounced from pulpits, and more recently The Catcher in the Rye, Look Back in Anger and Waiting for Godot were attacked by some critics and large sections of the public. In early performances of Godot, some people reportedly attended with the deliberate purpose of ostentatiously walking out half-way through. Doubtless, critics of these works thought they fitted some kind of genre which probably the words "trash" or "rubbish" summed up precisely, for them anyway.

The enormous expansion in published fiction and film production in the contemporary world has resulted in a growth of some "genres" in which the material ranges from the utterly forgettable to the classical. High Noon sits in the Western genre, Fawlty Towers in a certain kind of farcical comedy genre, Raymond Chandler's novels in a detective story genre but they've transcended their "slot" to become "art". I've cited three fairly old examples simply because the test of time is a pretty good proving ground.

So a main connotation of "genre" today is a class of writing or performance that is formulaic, but time will tell, classics will emerge, to stand on equal terms with the "serious" art and Lit.

[Bill Jennings]

Or it was, I recall, a corn-cob, not a pineapple, used in that notorious episode in Sanctuary. (I read the book a long time ago.)

[Jaquandor]

Damon Knight once defined "science fiction" thusly: "It is whatever I point at when I say 'science fiction'." That seems, ultimately, to work for me.