"Trite-and-True," but It's Not What He Thinks

It's about time for another "genre novels v. literary novels" spat, and Arthur Krystal provides it in an essay for The New Yorker that argues "genre" fiction cannot be as good as "literary" fiction.

There are the usual problems with his thesis. For one thing, literary fiction is a genre; implying that it is not is like arguing that some people don't speak with accents. For another, the boundaries between genres are not always as rigid as people think.  The biggest issue, however, is that Krystal relies on the No True Scotsman fallacy:

[I]t’s not plotting that distinguishes literary from genre fiction. After all, literary fiction can be plotted just as vigorously as genre fiction (though it doesn’t have to be). There’s no narrative energy lacking in Richard Russo, Richard Powers, Jonathan Franzen, David Mitchell, Denis Johnson, Annie Proulx, Gish Jen, Jhumpa Lahiri, and so on. A good mystery or thriller isn’t set off from an accomplished literary novel by plotting, but by the writer’s sensibility, his purpose in writing, and the choices he makes to communicate that purpose. There may be a struggle to express what’s difficult to convey, and perhaps we’ll struggle a bit to understand what we’re reading. No such difficulty informs true genre fiction; and the fact that some genre writers write better than some of their literary counterparts doesn’t automatically consecrate their books. . . . Genre, served straight up, has its limitations, and there’s no reason to pretend otherwise.

Krystal appears to be arguing that if a mystery novel has more than just good plotting, it no longer belongs in the genre category (again, all books fall into one genre or another, but for simplicity's sake I will use the term as Krystal does).  He makes this explicit when he talks about highly praised genre novels:

It seems to me that Chabon, Egan, and Ishiguro don’t so much work in genre as with genre, and “All the Pretty Horses” is no more a western than “1984” is science fiction. Nor can we in good conscience call John Le Carré’s “The Honorable Schoolboy” or Richard Price’s “Lush Life” genre novels.

Why can't we?  Because they are great?  That's an absurd way to classify genre novels -- science fiction or westerns or mysteries that are not too good to be called science fiction or westerns or mysteries. (I'm afraid to ask what he thinks about romances.  But then I am confident he would never call Pride and Prejudice a romance.)

I could give examples of genre books that are far more than just their excellent plotting (Neuromancer, The Name of the Rose, Jane Eyre), that are considered masterpieces.  I could also point to genre books that "transcend" their genre the way Krystal would have it, like Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, by subverting tropes and making the reader work, but which aren't actually that good (that's why the series has been lingering on my "What I'm Reading" list -- I see what Snicket is trying to do, but he can't sustain it).  It wouldn't matter, though, because by Krystal's definition great books cannot be genre.

Towards the end, Krystal writes:

What I’m trying to say is that “genre” is not a bad word, although perhaps the better word for novels that taxonomically register as genre is simply “commercial.” Born to sell, these novels stick to the trite-and-true, relying on stock characters whose thoughts spool out in Lifetime platitudes. There will be exceptions, as there are in every field, but, for the most part, the standard genre or commercial novel isn’t going to break the sea frozen inside us.

 Here's the thing -- most literary novels aren't going to break that frozen sea either (and different books will break that sea for different people).  Only a tiny fraction of books last beyond their generation, let alone make it into the canon.  It seems foolish to further reduce that fraction by eliminating entire genres.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Catwoman

Or more precisely, my love of Catwoman and my hatred of how she is sometimes depicted.  Catwoman is a fabulous character -- tough, smart, sexy, morally ambiguous enough to be interesting without being evil, and someone who can hold her own against (or with) Batman over and over.  Originally she was an antagonist and sometime-ally who did what she did for the thrill of it, but as part of the general "refrigeration" of female characters in comics, Batman Year One established her as a former prostitute from a troubled childhood, who turned to crime to improve her lot.  For better or for worse, Miller's background for her has stuck ever since.

That has not prevented her from being a great female character.  At least, sometimes, and that's what's so frustrating.  In the 90s I started reading the Catwoman comic, because I liked the character and I was finding my way into comics, and because I loved the idea of a monthly title devoted to a woman.  The problem was that the comic really wasn't very good at all.  There was a lot of faux feminism, mainly in depictions of Catwoman fighting against evil men trying to keep her down, but any actual feminism was undercut by the way she was drawn (total cheesecake), the way men good and bad related to her (always a subcurrent, or heck current, of sex involved), and the way other women were depicted (the worst being a storyline that was supposedly about unfair beauty standards, but was really about how old women are literally insane with jealousy).  After a few years I couldn't take it anymore, and I quit the comic.

Well, a few weeks ago I finally made the connection -- the artist responsible for the 1993-1999 Catwoman was Jim Balent, the "talent" responsible for the abhorrent Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose. (For those of you with strong constitutions, this highly entertaining recap of a notorious Tarot storyline illustrates just how pornographically insane that comic can be.  So not SFW.) No wonder I felt like taking a shower after reading an issue!

Fortunately, Balent's run ended, and after various cataclysmic events in Gotham, Catwoman's comic started again, this time with writer Ed Brubaker and artist Darwin Cooke.  Have I mentioned how much I love Cooke?  This run was a much needed corrective against the 90s Catwoman, and I loved every issue.  This was a comic I'd be delighted to give a young girl (well, not too young).

Of course, with the huge reboot that was D.C.'s "New 52," apparently the powers-that-be decided that the current Catwoman just wasn't sexy enough.  The cover of first issue of the new comic promised us we were back to the cheesecake art, the bizarre anatomy, the omnipresent sex, and the total objectification of an awesome female character, and that promise was fulfilled by the last page.  Laura Hudson wrote an excellent piece detailing just why this (and the way D.C. treated other female characters) was so offensive.  (It's also NSFW, but this time in the service of feminist critique.)

One step forward, two steps back.

Easter Fail

A lemon cake seems like an appropriate dessert for Easter dinner, right? A Simple Lemon Cake, made in one pan, with simmered and pureed lemon slices would be both easy and delicious, right? And the recipe is from the fine folks at Everyday Food Magazine, a part of the Martha Stewart empire, so it has to be a good recipe, right?

Wrong. Apparently the recipe testers were absent the day this recipe was approved for publication. I followed the directions exactly, and poured the batter into a nine inch round pan as directed, but noticed immediately that there was too much batter for the pan. For a moment I thought of transferring the batter to a ten inch pan, but then I thought "Nah, these guys are professionals, and I'm not. I'd better do what the recipe says." It's not the first time I've made the mistake of not following my instincts.

After the directed 40 minutes in the 400 degree oven (too high for cakes, but what do I know?), the cake was golden brown on the outside and totally raw on the inside. Another ten minutes, and now the cake was over-browned and cracked, but the skewer I used as a cake tester was still pulling up raw batter. After calling up Beadmom in a panic, we decided to lower the temperature to 350, cover the cake with foil to prevent more browning, and cook another 10-15 minutes. This time the tester pulled up moist crumbs, like it was supposed to. I pulled the cake out and set it one the rack to cool. And it collapsed ten minutes later.

Doesn't this look appetizing?

After 20 minutes, I inverted it out of the pan and let it cool completely, but with little hope. And when my friend stopped by that evening and we cut into it, this is what we saw:
Technically it was cooked, but it was very dense, almost the constistency of fudge. Bread-y, kinda raw fudge. Yum.

I go online to the Martha Stewart website, and lo and behold, they completely changed the recipe by cutting most of the ingredients by one third, adding and removing a few others, and changing the cooking temperature, so that it is now a very different recipe. Was there an explanatory note on the changes? Of course not. Did the fine people at Everyday Food let their print customers know? Of course not. I checked subsequent issues, and there was no errata.

Wrong pan size, wrong cooking temperature -- these are major errors in a recipe, exactly the kind that are supposed to be caught by the recipe testers that all cooking publishers should have. So what the hell happened? I was not at all pleased to waste my time and money on this, and for company, too. Good thing I had a strawberry-rhubarb pie in the freezer.

Word.

Light in the Dark.

They Just Can't Get No Respect

I love the New York Times Book Review; it and the Sunday puzzle are my favorite parts of the NYT, and I impatiently wait every Saturday morning for the newspaper to hit the curb so I can go fetch it in my pajamas and settle in to reading it when I am not refereeing toy disputes between the Beadboys. The Book Review, however, is rather notorious for ignoring genre fiction. So this week I took note of the essay on the last page, Picking a Genre -- a mildly amusing look at different genres. And even here, certain genres get short shrift. For example, romance is in the illustration, but not discussed. Science fiction and fantasy are not mentioned at all, unless you count the blurb on "fabulism" or magic realism. And so continues a longstanding tradition of ignoring genre.

Remember when the Book Review announced Dave Itzkoff would be doing a regular column (Across the Universe) on science fiction? I nearly cheered out loud, but apparently the NYT's definition of "regular" differs from mine -- according to the NYT archives, he has written a grand total of 14 reviews and articles on science fiction (depending on how you classify certain novels), and none in the last year. They dropped the "Across the Universe bit back in 2006. A perfect illustration of the Book Review's disdain for genre fiction, and rather foolish given the growing popularity (and mainstreaming) of science fiction.

The Book Review does review mysteries (called "crime", I guess for the same reasons some publishers try to gussy up scifi/fantasy by calling it "speculative fiction"), but the books reviewed are overwhelmingly of a type. Because God knows it's not worth reading if it doesn't have a brooding, lonely recovering alcoholic with health issues, a tortured past, a dead lover, a dismal apartment, and too much familiarity with the seedy underbelly of the city. That's it for genre fiction, however; scifi is barely touched and I think the editors think the civilization would collapse if they reviewed a romance. Reportedly, an editor once said, in explanation, "Well, we have to draw the line somewhere." Why? What does that mean? Isn't the point of the Book Review to highlight both "important" books and good books, books the readers of the NYT would be interested in? Are they aware of the diversity of taste in the city? Are they actually arguing that it is impossible to find a well-written, smart book in certain genres? That sort of attitude just encourages the idea that the NYT is a snooty paper for the upper class. Which it kind of is, if you only look at the styles section and the book review and the way they ignore local news. But its front page journalism is far superior to that of other local papers, and more to the point, they review populist music, shows, and movies all the time. So why not populist books? Good populist books -- there is a lot of schlock in scifi and romance (and "crime" and fiction and non-fiction . . .) and I think readers would love to be pointed to the best of the genres. It's simple, really; at the very least, once a month they could omit a review of yet another quickly written, irrelevant in a year, political book (or just cut it in half) and insert a page or half page with quick reviews in a genre. C'mon, NYT, you can do it. It might even increase readership and ad revenue.

Bizarre Marketing Decisions, or, Why You Should Never Judge a Book by its Cover

I don't tend to read many romance novels, not because I disdain the genre, but because I have such a hard time finding books that I like. For whatever reason, I'm more skilled at identifying and avoiding dross in the mystery and scifi genres than in romance. Which is why I like Smart Bitches Trashy Books, and when, in one of the comment threads, I read about a romance novel with a "meta" twist, I immediately ordered it from Amazon: Hero Worship by Dawn Calvert.

Meet Andi. Tired of all the bad dates she has suffered, she decides one night to curl up with a regency romance containing a hero she considers to be her ideal man. One wish later, she is actually in the book, meeting this man. The problem? She's not the heroine, she's just a minor character (and a simpering, weak-willed one at that). The rest of the book is about her attempt to change the story so she gets the man, fighting both an author who has decided on another heroine and characters who don't want Andi rocking the boat. If she's lucky, Andi might even end up in another book with an author (like, say, Ms. Calvert) more supportive of her characters' wishes.

Hero Worship is a romance novel, so getting Andi together with her man is the main focus of the book. All the meta, break-the-fourth-wall stuff is just a (novel, heh) way to make that happen. But that doesn't change the fact that it is a neat concept which plays with that old lit-crit idea of who really "creates" a text -- the author? The reader? The characters? Throw in some Barthes and Foucault, maybe some Jauss, and you have the beginnings of a senior thesis.

So what book-cover did the publishers use to illustrate a text that touches on major lit-crit ideas?
I was floored when I first saw the cover. Not only does this cover not give any indication whatsoever of the unusual premise of the book, it doesn't even accurately represent the Regency setting; men of the early 19th century did not loll around naked very often; certainly there is no naked lolling in the book itself. At most, this cover indicates that the book is in the romance genre, but it does even that badly. Where are the watercolors? The windswept hair? The wild moors and rearing horses and swooning heroines? If the publishers wanted to ensure that people could identify at a glance this book as a romance novel (with no attention paid to its unusual elements, because who cares about the individual book itself), surely they could have gone whole hog and had a proper "clinch" cover. Instead, we get the torso of a not-very-interesting man staring blankly into the distance on a beige (beige!) background. FAIL.