Ursula K. LeGuin talks about genre, gender, and broadening fiction

[Steerpike]

From an interview between LeGuin and Michael Cunningham:

And that, of course, is the lingering problem: The maintenance of an arbitrary division between “literature” and “genre,” the refusal to admit that every piece of fiction belongs to a genre, or several of genres.There are very real differences between science fiction and realistic fiction, between horror and fantasy, between romance and mystery. Differences in writing them, in reading them, in criticizing them. Vive les différences! They’re what gives each genre its singular flavor and savor, its particular interest for the reader—and the writer.

But when the characteristics of a genre are controlled, systematized, and insisted upon by publishers, or editors, or critics, they become limitations rather than possibilities. Salability, repeatability, expectability replace quality. A literary form degenerates into a formula. Hack writers get into the baloney factory production line, Hollywood devours and regurgitates the baloney, and the genre soon is judged by its lowest common denominator…. And we have the situation as it was from the 1940’s to the turn of the century: “genre” used not as a useful descriptor, but as a negative judgment, a dismissal.

Ursula K. Le Guin talks to Michael Cunningham about genres, gender, and broadening fiction | Electric Literature

 

[Incanus]

Ursula is really awesome. Fully agree with the sentiments from the quote.

Never cared much for baloney, nor for 'standard genre fare'. No matter the genre, literature shoud be art, or at least contain some artistic merit.