Forum: Author Hangout

'Genre' is prejudice …

Paige Hawthorne 🚫

Quoting Marlon James ("Black Leopard, Red Wolf"), "Genre is such a ridiculous convention, as ridiculous as the idea of the Great American Novel. Growing up in Jamaica in the '70s and 80s, I never had the privilege of discriminating against books. I grabbed whatever I could borrow, steal or get for free." ...

"I didn't realize I was supposed to view "One Hundred Years of Solitude" as a different kind of work from Gilbert Hernandez's "Palomar" until I entered a lit class. The distinction was and is a stupid one, but it might explain why not nearly enough readers know that "Palomar" is the best American novel of the past 35 years." ...

"Here's the funny thing about so-called genre books: Nobody ever had to teach a crime writer about cultural appropriation or representation of other people. That's an affliction that affects only literary novelists. And scoff at chick lit all you want, but it is the only genre where women work."

**********

So … no separate categories for sci-fi, mystery, romance, et alia?

Discuss.

Paige

Replies: PotomacBob StarFleet Carl awnlee jawking tendertouch

PotomacBob 🚫

@Paige Hawthorne

Publishers publish in excess of 50,000 books per year. That's dead-tree versions. The labeling by genre helps me sort through those to find the kind of stories I like.
the same is true on SOL.
Abolish all genre labels by publishers and and - and readers and reviewers will start their own. They may be the same or they may be different from what the genres are now - but they serve a useful purpose.

richardshagrin 🚫

General Reinsurance is also a genre. (with a dot com)

"Gen Re

genre.com

General Reinsurance Corporation is an American multinational property/casualty and life/health reinsurance company offering a range of reinsurance products and services."

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@richardshagrin

offering a range of reinsurance products and services.

You left off: to other insurance companies. Reinsurance companies sell insurance to insurance companies to cover major disasters, or failures in their general risk assessments.

Replies: Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫

@Dominions Son

Sorry, but my biggest problem with genre is that it's become meaningless, not that it serves no purpose. When over 70% of books are classified as "Romance", regardless of plot, the genre becomes utterly meaningless.

Rather than opening up the field to every book, authors and/or publishers need to more carefully control just what books can claim membership, otherwise newbie authors will claim every one possible, just to boost views by a few points.

Some outlets restrict the number of genres you can claim, but this varies widely. Some limit you to three, some to five, some seven, and some don't restrict you at all. As a result, chaos results (similar to story tags abuse on SOL).

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@Vincent Berg

Sorry, but my biggest problem with genre is that it's become meaningless, not that it serves no purpose. When over 70% of books are classified as "Romance", regardless of plot, the genre becomes utterly meaningless.

1. I never replied to you with any comment. The only comment, up to this point, was made to the richard who grins ( :) ) in regards to him equating the word genre to the General Reinsurance Company and more specifically, a comment he made about said company.

2. I actually agree with you on generic "Romance", However, they have been sub dividing the romance genre to be more specific.

For example when browsing books on Amazon, under romance, they have

Romance

Action & Adventure
African American
Anthologies
Billionaires
Clean & Wholesome
Contemporary
Erotica
Fantasy
Gothic
Historical
Holidays
Inspirational
LGBT
Medical
Military
Multicultural
New Adult & College
Paranormal
Regency
Romantic Comedy
Romantic Suspense
Science Fiction
Sports
Time Travel
Vampires
Werewolves & Shifters
Western
Writing

And several of those are yet further subdivided.

Replies: Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫

@Dominions Son

I actually agree with you on generic "Romance", However, they have been sub dividing the romance genre to be more specific.

For example when browsing books on Amazon, under romance, they have

Sorry DS, often I'll respond to a topic someone responds to without specifying it's not personal, as you'd raised the question about genre categories becoming 'meaningless'.

As for the "Romance" genre being subdivided, that helps, but it's utterly negated by authors/publishers being able to list "Romance" in addition to numerous other genres, thus once again, every book becomes a romance.

I prefer labeling Romance books as "Romance", and then subdividing it, just as I prefer authors identify science fiction as sci-fi, rather than adding "Romance" just to supposedly boosting views by a small amount.

As far as subdividing genres, that makes perfect sense. While I mainly write sci-fi, I specially write 'hard' sci-fi, so it benefits me being able to specify the type of fiction I am writing.

But we have two competing trends here, outlets allowing multiple genre listings, while those listing are also getting more detailed. On the face of it, that sounds beneficial, but what it ultimately means is that large number of stories get labeled as everything, making the categories meaningless.

Replies: helmut_meukel

helmut_meukel 🚫

@Vincent Berg

I prefer labeling Romance books as "Romance", and then subdividing it, just as I prefer authors identify science fiction as sci-fi, rather than adding "Romance" just to supposedly boosting views by a small amount.

Hmmm, so where would you put Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign?
In her afterword to the omnibus edition "Miles in Love" she calls it a "Barrayar Regency romance".
It is a romance, but as a reader of her Barrayar/Vorkosigan books I expect to find it on the sci-fi shelves not buried by the romance masses. But I want to know that it's a romance!

HM.

StarFleet Carl 🚫

@Paige Hawthorne

So … no separate categories for sci-fi, mystery, romance, et alia?

Not likely.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then chances are it's NOT a buffalo.

While there are books that can cross the lines and be part of multiple genres, keeping them for the most part separate is how we readers know where to go in the bookstore. Because regardless of what you quoted, E.L. James and Stephanie Moore don't quite belong in the same aisle as Robert Heinlein or Tom Clancy.

anim8ed 🚫

Classification by genre / sub-genre is as valid as any other classification system.

I know I find it annoying here at SOL when authors do not list the genre and/or sub-genres when posting their stories. It makes it a lot harder to find a particular story using the search feature without a genre.

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Paige Hawthorne

With such a distorted and sexist view of literature, I assume Marlon James failed that lit class.

AJ

Replies: Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫

@awnlee jawking

With such a distorted and sexist view of literature, I assume Marlon James failed that lit class.

My thoughts exactly!

Damn, look at all this crap I gotta study. Who knew there was more to books than just turning pages?

That's the kind of comment that only someone who's privileged is likely to make. Lesson: don't bitch about 'discrimination' unless you've suffered from some serious discrimination yourself. Frankly, everyone is sick of everyone claiming 'discrimination' simply because someone won't give them whatever they want at the moment.

Replies: PotomacBob

PotomacBob 🚫

@Vincent Berg

Frankly, everyone is sick of everyone claiming 'discrimination' simply because someone won't give them whatever they want at the moment.

We all discriminate every day. I discriminate in baseball because I'm an anti-Yankee fan (as a boy, I got tired of the Yankees winning all the time so wanted someone else to win; I still do). I discriminate because I don't like Brussels sprouts. I like butter butter than margarine. I discriminate on SOL because I like some authors better than others. All of that is LEGAL discrimination.
It is illegal to discriminate in employment for very specific reasons - age, sex, race, national origin, etc. It is LEGAL to discriminate in employment because you fear that a job-seeker doesn't fully buy into your business's mission.
It is legal for me to discriminate against you because I don't like the way you part your hair. It is legal for me to discriminate against you because there's just something about you ... I am subject to lawsuit, however, if someone believes I used one of those legal discriminatory practices to mask what they believe was really an illegal reason.

tendertouch 🚫
Updated:

@Paige Hawthorne

The subject doesn't make sense. Prejudice is an opinion. A genre doesn't have an opinion. Or we could be using prejudice as a verb, but genre isn't a verb so it still doesn't make sense.

If you mean that potential readers may be prejudiced against a work based on the genre, yep - they can form opinions about it with no specific knowledge of what's between the covers. Who knows, that book in the Westerns section may actually be a Romance. Oh well, I'll just have to check out the other umpteen thousand Romances.

Most of us don't have the same problem that James labored under in Jamaica - we're inundated with new titles so we need something to help us choose which one we'll grab next. Genre is one of the things that we use. Here on SOL we also use tags (DoOver? Sure, sounds good today), the synopsis (if the author can't differentiate between 'their' and 'there' in the synopsis I'm not going to waste my time looking further), reviews, score (which is imperfect but useful to me) and previous experience with the author.

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Forum: Author Hangout

'Genre' is prejudice …

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