by Joe Miller
My wife and I read a lot of genre fiction.
Caroline prefers romance. I usually read science fiction, though so far this year I’ve been on something of a mystery/thriller kick.
Genre fiction gets kind of a bad rap.
Harold Bloom, perhaps the most famous literary critic of the 20th century, was asked how to go about reading J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series. Bloom’s response was “don’t,” though he did allow that, “if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do.”
James Marriott, cultural critic for London’s Times, regularly refers to romantasy (a relatively new genre that, as the name implies, mashes up romance and fantasy tropes) as “slop.”
Critics like Bloom and Marriott argue that genre fiction is plot-driven, formulaic, filled with characters who are little more than shallow archetypes and rife with indifferent prose.
Perhaps most damningly of all, genre fiction is commercial. It’s designed to sell lots of books, which, they argue, means almost by definition that they aim at the lowest common denominator.
Literary fiction, by contrast, is said to be focused more on character building than on plot, with a much stronger emphasis on writing style. These are novels in which, as one editor commented, “nothing much happens,” in terms of plot but which instead focus on depicting what critic Laura Miller describes as “the fullest appreciation of humanity in its infinite variety and intricacy.”
Fans of genre fiction are quick to reply that literary fiction is just a pretentious name for books written by graduates of creative writing MFA programs for other graduates of creative writing MFA programs.
The truth is that the line between literary fiction and genre fiction is not as sharply drawn as critics would have you believe.
Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” are both set in post-apocalyptic futures. That’s a setting normally associated with science fiction – think John Wyndham “The Day of the Triffids,” Walter H. Miller, Jr.’s “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” Suzanne Coll-ins’ “Hunger Games” series or anything featuring zombies.
But Mandel and McCarthy are serious literary authors. “Station Eleven” was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, both of which typically go to works of literary fiction. McCarthy won a Pulitzer for “The Road.”
If you’ve not read them, you really should. (Though fair warning: “The Road” is deeply unsettling.)
While it didn’t win any literary prizes, Benjamin Stevenson’s “Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone,” features some excellent writing to go along with its fourth wall-breaking mystery. Stevenson even goes so far as to tell you in advance the page numbers on which murders take place.
The book also contains sentences like this one: “Crawford – who I’ve just noticed we’ve all been referring to intuitively by his surname, as you do with police officers (which makes sense, because if Jeremy is larger than his last name, Crawford, diminutive under his badge, is smaller than his first) – stood as I approached.”
That’s a good sentence.
Being smaller (or larger) than your name. Standing diminutive under a badge. Those are wonderful metaphors, all strung together with asides inside of other asides, inside of still other asides.
In a similar vein, “The Mystery Writer” by Sulari Gentill and “The Word Is Murder” by Anthony Horowitz’s – both books that I’ve discussed in previous columns – are similarly bursting with inventiveness and beautiful prose.
To be fair, critics are correct that a lot of genre fiction is badly written.
Amazon is awash in self-published genre novels by authors who have clearly unacquainted with the concept of a second draft.
There are occasional gems in there – Andy Weir’s “The Martian,” Lisa Genova’s “Still Alice” and Hugh Howley’s “Wool” series (the basis of the series “Silo”) were all initially self-published. But for the most part, self-published genre fiction is a good reminder that half of all writing is worse than average.
Indeed, badly written gen-re fiction is distressingly common even among things that are traditionally published and popular.
I recently finished Jack Carr’s “The Terminal List,” which was also adapted into a limited series on Amazon Prime. I borrowed the book from Libby and if I’m being completely honest, it’s overpriced at free.
Carr’s debut introduces us to James Reece, a Navy SEAL turned vigilante action hero.
Chris Pratt (who stars as Reece in the show) calls Reece a “rowdy…” I won’t print the word in a family newspaper but it’s one of Samuel Jackson’s favorites.
Personally, I’d describe Reece as a sociopath. Carr, in fact, attempts to head off exactly this interpretation, spending several pages very explicitly telling us that Reece is not a sociopath.
We then watch Reece waterboard a prisoner, set off a car bomb on a public street, coerce a man into detonating a suicide vest by threatening to kill the man’s wife and child, and partially disembowel a man and leave him tied to a tree to be literally eaten alive by alligators.
I’m morbidly curious to see how Carr would write an actual sociopath. But I’m not curious enough to wade through his dreadful prose to find out.
All I’m saying here is that you should read whatever you like. You should also read good books. Those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
