When I wrote last, I pretty clearly placed literature above the level of genre fiction. That might be a little harsh. It's likely to offend fans of weird fiction, science fiction, horror, and so on. It might sound a little snobbish, too. People read for lots of different reasons. Every one is a good one, I think, unless you're reading a book on how to murder your spouse. Fans of genre fiction read for entertainment and escape, but the same can be said of those who read more nearly literary works. We read to escape from our own lives and to learn about the lives of others, to encounter them in the times and places in which they have lived. In that way, every book is a fantasy, and all reading an adventure. How many bookplates and library posters have you seen in which a book is compared to a sailing ship? That ship takes us away from our own lives and homes and countries, even to the other side of the world. Although there are literary novels of adventure, we think of adventure as a type of genre fiction. So maybe every good book is a type of fantasy, a story of adventure, something that takes us away and allows us to escape from our own lives, if only for a while. Remember that the first pulp magazine, a magazine of all fiction, was called The Argosy and was named after a ship of adventure.
None of that takes away from the fact that genre fiction, especially weird fiction, horror, science fiction, and even detective stories, are very often done in poor taste. Fiction of this type can be extremely and gratuitously violent, bloody, and gory. Too many readers seem to like it that way. They seem to seek out and actually enjoy bloody horrors. There is also a lot of salacious writing in these genres. Readers seem to seek out that kind of thing, too. And beyond that, there is the simple crime of just plain bad writing. Fans and scholars of genre fiction want their subject matter to be elevated to the level of literature and art, but you can't have it both ways. It can't be good if it's bad. It can't be considered at a high level if it exists at a low one. People love H.P. Lovecraft. His writing has received a fair amount of scholarly attention. Even Leslie Fiedler mentioned Lovecraft in his book Love and Death in the American Novel (1960). But none of that changes the fact that Lovecraft was guilty of some pretty bad writing. And he's at the top of the heap. What must be below him? Anyway, if you're going to defend genre fiction as being good or in good taste, you might be forced into the same situation as William Gaines, who said before Congress that a comic book cover showing a man holding a woman's severed head was in fact in good taste.
Speaking of Lovecraft, a few years ago, I read a book called Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff (2016). I meant to write about it at the time. I still might. There are lots of literary and other kinds of offenses in Mr. Ruff's novel. I won't go into that right now. I'll just say that within ten minutes of finishing it, I began reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (2003), and I found more good writing on the first page or two of Ms. Atwood's novel than in all of Lovecraft Country. Although Margaret Atwood derides science fiction as "talking squids in outer space" (she's looking at you, Admiral Ackbar!), Oryx and Crake is science fictional, for it is both dystopian and post-apocalyptic. But as a literary work, it exists at a higher level than things like Lovecraft Country. And I'm afraid that an excerpt from Lovecraft Country would fit right in with the current Weird Tales. Anything Margaret Atwood writes might not, as she understands (I think) that only a woman can be a woman. That's not a popular opinion in popular fiction or our current popular culture.
This is not to say that what is called literature is necessarily good, or better, or more enjoyable, or written at a higher level than is genre fiction. It's also not to say that what is called literature cannot be bloody, violent, salacious, and so on. Not long ago, I read a novel called Tremor of Intent by Anthony Burgess (1966). On its surface, Tremor of Intent is a spy novel, or a type of genre fiction, but I think Burgess had a more serious intent in writing it. (The American first edition was subtitled "An Eschatological Spy Novel.") Tremor of Intent is literary: I think Anthony Burgess was a good writer with a high purpose. Nonetheless, it has one of the most gruesome scenes I have ever read in a novel of any kind, so gruesome as to be fascinating in its gruesomeness. The point is that just because a work is considered literary doesn't mean that it does not also have things in common with genre fiction. The opposite can be true, too.
Anthony Burgess was a near contemporary of John Osborne, who wrote, among other things, Look Back in Anger (1956). Osborne was one of the "angry young men" of the 1950s. I read his play a long time ago. I found his protagonist Jimmy to be cruel, unpleasant, unlikable, unsympathetic. Look Back in Anger is considered a realist play. It followed in a line going back to the nineteenth century, including the naturalism of the nineteenth century. Naturalism and realism are considered literary. I guess we're supposed to find value in works of this type. Realism caught on well in America. One example that has leapt into my mind is The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren (1949), another novel that I found to be pretty unpleasant. And just a couple of weeks ago, I read an anthology called Nelson Algren's Own Book of Lonesome Monsters: 13 Masterpieces of Black Humor (1962), and I can tell you this is one of the worst books I have ever read. I should have read a science fiction novel instead of this book of "literature."
Unfortunately, themes, styles, and subject matter have gone back and forth between literature and genre fiction. And unfortunately, genre fiction seems to have become too heavily influenced by what is called literature. I think this is chiefly through naturalism, realism, and I guess post-modernism. The sympathies of authors who work in genre fiction seem to have gone over to the outcast, the aberrant, the perverted, the hateful, the murderous, the nihilistic, and so on. Those same authors seem to want to invite us into the horrible places inside themselves and their own psyches, there to join them in all of their decadence, corruption, hatred, and descent. People don't read in order to hate or to be corrupted or dragged down into darknesses, voids, and abysses, or at least they shouldn't. If they do, there is something really seriously wrong with them. They need spiritual help. (It's there.) When we board a craft, we want it to be a great sailing ship (the leaves of a book are like the sails of a ship), not Charon's ferryboat. Or if we go that way, we want an Orpheus to lead us back.
Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley
