Mark Haddon - interview in Observer

[mstislavl]

"...For me, writing is like being gay. you finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and and hope no one runs away."

(по моему мнению быть писателем - это как быть гомосексуалистом. в конце концов ты сам себе в этом признаешься, перестаешь это скрывать и надеешься, что люди от тебя не убегут).

And MH discusses the difference between genre fiction and literary fiction - unfamiliar to me terms. But as far as I understand all books belong to some genre. "Crime and punishment" - detective story, "War and peace" - epics etc. so where is a boundary between "genre" and "literary" fiction?

Comments

[farraige.livejournal.com]

a discussion on definition of genre fiction.

from farraige link

[mstislavl]

he 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.




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