Let Genre be Genre!

Why are we judging genre fiction by the standards of Modernism? These standards are historically conditioned, apply to a totally different kind of fiction, and are as arbitrary therefore as any critical standards are.

What we get from Modernism are valuing the short work over the long and the self-contained work, ie stand-alone, over the ongoing multi-volume work. Why do I say we get these standards from Modernism? Because before Modernism, highly-valued works of fiction were very long -- consider Doestoevsky -- and often on- going publications, such as Tristam Shandy. "Sequels" and roman fleuve abounded: Trollope's Palliser novels, Balzac's Comedie Humaine are only a few examples. Certainly in what we may call the "Golden Age of Reading," from the 1750s to the invention of TV, popular entertainment fiction as well as literature came in long, sprawling forms. Consider all those three volume novels, written by and for women as well, and the ongoing sagas of Sir Walter Scott and the long novels of Charles Dickens.

Thus, is it a good idea to apply strict Modernist critical standards to genre fiction, which, aimed at a popular audience as it is, has different goals than Modernist literature? Of course, when I speak of fiction as having "goals," I'm being Modernist to the core and following the New Criticism idea that each work of literature should be judged on the basis of how it achieves what its author set out to do with it.

Stand back for more gross oversimplification! We should, according to this school of criticism, look at each work as a thing in itself and judge it on the basis of its inherent purpose. Ie, if a book is meant to be entertaining, the critic should say whether or not it succeeds at entertaining, not whether or not it is Great Art. Conversely, a book that attempts to achieve artistic goals that comes off as a good read and nothing more is a failure by its own terms, no matter how moving it may be to read.

It could well be that by applying Modernist standards to SF and Fantasy, we are making it impossible to arrive at some real standards of quality, ie, standards that fit. How are we going to analyze the undoubted drek out there if we have the wrong tools? If, for instance, a critic dismisses most of a multi- volume work as "filler," simply because it's a multi-volume work and for no reason more, how is that critic going to know real filler when he or she sees it?

Because there is filler out there, and padding, and all that Bad Stuff. However, the careful building up of an alien culture in order to make the actions of alien characters comprehensible is not filler; nor more is the creation of a historical background for a culture in order to give the events that happen their depth; and finally, the depiction of relationships between characters in these exotic contexts is to many readers and writers the core of a book, not "romantic fluff" or more filler.

All right, I want to read what you said about Modernism after all.

But wait! There's more about genre here.