Tracy Lee Karner

On Blurring Genres and Other Divides

“Memoirs are just one form of word delivery. It’s all inquiry, expression, a search to connect. To honestly recognize our mortal selves in others.”

Marc Nieson (Schoolhouse)

A few weeks ago I thought Steven Petite was spot-on in explaining that the distinction between genre and literary fiction is based on the kind of experience the reader is seeking. If a novel’s purpose is for entertainment/escape — it’s genre fiction. If its purpose is, as Marc Nieson phrased it, to help us “honestly recognize our mortal selves in others”– it’s literary fiction.
In the comments section of my last post, Pamela S. Wight of the blog Roughwighting challenged the assumption that there exists a discernible divide between genre and literary fiction.

“Some contemporary mysteries are written beautifully and are character-driven (one of my best examples is Louise Penney’s mysteries),” she wrote. “And dare I say, I have read many novels deemed ‘women’s fiction’ that delve into the depth of a character. I have a difficult time distinguishing these days between literary and ‘genre’ fiction – I think it’s blurring.”

Marc Nieson also addressed this blurring of categories. In an interview about his memoir Schoolhouse, in answer to Melissa Scholes Young’s question about why he’s crossing genres, (his work in progress is not another memoir, but a novel), he replied,

“We’re all on the same spectrum after all, of a single species, a single globe. I’d say the same with regard to isolating genres. Memoirs are just one form of word delivery. It’s all inquiry, expression, a search to connect. To honestly recognize our mortal selves in others.”

In his memoir, while exploring how words work on a page, Mr. Nieson points out his conscious use of white space. Space (on a page) is a tool found in the workshop of poets. Memoir and poetry often overlap–consider autobiographical poetry (Anne Sexton’s work, for example), and lyrical memoir (Frances Mayes Under Magnolia).
As genres overlap, they also expand. Jay Parini writes in his introduction to The Norton Anthology of American Autobiography, “In all, the range of tone, focus, and form in American autobiography is dizzying.” That was 1999. Since then, the category has grown as prolifically as kudzu.
So what, exactly, is memoir? I like J.C. Hellman’s simple definition of memoir as well as any:

“A memoir is basically a book about [someone’s] life and the wisdom [she or he has] drawn from it.”

A memoirist uses setting and time to explore a series of events leading to insight about what it meant or why it mattered. Marc Nieson’s memoir Schoolhouse, as J.C. Hallman writes in his review, “uses Nieson’s time living in an old stone schoolhouse during his stint at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as a temporal fulcrum and emblem of transition.” In an MFA program, writers chose a genre, but are in ongoing conversation with people writing in other genres. They’re bound to share tools.

Mr. Hallman begins his review by acknowledging his relationship with Mr. Nieson. Both attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, played poker together, and “became friends in a more than casual, yet less than wholly intimate way.”
And there’s another blurring of boundaries. Ideally, a review ought to be an objective measure of the quality of a book, untainted by the friendship or enmity between reviewer and author. But as Mr. Hellman points out, not only have social media and a shrinking literary landscape made the world smaller, but for hundreds of years “friends (and enemies) write [and have written] about each other’s books, but pretend they are writing about strangers.”
But if writing is not only a “form of word delivery,” but also “a search to connect,” then a blurring of genres, of the relationships between reviewers and writers and readers, even of the definitions of kindred and stranger, is inevitable. Connecting–softening or blurring the boundaries–is the implied goal.
Lee Upton writes in her essay The Bigamists: Writers Crossing Genres:

“An old argument exists that there is no sense in naming genres, given the permeability of language and given that genres are dependent on readers’ expectations and thus are in flux. Admittedly, some genres are more multiply implicated in other genres. Especially if you happen to be a novelist, you are already often a multi-genre worker; for if the novel is still a “loose baggy monster,” as Henry James complained of the nineteenth century novel, the baggy pants contain so many sewn together fragments from other language fields that to write a novel is to engage in practices that are anything but genre-tight. The novel stuffs into its pockets all it can: letters, poetry, ledgers, emoticons.”

These days, so many memoirs read like novels (and vice versa), that for a while no one suspected any wrongdoing when James Frey published his novel A Million Little Pieces as a memoir. Then, after discovering Mr. Frey’s no-no, Oprah kicked his book out of her book club.
It’s a lie to say you’re telling the truth (writing nonfiction), if the stories you write didn’t actually happen.
It’s better to be forthright, as J.C. Hellman was in reviewing Schoolhouse, and as Ann Patchet was, when she published Commonwealth, based on her own experiences. She calls that work an autobiographical novel.
But even better than being forthright, is to be kind. Here’s J.C. Hallman writing about Marc Nieson again:

“Even in the first few pages of his book one taps into the gentle, anger-averse mien that made Nieson something of an odd presence at both those games, and in that creative writing program, each of which often featured conflict….It’s a kind and quiet book about a world that often isn’t either, and it’s told in a spare language that serves an inverted measure of the volume’s difficult-to-plumb sophistication.”

Marc Nieson’s kindness is not only the result of, but also the progenitor, of empathy.

“Of course you recognize that you have a particular kind of intimacy with people in books, and with people through books, which everyday relationships lack, but if you never read a book that was written by someone you know, then you never come truly face to face with the sad inadequacy of real life, which is the reason books exist in the first place,” Mr. Hogan writes. “When I read Schoolhouse, I realized there was more pain and past in Nieson’s life than I had ever known or suspected might have lurked there.”

He adds, brilliantly,

“If you never read a book that was written by someone you know, then you never come truly face to face with the sad inadequacy of real life, which is the reason books exist in the first place.”

I’ve only recently come to understand why I have this lifelong, unwavering commitment to reading and writing. I seek two rewards: 1)  to develop empathy as a path to kindness; and 2) to dive below the inadequacy of life to discover the connection of a deeper intimacy. For this reason, there are books I choose to read, and books I refuse to read. There are authors who are kind, and authors who are venomous.
As Nobel Laureate Heinrich Böll so famously said, “Words kill; words heal.” (Worte toten; Worte heilen.)
Böll, an intellectual Catholic German who came of age in the Third Reich, wrote his great works (Bogner, Go Home, Children of the Dead, Where Were You, Adam?, and The Two Sacraments) in the post-Nazi era. He concerns himself with the individual’s role in the the realm of corporate/governmental/societal culpability and guilt.

“I don’t believe that an individual can be guilty just because he is born in one place rather than another. But neither is he for that reason innocent. That’s the rub. Neither innocent, nor guilty, that’s what we all are.”

Herr Böll said that, in a 1974 interview just before he gave up the international presidency of P.E.N. in order to devote himself once more entirely to his writing.
I have a dream that people–as individuals, corporations, societies, nations, continental and global associations–might at long last come to the realization that finding fault for our immense, perpetual problems–that casting blame on someone else–gets us nowhere. In order to stop poverty, stop racism, stop violence, stop environmental devastation, stop scapegoating, and stop self-serving exploitation, the solution begins quite simply:
We must grow in maturity and compassion so that we might honestly recognize our mortal selves in others.
We must blur the divide between Us and Them, between Kindred and Other, and then we must treat everyone with kindness.
Kindness = of one kind.

To whom do you choose to listen? Are there books, authors, reviewers, commentators, or people in your world whose voices you consider kind?

Next time: my thoughts on the impressively kind, cross-genre epic, Sister of Grendel, by poet-novelist Susan Thurston.
Recommended reading: J.C. Hallman’s Amputations and Oversights: On Marc Nieson’s ‘Schoolhouse’ ; Lee Upton’s The Bigamists: Writers Crossing Genres; and  “An Interview with Heinrich Böll.”
 

15 thoughts on “On Blurring Genres and Other Divides”

      1. Let’s try this again. For some reason, my old (abandoned) WP.com site comes up rather than my janetgivens.com site (which is actually WP.org)
        Yes, Pamela and I know each other through social media magic, specifically our blogs. I find her voice dynamic and compelling. And kind. 🙂

        1. I’m blushing here, but it’s a wonderful rosy blush. I have read and re-read this post by Tracy, and will probably do that at least twice again. I think the word “KINDNESS” – is a brave and important word to use in the reading and writing of books. KINDNESS seems to be needed more than ever in our global world. Kindness, in fact, would bring us together more globally, blurring that ‘divide’ that still exists.
          That said, I won’t read an author who is unkind in her/his narrative. That’s not to say that I don’t read books that relate unkindness. For instance, right now I’m reading The Women in the Castle. It gives in unflinching view of Nazi Germany before, during and after the war, and the Germans who live through it – not as Nazis, but still, surviving by allowing the Nazis to ‘be.’ But the author ‘shows’ (never tells) the story from the eyes of right. From the eyes of kindness. Oh! What a long discussion we could have here. I’ll just finalize my thoughts by sayin KUDOS to Tracy for helping us all ask these questions about genre (and in the end I say, who cares? a good book is a good book) and memoir and what ‘truth’ is. I tell my writing students that everything we write is “fictionalized truth,” even when they’re writing about a true aspect of their life. For once we start writing about it, in some way, it becomes fictionalized. But on the other end, when we write open, true, honest fiction, that can be as real as real can be. (Okay, now I’ll stop…) 🙂

          1. Joan, I agree whole heartedly. When we write, even a true story becomes ‘fictionalized truth,” because we are selecting the details that tell our own version of the story. And true, honest fiction is the only kind I like to read.
            I wish you lived closer — I’d host a monthly coffee klatsch, just to hear your take on the topic –you have such interesting insights! And it probably helps that we agree about what’s important — things like truth and kindness. I do like people to challenge my opinions, and make me stretch, but mostly of all, I like people who understand that “Kindness, in fact, would bring us together more globally, blurring that ‘divide’ that still exists.”

  1. A thoughtful post, Tracy. I love your goals.
    As far as authors, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about whether they were kind or not. I’m more concerned with the story and characters. Though I’m not interested in a story or characters driven by hate.
    In “real life,” I do not listen to people who are not kind–unfortunately, that includes many people in power right now, including our president.

    1. Hi, Merril–thanks for stopping back. Part of what I meant about an author’s kindness is definitely observable in the story and character that author creates, especially in what lies behind the characters’ motivations. I think authors’ kindness, or lack of kindness, determine the way they treat their plot and characters (just as that quality determines how we treat events and people in “real” life). For me, a kind author believes in the humanity of all the characters. In a kind author’s book, there are no idealized figures no wholly “perfect hero” or entirely “treacherous villain” (although there are protagonists and antagonists). There are humans, in all their humanity, making consequential choices, driven by complex motivations–giving us readers the opportunity to recognize our mortal selves in them, to “walk in their shoes.” I’m not necessarily looking for a happy ending, but I am looking for a resolution in which I’ve learned something about the power of love or forgiveness or faith (or one of many other fruitful, non-material qualities) that enable and redeem our fragile, fraught lives.

    1. I’m terribly sorry about that, John. Thanks for pointing it out–I fixed it now. I’m going to have to take the time to figure out how to turn off auto-correct. I spend more time undoing auto-fixes that are wrong, and often miss that it has decided I meant to type something else.
      I truly admired your review. Now that I’ve “discovered” you by looking for reviews of Marc’s book (whom I discovered because a librarian friend recommended his book), I’m looking forward to reading some of your books. I’ve had an unexplored interest in William James since my undergraduate years.

  2. Some books do seem to fall clearly into a genre and their authors are happy for that to be so, they even create large clubs and have conferences and take advantage of the fact, then others blur the lines and refuse to be categorised and yay for that, I certainly don’t want everything to be so clear cut that it can all be categorised. Just yesterday I read an amazing review by Vishy (Vishy The Knight) on the novel When I Hit You which the author herself describes as autofiction, a term that is brand new to me but most welcome, she has good cause to have created it or copied it, I’m sure she’s not the first to do so, but she’s being honest that some things in her case are better left to the imagination to deliver to the reader in a way that is less brutal than the harsh truth.

    1. I, too, relish some blurring of distinctions. Categories are useful at times, for description and definition, but when rigidly adhered to, dialogue turns predictable and monotonous, which is, in my opinion, another kind of lie about what life is. Life is unpredictable and varied. So, categorizing, profiling, ranking — those are attempts to put order into what is inherently messy. It’s can sometimes be the subtle use of force to define boundaries and keep people and their ideas neatly in boxes. I do understand that tidiness, predictability, clear definitions are comfortable for people. They’re comfortable for me, too. And whatever is most comfortable is bound to be more popular.

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