Genre doesn’t dictate quality

I recently saw this brilliant response to a criticism of chick lit. Michelle Gormon is a chick lit writer herself, published by Penguin. Her article appeared in The Guardian.

“Critics cite many reasons in their dismissal of the genre, reasons that ostensibly aren’t rooted in literary snobbery. ‘The problem’ with chick-lit, I’m told, is that it doesn’t deal with the real issues that women face. Well actually, some of it does. From sibling rivalry to infidelity, addictions to poor body image, a woman can take her pick within the genre if she wants to. And the rest of it? It’s meant for pure indulgent enjoyment, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

“But why insist that chick-lit reflect the issues facing its readership when no other genre is measured by the same yardstick? It isn’t expected of science fiction, crime, mystery, historical fiction, or even most literary fiction. Women didn’t flock to buy We Need to Talk About Kevin thinking, ‘Gosh, my son is in prison too for picking off his classmates with a crossbow. That’s the book for me.’

“And there’s no need to fret over the malleable minds of chick-lit fans. Our poor little female brains aren’t going to turn to mush because we read light and breezy books. And it’s not as if women who read chick-lit read it exclusively. Most of us enjoy chocolate cake, but we don’t eat it every night for dinner.”

As you’ve probably gathered from past posts, I don’t find our strict, and often snobbish, distinctions between genres helpful at all. The genre doesn’t dictate how well a book is written – nor how much it says about society.

Chick lit and romance can and do deal with the issues of our times: attitudes of men to women and vice versa, dating rituals, the difficulty of finding love in modern society…

One of my favourite authors, Michael Chabon, who won the Pulitzer for his wonderful book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, recently wrote a book of essays on reading.

Chabon would like to see the distinction between “serious” and “popular” disappear. He argues that “serious” fiction has as many conventions and restrictions as any other. Far from being a higher form, it is just another genre, no different from any other.

Personally I like all kinds of fiction – and I have a great love of good crime novels. Besides having all kinds of worthy reasons for reading, I also find that it makes me happy. What can be wrong with that?
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