Talkin' 'Bout My Genre-ation

[Thomas Eckhardt]

What I started with was the notion of certain non-realistic narrative modes
being very important in V. Thinking and arguing about this, I still believe, can
indeed be of interest to everybody. I think, it is not only a matter of cultural
context but also of the contexts that are provided within a work of fiction. In
that, questions of genre to me seem to be related to the questions of POV in
complex novels like V. It seems especially important to me to take these
contexts into account whenever one wishes to discuss the attitudes towards real
world phenomena that perhaps find expression in a difficult fictional text. The
negligence of, for example, narrative mode or POV in favour of a 1 to 1 "The
author says" or "The author tells us" approach has done a lot of harm to list
discussion in the past, IMHO.

As for the attempt of classifying V. or other works of P. - be that as
"Menippean satires", "autobiographies" or "operator's manuals": Although I am
personally interested in this kind of generical/historical attribution, I have
to admit that such a classification does probably nothing to enhance or enrich
the reader's experience of the text. But, as you say, it's all a matter of
degrees.

Regards,
Thomas