NP : Was " genres are literature too" thread

[Tom Beshear]

I think the main thing distinguishing genre fiction is the primary importance of story. Other elements are secondary and are generally deployed in service of the storytelling. Other values -- characterization, psychology, use of language, themes, symbolism, etc. -- can be more important than story in literary fiction. A lot of great literary fiction also has a tragic view of human existence. Genre fiction tends to be much more optimistic about human nature (well, maybe not noir, but ...).
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Prashant Kumar 
  To: Paul Mackin 
  Cc: pynchon -l 
  Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 7:17 PM
  Subject: Re: NP : Was " genres are literature too" thread


  Seems as though the distinction being made between "genre" fiction and literary fiction is one of lowbrow vs. highbrow, implicitly, at least in much academic discourse (though there is quite a bit of work on sci-fi). Of course, the two aren't completely disjoint, and anything in both categories (I think LoTR is a good example here) probably wouldn't have that quality that makes academics chomp on the bit.


  What's the sociology on the literary-genre divide? And, while we're at it, since literary is obviously a genre, what defines it? I've heard tell that "literary" is more a function of the author coming through the text, though suppose one could spin that any which way.


  P.


  On 15 October 2012 04:58, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:

    Question:  Cannot all or most of the literary theories, that have been used and may still be used today, be applied just a well (maybe better)  to genre fiction as to literary fiction?  Is this perhaps an important unifying feature of all fiction regardless of how high or low?

    Maybe related, the last chapter of Terry Eagleton's latest--The Event of Literature--takes up the question of what do literary theories all have in common?  His candidate for the honor is the Unconscious.  All but one theory by his lights consider what is written as a Strategy for dealing with the Unconscious or the otherwise hidden.  He talks a lot about Freud's ideas on repression, etc. So literature--in theory--is the repressed, acceptable version of what's somehow down deep and hidden.  This is a very inadequate paraphrase, but it might serve the purpose of suggesting that possibly  literary and genre fiction are sisters under the skin.

    The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under the skin--Kipling

    P




    On 10/14/2012 12:05 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

      And the abstract unifying agent in GR works because, though
      implausible, it is convincing. So, Wood has no serious objection to
      Pynchon's talking dogs or clocks, but to his rhetorical faliure, that
      is, P fails not because verisimilitude is essential or even prefered,
      but because P fails to convince us that all these characters and plots
      are plausible under the unifying agent. The abstraction pulls the
      characters on and off the stages like a puppet parade in a space
      opera.





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20121014/c083a2a8/attachment.html>