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deconstructing the genre
Feb. 22nd, 2007 11:07 amWhile I'm in poking-at-the-underlying-mechanism mood...
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sarahf has the chair at Romancing the Blog today:
http://www.romancingtheblog.com/blog/2007/02/22/why-i-learned-to-love-literary-criticism/
She's discussing the application of litcrit to romance, and addressing the problem (also common in sf) that a lot of genre fans quite reasonably don't like litcrit because so much of it to date has started from the assumption that genre is by definition inferior. Both the post and the comments so far are well worth reading.
There's an interesting diversion into the problem of not being able to turn *off* the internal critiquer even when reading for pleasure. I only did English literature to university entrance exam level and don't speak fluent litcrit, but even so I had a problem with this for a couple of years afterwards, when I could not help but consciously analyse stuff even when I was reading it purely for fun. Eventually it dropped to subconscious level, where it enhances my enjoyment of the book rather than all too often getting in the way. There's a similar problem with critting/editing material as part of the process of getting it ready for publication -- do a lot of it, and you find yourself consciously analysing everything you read.
Elsewhere, Mrs Giggles discusses the way in which some of the writers in the ebook erotic romance industry are churning out material, rushing to get something in to each new publisher that opens its doors:
http://mrsgiggles.braveblog.com/entry/26707
I'm reminded of a similar type of behaviour you can see in the fanfic arena, where some writers are not interested in working on polishing their stories, but only in getting the next story up and the next fix of egoboo from their readers. I'm somewhat wary of getting involved in this since I can see it leading to Ye Internet FlameFest, but it's further incentive to work on that "editing is a feature, not a bug" essay I've been muttering about.
(Yes, I am still blocked on The New Book.)
ETA: The Mrs Giggles link isn't working at the moment -- I thought I'd messed up the link, but no, the post seems to be gone when I look at the front page of her blog. I hope she hasn't decided to take it down permanently, as it was an interesting and thoughtful post with some things I wanted to think about later, and I didn't save a local copy of it. :-(
sarahf has the chair at Romancing the Blog today:http://www.romancingtheblog.com/blog/2007/02/22/why-i-learned-to-love-literary-criticism/
She's discussing the application of litcrit to romance, and addressing the problem (also common in sf) that a lot of genre fans quite reasonably don't like litcrit because so much of it to date has started from the assumption that genre is by definition inferior. Both the post and the comments so far are well worth reading.
There's an interesting diversion into the problem of not being able to turn *off* the internal critiquer even when reading for pleasure. I only did English literature to university entrance exam level and don't speak fluent litcrit, but even so I had a problem with this for a couple of years afterwards, when I could not help but consciously analyse stuff even when I was reading it purely for fun. Eventually it dropped to subconscious level, where it enhances my enjoyment of the book rather than all too often getting in the way. There's a similar problem with critting/editing material as part of the process of getting it ready for publication -- do a lot of it, and you find yourself consciously analysing everything you read.
Elsewhere, Mrs Giggles discusses the way in which some of the writers in the ebook erotic romance industry are churning out material, rushing to get something in to each new publisher that opens its doors:
http://mrsgiggles.braveblog.com/entry/26707
I'm reminded of a similar type of behaviour you can see in the fanfic arena, where some writers are not interested in working on polishing their stories, but only in getting the next story up and the next fix of egoboo from their readers. I'm somewhat wary of getting involved in this since I can see it leading to Ye Internet FlameFest, but it's further incentive to work on that "editing is a feature, not a bug" essay I've been muttering about.
(Yes, I am still blocked on The New Book.)
ETA: The Mrs Giggles link isn't working at the moment -- I thought I'd messed up the link, but no, the post seems to be gone when I look at the front page of her blog. I hope she hasn't decided to take it down permanently, as it was an interesting and thoughtful post with some things I wanted to think about later, and I didn't save a local copy of it. :-(