• Home
  • Blog
  • News
  • Events
  • About the Author
  • About the Book
  • Bookstore
  • Reviews
  • Press/Media
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Blog
  • News
  • Events
  • About the Author
  • About the Book
  • Bookstore
  • Reviews
  • Press/Media
  • Contact
D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

Genre Wars

8/29/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Genre.
 
Like many words (and other things) we take for granted, it’s kind of funny looking when you stop to actually examine it, isn’t it? Mr Webster says it’s French (which I already knew), coming from the Latin genus, which means kind, as in type (which I also knew). But what it all boils down to is that we humans have a weirdly obsessive need to categorize virtually everything, whether it’s moving or not. We want --- hell, need --- to be able to stick a label on it and neatly stow it away in its proper compartment. Otherwise, the reasoning seems to go, the darkly malign forces of higgledy-piggledy would reign supreme, and we can’t have that.
 
But sometimes, this proclivity tends to generate strange, almost nonsensical results. For example...
 
On my most recent foray to the local bookstore --- a trip always fraught with two separate and very real perils, which I can detail later, if you’d like --- I picked up the final installment in author Jack Whyte’s very fine historical fiction trilogy on Scottish heroes William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. Whyte has written other really excellent works (a series called a Dream of Eagles, dealing with the Arthurian legend, and a trilogy on the Knights Templar), both of which I thoroughly enjoyed and can highly recommend. But my purpose with this post is not really to extol his books, but rather to muse on a comment he makes in his author’s note at the beginning of his latest tale.
 
By his own admission, Whyte’s works fall under a broad classification the publishing industry calls “historical fiction” --- but as he correctly notes, North American bookstores refuse to recognize it as a genre. Historical fiction therefore tends to get lumped into one of two sections in the bookstore: either Fantasy and Science Fiction or Literature, which as a giant, generic catchall has to be one of the most unhelpful categories bookstores have ever devised. Whyte notes that he gets thrown into the Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF) section because his first series was Arthurian, even though he went out of his way not to include what we would think of as common Arthurian ‘fantasy’ elements... the magical sword delivered by a goddess, the wizard able to perform all sorts of magic, etc. etc. (Rather ironic, really.)
               
Mr. Whyte thoughtfully provides a definition for historical fiction, saying “the best of it is a transcription of thoroughly researched records of genuine historical events embellished, emphasized, and made more appreciable to modern readers with one single element of historical commentary that is taboo among academic and classical historians. That element is speculation.” (Except he doesn’t mean speculation as in speculative fiction, which seems to be gaining traction as another term for F&SF.) So, for example, a historian might write about the reign of the Roman emperor Claudius, discussing people, places, dates and events. A writer of historical fiction --- such as Robert Graves --- would take those events and craft among the characters conversations and personal dealings, interactions we have no knowledge of, and wind up with two really great novels (I, Claudius and Claudius the God) that are faithful to the historical record while doing a great deal of speculation. In some ways, it’s not unlike a term used in the model railroading community, where something similar is referred to as “prototype freelancing” --- and could also be applied to the writing of fantasy, my own personal interest. But that’s a discussion to be had another day... which we’ll have.
 
In the meantime, perhaps a takeaway from all this is that we should avoid trying to pigeon-hole everything into broad stereotypical categories... and be prepared to look at things in different ways. That’s what C.S. Lewis was referring to when he said, “That is one of the functions of art: to present what the narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude.”
 
Or put another way... what was that Apple slogan awhile back? “Think different”? Good idea.
 
(Although, as an English teacher, I have to say I deplore the word crime involved. Pfft.)
 
 
P.S. What’s that, you say? The Perils of the Bookstore? Ah, yes. I did promise to elucidate, didn’t I? Thanks for reminding me. The first Peril is the Obvious One: so many books, and I want to read them all. Well, almost all. Which means buying them. My wallet recoils in panic while the clerks leer knowingly as soon as I step over the store’s threshold. The second Peril is also rather an Obvious One --- to a writer, anyway --- and ‘tis a cause for profound depression: again, so many books, but... how are my own offerings ever going to get noticed ‘midst the tsunami of new (and old) material? Of such existential crises are a writer’s life made.
 
Sigh.
 


0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    D.R. Ranshaw's Blog

    Author of The Annals of Arrinor series.  Lover of great literature, fine wine, and chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.

    Archives

    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly