Genre Vs Literary Fiction, Again

A couple of interesting articles were brought to my attention today, both concerning the ongoing genre fiction vs literary fiction debate. The first was sent to me by the very nice lady who gave me a most kind review for The Twelve in The Observer back at the star of July, literary agent and critic Nicola Barr (who is actively seeking Northern Irish writers, let it be known). It was an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that asserted the importance of contemporary plot-driven fiction, describing how the character-based fiction of modernists of the twentieth century, and its tendency to focus on internal (i.e. character) rather than external (i.e. plot) conflict, had its place in the 19-whatevers, but that in the twenty-first century, so-called genre fiction is better placed to reflect our society.

I'll admit my bias on this point. I've made my case on this before, stating my belief that "genre" story-telling can address big issues in a way that other forms of fiction can't, particularly when those issues are so big and so raw that tackling them in a more literal way is impossible. My hat's off to Lev Grossman for taking this stance.

I saw the converse of this point of view when I posted a link to my Facebook page. Gavin Carville responded with a link to a Guardian article about comments made by Booker-winning Scottish author James Kelman during the recent Edinburgh Festival. I hesitate to quote a newspaper, knowing first-hand how slippery and tricksy a newspaper quote can be, but his words are reported thusly:

"If the Nobel Prize came from Scotland they would give it to a writer of fucking detective fiction or else some kind of child writer or something that was not even news when Enid Blyton was writing the Faraway Tree because she was writing about some upper middle class young magician or some fucking crap."

No prizes for guessing that Mr Kelman was referring to Ian Rankin and JK Rowling in that quote. I was tempted to call the latter part of his spiel simple class bigotry, but I remembered that I myself have used the term "middle class navel gazing" to describe much of today's literary fiction, so I will point out my own hypocricy rather than someone else's. I confess I have not read any of Mr Kelman's work, so may not be fully qualified to comment, but I can't hold back on my contempt for this statement, if it is indeed accurately represented. It is the worst kind of snobbery (not even inverted) and literary bigotry, and utterly pompous. For an author who sells himself from a working class soap box, it displays a shocking arrogance regarding the reading habits of the proletariat he claims to embody on the written page. Worst of all, it is precisely this kind of supercilious intellectual vanity that has most people watching X Factor on a Saturday evening instead of reading a book.

There's an interesting debate here about the rights and wrongs of the statement. The fundamental point that most of them miss, however, is that the distinction between literary and genre fiction is purely a matter of commercial expediency. A means of categorisation that publishers and retailers use to arrange books on shelves, and target their respective audiences, is being used by so many as a measure of quality when it has no bearing whatsoever on the intellectual or emotional weight of the material being sold. So-called genre fiction is equally capable of revealing the truth about ourselves that is for some reason seen as the preserve of "literary" work. So-called literary fiction is equally capable of being the vacuous eye candy time-and-shelf filler that so many dismiss "genre" books as.

Here's a point of view from someone who came from a working class housing estate, and still lives on one: Class is not only a matter of money and social borders. There is also a self-sustaining intellectual class system that is based not on actual intelligence or the value of ideas, but on the pomposity of individuals who regard their own expressions of self as being superior to those of others based purely on an aesthetic laid down by the artistic establishment.

Thank God no one really listens to them.

On Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Other Insufferable Tosh

I posted on Twitter this morning about having watched Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona last night, and that I hadn't disliked a movie so much in ages. There were a few comments on my Facebook wall in response, so I thought I'd elaborate here, and tie it in to another topic that's been floating around the Interwebs in recent days.

Sometimes a film is poorly made; sometimes it has a turgid script, or bad acting, or uninspiring photography, or any number of faults. I can't say Vicky Cristina Barcelona (henceforth known as VCB) had any such flaws. It was certainly a well-crafted film, as one would expect from Woody Allen. But I used the word 'dislike'. There are many movies that I think are bad, but there are few I actually dislike. Because dislike is personal. Dislike means something in the film actually bothered me. One film I dislike, for instance, is The Devil's Own. I don't dislike The Devil's Own because it's a formulaic and predictable thriller; I dislike it because it displays a shocking ignorance of, and insensitivity to, its own subject matter.

I approached VCB with a positive frame of mind. For one thing, I have visited Barcelona three times, and it is one of my favourite places on earth. For another, I generally have a lot of time for Woody Allen. And yet another, the movie has an excellent cast, and not just in terms of eye candy. Thus, I was hopeful as I inserted the Blu-Ray into my player.

I think the fingernails-on-the-chalkboard feeling began about fifteen minutes in. The problem was this: these characters meant nothing to me. The story, in a nutshell, centres on two young women summering in Barcelona. They are approached and individually seduced by a local artist, and matters are further complicated by his unstable ex-wife. All well and good. But then my inverted snob started to rear his ugly head.

The two young women had no visible means of support. One is studying for a Masters in Catalan culture (as an aside, all the Catalan characters strangely spoke Castilian Spanish, rather than Catalan, which is the dominant language of the region), while the other had just spent many months making a twelve minute film. In other words, they were trust fund kids, living off their fathers' money while arsing about in Europe. In yet other words, they were feckless young adults who had grown up with no idea of the realities of life or the issues that affect most people day to day. While they're mooning around, whinging about the pain of love and desire and commitment, real people are working their guts out and wondering if they can make the next mortgage payment. When the intrusive narrator (and that was one specifically bad part I neglected to mention) tells us how the artist, played by the excellent Javier Bardem, bought his beautiful house with its rambling rooms and gardens from another artist, he neglects to tell us how the artist paid for it. I don't know a single artist who can afford anything other than a normal standard of living, at best, let alone a life of luxury. Then along comes Penelope Cruz, playing a deranged ex-wife whose deep love for the artist drives her to violent rage while she drives us to slap her about the head and shoulders.

So, despite their good fortune in life, these four characters are not a happy bunch. I wish I could afford to be that bloody miserable. While I didn't grow up in poverty, things were tough. I know my mother often went without so that us kids could have basics like shoes or milk money for school. I grew up in a house where a can of Coca Cola was a special occasion luxury. By special occasion, I mean Christmas, or the time I nearly lost my little finger to a school gate, and I got a can of Coke for being brave as the doctors worked on my damaged hand. How can someone like me (not to mention anyone who grew up in real hardship) be expected to feel anything but contempt for a cast of characters who are so vacuous and self-absorbed as those in Vicky Cristina Barcelona? Is there a film genre specifically for those privileged few who have been cushioned from reality all their lives?

As I watched the movie, all the time resisting the urge to just press the Stop button, I couldn't help but think of recent online debates on literary versus genre fiction. There was the Esquire article, and Jason Pinter's response, and then this little gem brought to my attention by Lisa Kenney via Facebook. The argument in that second piece was basically that if the unwashed masses would only give literary fiction a chance, we might have an epiphany and forever leave the intellectual deserts of our crime and romance books, and discover the delightful oases of cerebrally challenging and important works at the higher end of the market.

Bullshit.

There is good and bad in all fiction, whatever the genre. And whatever some might like to think, literary is just another genre, a means of organising the shelves in bookstores. I have read as many works from the literary shelf as any other genre. Some of it was brilliant, some of it was tosh. But here's the problem with literary fiction versus other genres: bad literary fiction is insufferable. I simply can't endure the kind of middle-class navel gazing that bogs down the literary field. Good crime novels are just as capable of shining a light on the human condition as good literary fare. Bad thrillers may be unbelievable, shallow, or even manipulative, but bad literary novels are self-important and pretentious. And worst of all, bad literary novels, and bad art-house movies for that matter, are just plain dull.

The Hidden Depths of Genre

This post was inspired by two things. One of them was this very snotty and condescending piece at Esquire magazine's website, which masquerades as a review. Jason Pinter did a better job of critiquing this critique with his own much more intelligent piece.

The other was watching the movie Cloverfield over the weekend. On the surface, Cloverfield seems the very model of an Event Movie, a film driven more by hype and special effects than plot, dialogue or meaningful characterisation. A typical monster movie, in other words, albeit set apart from the crowd by the jerky camcorder photography (which transfers to the Blu-Ray format better than you might think). If we take Cloverfield at face value, then it is a brilliant example of its kind. It's breathlessly paced, lean as a 100-metre sprinter, and has all the crash-bang-wallop and scares you could want in its ninety minute duration.

But there's so much more to Cloverfield than the visceral spectacle of a monster levelling skyscrapers. While characterisation and real dialogue aren't a big part of the movie, and given its format and streamlined running time they aren't overly missed, it is certainly more than throwaway popcorn fare.

To anyone with half a brain, the movie's underlying theme is hardly subtle. But then neither was 9/11, the horrific event this film represents. Some scenes are so reminiscent of actual footage from 9/11 they must have been deeply disturbing for anyone who was there that day. Take, for instance, the scene where a group of people take refuge inside a drug store, sealing the doors just in time as a wall of dust and debris stampedes past the windows.

An obvious influence on Cloverfield comes from the other side of the world. The makers of this movie have openly stated it is an homage to Godzilla, a cinematic icon that has never successfully transferred to Western movies. But looking at the cultural context of Godzilla in Japan's history, there is a darker comparison. As Cloverfield acts as an analogy for 9/11, Godzilla is symbolic of Japan's coming to terms with the atomic bombs detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both the first Godzilla and Cloverfield portray monstrous entities laying waste to entire cities less than a decade after both the respective countries suffered terrible attacks that were unimaginable before they occurred. Thus, what seems the most absurd of cinematic genres - the monster movie - is used to explore a horror that can't be expressed in a more literal, realistic way.

(A quick note before anyone points it out - the Cloverfield and Godzilla analogies are well worn, but I wanted to use them as known examples.)

And horror, as a genre, has always been used to explore more serious themes, from the 19th Century fear of scientific progress (Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) to the pain of a developing adolescent sexuality (The Exorcist, Let the Right One In). Genre fiction, whether that be crime, horror, science fiction, romance, whatever, is perfectly capable of tackling themes that more literary work will struggle with.

In fact, the best genre fiction does exactly that; it shows us things that would be too difficult to contemplate in any other context. Remember that next time you feel belittled by some supercilious literary type who wouldn't stoop to such trash as genre fiction.