Kicking Sand Across
The Line: Blurring
the Genres
By Lyman Feero
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What is the greatest crime ever perpetrated against literature in recorded history? Genre classifications are of course; the literary version of taxonomic nomenclature.  The primary suspect in the commission of this crime is still up for debate. Many would argue it was created by the authors who chose to write similar works. Others would blame the publishing houses for wanting a quick and easily digestible means of marketing these similar works. Which is all well and good but the final suspects are you, the readers. Your thirst for stories that have traits in common may have created this atrocity.  Wherever the crime first occurred, it created a positive feedback loop that has been destroying the best in fictive writing for decades. Which came first? It’s a paltry question.

What we do know is that somewhere along the line publishers figured out the economics of publishing. Sell a hundred novels at four shillings or sell a thousand first chapters for a penny. Thus pulp fiction was born in the form of a penny dreadful. Now that the masses had their hands on affordable reading materials, the genres congealed in the spilt ink of the publishing houses’ floors. The overflowing coffers certainly provided a spark, but there’s little sense in going back and trying to find just when the synergy that breathed life into the genres occurred. Genres exist and writing will forever be tainted by them.

Since Aristotle’s Poetics, genre has held the creative endeavors of writers in a vice. Many writers find themselves hamstrung by the genres in which they make their living. They are either forced to toil in pigeonholed obscurity or wait until they are famous enough at what they do to step over the line. Stephen King used the brute force of his marketing presence to publish non-fiction, science fiction and fantasy. Most writers will never see that level of fame. They are left to regurgitate the latest trends in their genre, hoping to keep up, creativity stagnating.

Writers have battled against the tyranny of genres for decades. Renowned writer Robert A. Heinlein felt that the genre of science fiction was too narrow to encompass his works, which at the time contained very little science in their pages. He coined the phrase “speculative fiction” as a broader, more inclusive term for his writing. Writer Harlan Ellison championed the phrase as well to avoid being pigeonholed as a science fiction writer. His desire was to break out of science fiction’s genre conventions and escape the prejudice with which science fiction is often met by mainstream crtitcs.

One would think that in a global society such divisions within writing would have fallen by the wayside. Litfic vs. Popfic, Horror vs. Romance, Sci-fi vs. Crime. Such rigid lines are always artificial and contrived. Nothing that is inorganic to the craft can remain. Genre bloat and market exhaustion is beginning to have some effect on the larger more established genres. The readership of genre fiction eventually tire of the same stories repackaged with a different cover. Sales hit a plateau and start to decline because marginal writers are rewarded in a genre boom, leaving the good writers to seek greener pastures in more literary writing or under a different genre completely.

The walls are still high enough that genre jumping or genre crossing writers feel duty bound to explain when their projects deviate from what the masses have come to expect. Author David Anthony Durham (Gabriel’s Story, Pride of Carthage), previously known for historical fiction, had to field his share of questions when he seemingly departed from the ways of historical fiction for the realm of epic fantasy with his novels Acacia and The Other Lands. The journey isn’t always easy as David evidences in his blog article of Sunday, January 28, 2007, David, why fantasy?

“And every so often a ‘literary’ writer gets pulled over to the dark side, although they often have a hard time admitting that they’re dabbling in a genre: think TC Boyle and Margaret Atwood, for instance.

“There’s no guarantee that fantasy readers are going to like my take on the epic; nor will the literary audience necessarily embrace it as I hope they do. My publisher and agent both talked that through with me. They love what I’ve done and what I’m proposing to do, but they admit it’s still a tricky proposition.”

Durham is just one of the many writers that are starting to realize that it is possible to kick sand over the line. His efforts were met with critical acclaim and a following of loyal fans. It shows that the genres are malleable. Durham took his skills in historical fiction and told the histories of an imaginary people in an imaginary land. The books are neither fantasy nor historical fiction, rather they harken to an older sensibility when great stories were told any way an author saw fit.

There is a certain freedom of thought that comes with ignoring literary or marketing boundaries. There is less of a fear in today’s publishing market that a story won’t sell if it can’t be readily assigned a genre. It is a return to the more literary approach to selling fiction. As the genres fade so will the genre ghettoes, as there will be no mortar with which to build walls. It is frightening for some writers to abandon the old definitions and see their work in the light of multiple genres. The temptation is to fall back on the old formulas rather than trusting one’s instincts and break new ground.

More and more often works of cross-genre fiction are receiving awards and literary acclaim. Aspects of detective and crime novels, thrillers, science fiction and fantasy, horror, westerns, comics, and other subgenres worm their way in and out of each other’s sacred grounds. Jonathan Lethem’s cross-genre novel The Fortress of Solitude features a pair of comic-book-loving boys who are granted superpowers. Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union is an alternate history with a hardboiled twist. Not to be overlooked is Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer winning novel The Road, a post-apocalyptic thriller complete with cannibal zombies.

Ursula K. Le Guin, legendary science fiction and fantasy writer, states in an essay on genre, “Much of the best fiction written doesn’t fit in the genres anymore, but combines, crosses, miscegenates, transgresses, and reinvents them.” This is where we find ourselves at the dawn of the 21st century. Many would say it is a natural evolution. Rather it is a de-evolution. Genres like red giant stars have expanded to the point of supernova. The genreless and cross-genred writers anxiously await the cataclysm. They will be the ones to collect the cast off, the flotsam and jetsam that will shape their new (old) brand of fiction. It will be a time when writers can answer the question “What do you write?” with the answer “I write.” Until that time, the more adventurous will keep kicking the sand over the line, obscuring it with works that are unique and unfettered by the criminal minds behind the genres.

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Lyman Feero graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine in 2006. His critical thesis focused on genre marketing and genre theory. His fiction has appeared in publications such as Bizarre Bazaar, The Blue Lady, Thuglit and the anthology Sex, Thugs and Rock & Roll.

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