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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I deny all alleged statements unless specifically quoted Do people consider stuff like Gentlemen of the Road, The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Summerland to be non-genre just because Michael Chabon wrote them? This is an honest question, I am dumb and mostly poorly-read so I have no idea how actually smart people categorize those books.
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Nov 12, 2018 19:50
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Franchescanado posted:What genre would they fit in? What is the main concern of the novel? Is it to provide entertainment and escapism, with heavy emphasis on plot? Or is it concerned with exploring themes and ideas through characters and situations with a focus that shifts away from plot? Does it distract you, or does it promote thoughts about your internal life, the internal life of someone foreign to you, and/or the world around you? Hieronymous Alloy posted:I picked Gentlemen of the Road for Book of the Month a year or so back pretty much exactly to push that question. I think what makes me curious is that my answer on all counts in the first quote is "both." The books I mentioned have a couple cops investigating a murder on the eve of their society's dissolution, a pair of physically mismatched con-men who get swept up in a plot to steal a country, and a kid who ends up playing baseball at the center of the universe in a bid to stop the end of the world. These are fascinating plots that make for good escapism, but the prose, settings and characters gave me plenty to actually think about as well (Summerland perhaps the least, but as a kid who played a lot of baseball growing up despite not really liking it, it really resonated with me). Basically I would classify these books as really, really good detective, adventure and YA books, but I feel like some people would take the "really, really good" part and use that as an excuse to remove them from their genres ("one of the good ones"). Whereas I'd personally prefer to define a genre novel by its trappings, not by the limitations imposed by that genre's lovely writers. I'm curious why people on either side would classify it their way beyond my own standard of "that's the way that feels right." OscarDiggs posted:This is absolutely the thread for you, friend! THough you may also want to ask in the actual literature thread because it get's more traffic. I'll have to check out the main non-genre fiction thread as well. I'm not completely unread, and I write for a living as a reporter and for fun as a humorist, but I don't have any background in criticism so I hesitate to jump in all uninformed. I mainly brought this up here because Chabon was mentioned, I've been on a reading kick of his work, and it's something that's been on my mind.
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Nov 14, 2018 19:31
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