There’s this notion that labelling something with a genre somehow cheapens it, however so much stuff that’s “literary” is sort of fantastical (or speculative or, well, pick one). I mean, what’s 100 Years of Solitude, if not a kind of fantasy? The weirder thing, really, is that the aversion to labeling something like Vampires in the Lemon Grove as fantasy serves to keep a lot of readers away who would be otherwise be very interested in the story.

From The Guardian.

It’s always a problem when one of literature’s big beasts wanders off the reservation into the badlands of genre. The latest to blunder through the electric barriers erected around the safe zone is two-time Booker prize nominee David Mitchell, whose new book Slade House is undeniably a haunted house story. Or, as the Chicago Tribune put it, his “take on a classic ghost story”. As if the thousands of genre ghost stories written every year by horror writers weren’t also one individual’s take on that classic form.

This right here, though:

Writing a werewolf novel because you think it will sell, then patronising people who love werewolf novels, isn’t a smart marketing strategy – but it’s amazing how many smart writers are doing just this.

The kid that’s interested in fantasy or science fiction that only haunts those parts of the book store misses a lot of really great stuff. But those sections are full of hacks, right? Ugh. Genre shouldn’t be short for “this one plot and these same characters with different names”. I mean, it’s not like the literature section isn’t full of books about men’s important boners.

Genre should be a tool for discovery, not a gatekeeping device. Calling House of Leaves literature isn’t going to do me any favors if I want to browse through books that are meant to leave me unsettled. This, of course, goes back to Boing Boing’s post the other day about how genres should be more like tags and less like hierarchical categories.

Update: thanks Ian for reminding me about Ursula K. Le Guin’s perfect essay on genre.