“Only on a
varied diet can we live.
The pious
fable and the dirty story
Share in the total literary glory.”
-W.H. Auden
Scary
stories are some of the oldest narratives of the human world. They serve the
purpose of being warning notes in our societies, letting us know of dangers
that should be avoided. Western culture abounds with the concept of the haunted
house, the lonely lane, or the mysterious wood. Mostly these legends are local,
tied to specific locales, but occasionally they gain a wider audience, are
written down, and become part of our narrative consciousness. We all have our
own stories about ghosts and enjoy reliving them; however, they number amongst
the most reviled of our literary canon.
Western
written culture, in tandem with capitalist notions of marketing, has built a
literary divide, creating a subtle elitism of the written word. If you write a
book about ghosts, or spaceships, or elves, country-house murders, or even
fictional events set within a real historical environment, your work will be
categorized as ‘popular-’, ‘speculative-’ or ‘genre fiction’. It will be called
‘fantasy’, or ‘sci-fi’; an ‘historical romance’ or a ‘whodunnit’. And in the
average bookshop it will be kept far away from the more ‘worthy’ realm of
“literary fiction”.
In
Europe, traditionally, such distinctions were hardly ever made (it’s been
awhile since I was in Europe looking at bookshops, so things may have changed,
but bear with me). Books were enjoyed on the basis solely of their own merit –
those which entertained were valued, along with those of a particular wordsmithing
flair. To be sure there was a certain parochial nature to the selection
process, however notions of relative social status were largely discounted. I
recall back in the 80s reading lists of what were considered the most relevant
artistic mediums in France, which listed ‘Television’ at number six (in the
days before Reality TV) and ‘Comics’ even higher. A Parisian list of the most
important novels of world literature (c.1987) listed Agatha Christie’s The Murder of
Roger Ackroyd in the top ten (as it should be). There is (or, at least, was)
an egalitarianism of European book appreciation that is definitely
short-changed in the English-speaking world.
That
the division between literary and genre fiction is arbitrary, can be observed
any time that you wander into a bookstore, and it creates a constant headache
for those who work in such places. Where do you put Kurt Vonnegut’s books?
Literature, or Science Fiction? How about Donna Tart? Literature, or Crime
Fiction? Colleen McCullough certainly goes in the Australian section, but as
Literature, or Historical Romance? Is Doris Lessing Literature, Memoir, or
Sci-Fi? In these days of Margaret Atwood’s celebrated stories of a dystopian
future built on the injustices of the patriarchy, where do you draw the line?
Should such a line be drawn at all?
Stephen
King is arguably the most feted horror author of the Western English-speaking
world and he champions the notion of the relegated fictive form. He proudly pops
his blue collar and claims the literature of the common person as his own
territory and one worth celebrating. Unfortunately, claiming the ‘low ground’
does little to underscore the worth of much which this umbrella covers. The
best writer on the planet is damned by being classified as a popular author;
bad genre writers are doubly damned for being bad at bad writing. However, many
of these writers form the bedrock of our zeitgeists and become the touchstones
to bygone ages. Who can talk of the Noughties without mentioning Fifty
Shades of Grey? Where does a discussion of the Nineties go without talking
about Stephenie Meyers? Stephen Donaldson was the best-known fantasy author of
the Eighties; Sidney Sheldon, Jackie Collins and Harold Robbins steamily dominated
the Seventies; Jacqueline Sussan and James Michener exploded in the Sixties;
Alistair MacLean and Grace Metalious were bestsellers of the Fifties; Dennis
Wheatley sold thousands of books from the Thirties onwards. These authors are
crucial to our understanding of the social history of the world and yet none of
them is remotely considered a ‘literary’ writer.
Conversely,
there are authors classed as ‘literary’ from whom literary elitists would fervently
like to distance themselves. Michael Arlen’s The Green Hat was the
single most phenomenal bestseller in English of the 1920s but who even
remembers it today (apart from vintage literature tragics like me)? John
Masters was a celebrated literary author, but for a long time now has been considered
passé. John Galsworthy has seen a recent revival in interest, riding the
coattails of Downton Abbey, but he was also dealt the cut direct by the
literary elitists. Being part of the literary ‘cool kids’ crowd is a precarious
situation in which to find one’s self, because there are fashionable trends in
literature which must be observed. Conversely, the fans of popular authors keep
their works alive, it seems, forever.
A
thing that literary fiction readers fail to realise is that their preferred
type of writing also has its own tropes and styles, often dependent upon
contemporary political and social trends; it is a genre in and of itself. Claiming
artistry of execution is no argument: there is no quality of writing in a
literary novel that cannot be matched by the style of a popular author
somewhere. You throw (Booker Prize winner) Eleanor Catton at me; I’ll respond
with (Costa Short Story Award winner) Jess Kidd. Gustave Flaubert may have effetely
wrestled with writing one sentence a day (on a good day), while workmanlike Stephen
King pounds out 1,000 words every twenty-four hours, but this is all just
technique, a means to an end, and each writer’s operating style is different,
not a means by which to criticize them. How it is accomplished shouldn’t
reflect at all upon the finished piece. And neither should the content.
Genre
fiction, as defined by the literary, is a sub-genre of fictional writing.
Unfortunately, I would have to disagree. What we now call ‘Fantasy’ or ‘Speculative
Fiction’ (also known as ‘Science Fiction’) used to be part of an earlier
literary movement known as ‘Weird Literature’, with such luminaries as Arthur Machen,
Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce and H.P. Lovecraft. Before that, we had the ‘Gothic
Novel’ which in turn played off the ‘Penny Bloods’, or ‘Penny Dreadfuls’, and
in America the ‘Pulps’, which entertained the reading public. Tucked in amongst
all this we saw Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins devise the (modern,
Western,) ‘Crime Fiction’ novel, which was enthusiastically praised by none
other than Charles Dickens, and who was not too proud to experiment with the
form himself, giving us The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Before these,
starting with Don Quixote – the so-called “first modern novel” - the ‘Historical
Romance’ was the favourite form of fictional literary entertainment. But let’s broaden
our parameters and go even further back:
The
first ever crime fiction novels - the
adventures of Judge Dee - were written and published in the Chinese Yuan
Dynasty (1279-1368) under Kublai Khan and the Mongol overlords of that country;
the heroic epic of two noble houses drawn into a gods-manipulated conflict –
the Mahabharata – dates from the 4th Century BC; the
fantastic travels of Odysseus, attributed to Homer, date from the 8th
Century BC; and the Epic of Gilgamesh was widely distributed on clay
tablets throughout the Sumerian Empire around 5500 BC. And locally, here in
Australia, even older than any of these, Indigenous stories about fantastic
Bushland monsters - primarily the Bunyip - are said to have been cautionary
tales warning people to avoid treacherous stretches of water. So, who exactly
is the ‘sub-genre’ in all of this?
It
has been said in the past that the best writers write about what they know.
M.R. James, the famous British academic and ghost story writer, took this
further: his stories are drawn from his breadth of knowledge about Medieval
England and his fusty academic life; in such bucolic surroundings he sketched
the ordinary world then “let the horrid thing put out its head”. In this vein,
I have launched imagined horrors amongst the things and places I know about and
I am not ashamed to count myself a writer of genre fiction. If you’re
entertained, then my work here is done.
*****
I
know I’ve been a bit quiet of late but there have been other things on the
boil: I have published a new book! This is a series of creepy tales set in the
Blue Mountains of New South Wales, where I live and work. The book is
available in hardcopy only at the moment, but will be coming out as an e-Book in
due course.
If
you would like a copy, there are three ways to get hold of it:
First,
badger your local bookshop and tell them that they can order it for you from
Amazon through Ingram, the worldwide Print-On-Demand company. Your local
bookstore will attract a good trade discount and can get more copies later if
it goes well for them (most book shops that sell new books will already have an
account with Ingram’s). The Amazon KDP ISBN that they need to quote is 978-1-925959-58-1 and the direct link for ordering is as
follows:
Now that you’ve done all the hard work for
them, they should be very happy to get it in for you! Prices will be in US
dollars, but they should able to massage the cost for you somewhat.
Second,
if you’re ordering directly and buying from outside of Australia,
use the following link to whistle up a copy:
This will also be priced in US dollars and
the Amazon KDP ISBN is 978-1-925959-59-8.
Third,
if you’re buying direct from within Australia, use the following
link to get a copy direct from the publishers, MoshPit Publishers, at the The
MoshShop:
The price quoted there is somewhat higher
than the RRP (AUD$24.95), but the extra charge covers postage to anywhere within
the country.
