Go Ye Forth and Categorize
In Genesis, humankind was given the right to name and categorize living things.
God formed every beast…and brought them to the man…and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. (Genesis, 2:19-20)
With all the “beasts” named and put in their proper place, humans could make better sense of their surroundings.
Fast forward several dozen millennia and click on Amazon to search for your favorite book. Pick the category you like best from the dropdown: Romance…Historical Fiction…. But for one moment stop and think if you had chosen not only Romance, but M/M Romance; would you have come across Saxon James’s Frat Wars, Amazon’s #1 bestselling M/M Romance? Or if you had clicked on Black Historical Fiction rather than just Historical Fiction, would you have found Toni Morrison’s esteemed novel Beloved?
Inclusion Confusion
So here we are in the 21st century. Inclusion is the catch-phrase of the second generation of the new millennium. But my conjecture is that inclusion has led this generation to the polar opposite of that concept’s intended purpose. By creating separate genre categories to emphasize diversity, the literati have driven unnecessary wedges between sections of the writing community.
In the last century, cisgender, white, Anglo-Saxon males controlled the sales of most mainstream literature. However, in the 21st Century, the publishing industry, in an attempt to compensate for its myopia, has put on blinders instead of corrective lenses. These blinders are found within the search engines of online book sites as well as in the organization of bookstore shelves. It is as if the industry has taken one of God’s earliest commandments and transferred it to literature by naming genres with ever narrower categories.
From Beasts to Books
Walk into any bookstore and you’ll see the nomenclature:
LGBTQ+ LIT
BLACK LIT
LATINx LIT
WOMEN’S LIT
One is left to scratch their head as they search the shelves of a bookstore, or the dropdown of a website, and think: Here I am, a cisgender-LatinX-gay man…where do I begin? Chick-Fic (Women’s Literature) is out—I ain’t that gay. I’m dark brown but not Black, so that’s out. So maybe LGBTQ+, or maybe LatinX. Geez, I wish I could find a combination of the two. But I can’t, so I think I’ll just go home and watch TV.
What this forlorn book seeker doesn’t realize is that they’ve been misled by the very categories devised to serve their needs. If they had searched the shelves of LatinX they might have come across Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels where one of the pivotal characters is gay. Or if they had searched in the Black Literature section, they might have stumbled upon James Baldwin’s classic, Giovanni’s Room. These two outstanding novels are minor examples of how the drive to emphasize diversity has led to greater division in the reading community.
Great literature is universal whether it deals with Blacks, gays, women, LatinX—it all has one thing in common: it deals with the human family of which we are all a part no matter our color, sexual orientation, or political persuasion.
Unwoke
What has led the book market, i.e., agents, publishers, salespersons, to this point? Is it that they want to follow the rule of God; which is in fact a human need to classify the world—name the beasts—around us to make sense of what we see? Or is it that they fear the stigma of being classified as “unwoke,” and thereby lose sales? I wager it’s a combination of politics and profit.
Recognition and acceptance of diversity in the writing community is essential. But in doing so, the publishing industry may have unintentionally marginalized works that cross the lines of arbitrary genre categorizations.
A Bestseller on the Back Shelf
Lauren Groff’s most recent and much acclaimed historical novel, Matrix, might make the point better than any other discourse or example offered here. The brilliant work, set in a 12th century English convent, deals with the life of Marie de France, author of the Medieval Breton Lais. The historical setting is vividly developed and would appeal to any enthusiast of Medieval historical fiction. But equally well-developed are the lesbian love affairs between Marie and the other nuns in the convent of which she is abbess.
My question is, if Lauren Groff had made the decision to market Matrix as an F/F Romance, would it have sold and earned such high praise? I think not. Rather it would have been relegated to the LGBTQ+ section of a bookstore and its florid fluid prose would have been overlooked by the majority of the reading public, to say nothing of The New York Times Book Review.
Lit is Lit
Categories are convenient, they help organize and make sense of what’s around us. But when those categories become so complex that they lead to confusion and missed opportunity, it may be time to abandon God’s commandment and re-organize our bookshelves in a truly inclusive light.
Niki H Kantzios
Point well taken. This applies to other not-quite-genre-fits that have nothing to do with minorities of various kinds too, and is, I suspect, driven by non-human search engines. Are my works cozy mysteries? Is Agatha Christie a cozy mystery? Some people think so but others don’t, and I would rather see myself on political intrigue or family drama, but heck–there’s no one category for all that. Is a historical fiction with a gay protagonist appropriate on an LGBT list? Too much responsibility, God!
VERONICA H HART
Congratulations, Paul, on an excellent article.
Paul
Thanks, Ronnie.
Pat Grayson
At one time, years ago, the Books-A-Million near me had a tiny shelf designated for LGBT works, fiction and nonfiction. That shelf vanished, so I began tirelessly Googling to help me find what I wanted. I do NOT see a similar LGBT section in my public library. Why the different approach?
paul
The Bradenton Main Library has 130 books in its LGBTQ section, I know because my novella is one of them.
Peggy Lantz
What’s an M/M Romance? Or an F/F Romance?
Paul
Male/Male – Female/Female Romance
Claudia Chianese
Paul, Thanks for addressing genres. Recently I received feedback on another aspect of selecting genre and lack the experience to really put their insight to good use. Evidently, I need to chose either romance or legal thriller as the main genre, and make the other a sub genre. Help! Claudia
Michael
Right on, Paul. Novels are only great insofar as they speak to a common humanity. If we narrow the genres down even further, every writer can be a “bestseller” in their literary echo chamber of one.
Barbara Busenbark
Well said Paul, I couldn’t agree more. It also feeds into stereotyping people. I am a fan of Medieval historical fiction so I love your example.
Lee Gramling
As you suggest, everyone loves a good story. My experience and observation are that the author’s name has far more marketing weight than any category his/her books may fall into. And in fact, the most successful ones tend to create their own genres. (How, exactly, would you classify the Harry Potter series?) The problem, as always, is getting someone to believe in and take a chance on them.
I think writers need to write what they feel comfortable with, and not try to force their work into some arbitrary niche. Maybe they’ll become rich and famous; most likely they won’t. But at least they’ll have the satisfaction of being true to themselves.
–Or, if fame and fortune are really the overriding goals, then write something like an “unauthorized biography” or a vapid treatise on some hot-button issue and quit trying to be creative!
.
WILLIAM CLAPPER
Excellent rebuke of the current literary scene. You make valid points that the profusion of niche genres dilutes the literary pool. Widening the view, your thought can be applied to other forms of human endeavor.
Paul
Thanks, Wil. Yeah, it the human urge to label things and thereby make sense of what around us. I’m not sure we can do away with that intrinsic need.
Anne
I think bookstores have gone off the deep end, trying to cover anything/everything. Maybe that’s why I get an unsettled feeling when I visit today’s bookstores. It wasn’t always that way. Sure, I gravitate to my genre’ of choice, but I also check out the jacket blurb to see if it’s something I want to read.
Great article, and perspective, BTW.
Phil
With so many categories and some so targeted, good works may be missed just because it is out of the reader’s routine genre’.
Dennis Dunigan
Wise counsel from a serious novelist.
Jacqueline
Rethinking is the clarion call of our time and conceivably not only for literary genres. Iasevoli’s words ring true when applied to a host of apparent dysfunctions, one of the most destructive may be contemporary profit/politics pacts, leaving many with that eternal question mark stamped over our thoughts. And I feel fitting the quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray, “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Michele
Paul,
Great article that rings true. So difficult to find the perfect genre. Your insight into the current situation is spot on.
Hope this is the first of many amazing articles to come.
Anne Marie
Paul, great commentary on an issue that I’ve noticed recently. We’ve come so far from fiction/non-fiction, but is that a good thing?
Paul
Thanks, Anne Marie. I’m thinking of writing part 2 to this post: a clarification and reinforcement of this premise.
Dan
Paul,
Wonderful observations here. The seeming need to compartmentalize fiction into ever-narrowing genre boxes, and then even by ever-expanding author identities, and then to decide from on high who can tell what story from which perspective–it’s strangling the very ideals that made fiction such a popular and effective art form. Diversity of thought and rich imagination is smashing on the rocks of an obsession with identity and what that even means for creators.
And worse, it’s all so damned childish. We’re infantilizing ourselves, and evermore daily. You point this out succinctly and boldly here in this post: “The drive to emphasize diversity has led to greater division in the reading community”…a brilliant line, and yet in the writer community, it’s even worse.
To say nothing of the YA publishing world, the quintessential Twitterian circular firing squad.
Do you see a way out?
Dan
*are smashing
paul
Thanks for your kind words here. Unfortunately, I do not have an answer to your final question. The publishing industry has built this framework of genre categories and it’s going to take a wrecking ball to knock it apart– from whence and where that ball will come is impossible to predict.