How Zombies and Superheroes Conquered Highbrow Fiction, article.
I've long been a bit puzzled and slightly dismayed by the sharp segregation between "genre" writings and "literature", where the latter strictly was about "real" people with "real" lives. In other words, ad executives struggling with difficult relationships with their father who is dying of cancer, and other riveting stuff, not. So it is nice to see these artificial walls finally beginning to crumble.
The self-professed hi literati has traditionally seen anything with SF or fantasy aspects as being "genre" and second-rate at best, not worthy of serious consideration on any level. This is stupid in the extreme, both on the face of it, and looking at the fact that many of the most classic and revered writings are SF or fantasy, Shakespeare has ghosts, Jules Verne wrote SF, Mark Twain wrote about conversations with the devil and speculated about the reality of the universe, Dante visited Hell and Heaven, Dracula and Frankenstein are amongst the most classic books ever written, and so on.
5 comments:
You don't get it. It has to do with what's going on under the surface - with most genre writing, nothing.
This zombie shit is ridiculous and won't be read by anyone with a brain. It's cheap and stupid.
Careful with that snark, Anonymous. It might turn into a boojum and you may "softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again."
What's under mainstream literature? Bad sex and people behaving like soap characters.
What's under genre fiction? People unearthing wonders and living among gods.
Spoken like someone with no familiarity with literature. This type of zombie shit is for people like you raised on comic books. Reminds me of an episode of Cheers where Frasier tried to introduce the morons at the bar to literature but had to jazz it up. I guess that was just a sad prediction of the future.
Enjoy your crap, dunce.
Holistic business therapist? HAhahahahahahahahahahahaha!
And shouldn't it say "unpublished hack writer"?
I've never read a Jane Austen novel but I suspect while it might not be my cup of tea I'm not interested in a version with zombies either.
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