When I first decided to make a second valiant attempt at writing long form fiction, I was hesitant to address the topic of my brewing works with strangers. All of the half-hearted, and drunken attempts that I’d mustered since the war, the ones that now lay strewn about my office collecting dust in black binders or cardboard bomber bindings, all fit nicely under the broad modern literature umbrella.
The upcoming works, the collection of stories bubbling just below the surface of my fingertips, feel outside that genre, you know, the one we’re supposed to aspire to write to.
I broached the idea, in a casual, sideways manner, to good friend and respected writing cohort, Vito Grippi.
“What are your opinions on genre literature?” I asked, erstwhile, in an instant message.
Perhaps he knew where I was coming from and was simply being socially polite. Perhaps he was being truthful. Either way, his answer provided enough energy to my fledgling and fragile decision in such a way that a large bit of either blame or praise rests on his shoulders.
People think this everyday.
Vito’s stated opinion, that if the work is written well enough, and if the content is smart enough, that the genre means little, mirrored my own. To put it another way, damn the torpedoes and write the fucking book.
Yes, it was Vito’s sentiment, echoing a decision I had likely already made, that pushed me towards writing fantasy literature.
The decision to write a genre book, or in my case – genre books, wasn’t an easy one. I had bought firmly into the pomp and circumstance of modern literature. The desire to write the next Great American Novel was one that ate at me. To sum it all up, everything that is the America of today, the strife, the promise, the technological-fueled desires – they are all still leaping up, waiting for that perfect story to sum them all up. To explain them. To wrap up the meaning of everything so that future generations understand the duende that we now face, these are the questions that a writer today must address, and in turn, must answer. Common knowledge says they must be answered in a modern lit form, a genre that encapsulates the world in which the questions were asked from.
But I was purposefully choosing a different path. And it’s not an easy path to walk. Modern lit is almost defined as doing more with less, a cutthroat use of words so apropos that none other can be used in any given moment. Genre literature, on the other hand, is often ridiculed as doing less with more. It’s contrived. It’s cliché. It’s nerdy and fringe. It’s a sliver of reality at best, and a host of easy outs at worst.
Genre is, of course, none of these.
When we choose to look at the total body of any particular genre, modern literature included, the worth of the body is reduced to the median quality. When genres are considered, that median quality is easily reduced to the clichés – be it dragons and swords for fantasy, buxom women and buffed men for romance, hard boiled and scheming folks for mysteries, lasers and cybernetics for science fiction, or drug addicts and divorced children of modern lit.
The reality, when we choose to flee from such childish clichés, is that genre literature is at the very least, equally enabled when it comes to telling the situations of our modern dramas than modern literature. Genre fiction just chooses to do so in a metaphorical language. Genre fiction takes the obtuse tails of our modern world, and strips away the details which can easily trip a reader up, and supplants those stories into a details setting that is substantially less familiar.
To put it another way, genre fiction takes the core arguments of our existence, and couches those stories in another setting. The tripping points, the niggling details which can easily send a carefully crafted statement into the obscurity of entropy are avoided, in favor of an older form of story telling – that of the parable.
They’re two different tactics, two different roads if one is to borrow from Frost, but the end result is the same. That which we write is ultimately a reflection on the world which we live in. While the current set of stories might be birthed in a fantasy world, the concepts being tackled are no less modern.
I’m using my book, and the stories which are sure to come afterwards, to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned. The times I spent in Iraq, the ideas I have on being a citizen of a nation and a world, the understanding I have gathered from bars – these are all the fodder which will be handled. While these are normally the topics of modern literature, I’m eschewing that instead for fantasy. The problem, the argument, for me is too big to allow for details and their detraction. My use of genre is a means and a method.
I’m sure that I do have that modern lit novel in me somewhere. That story of life and love and trains and God, but right now, I’m not at a point where I can deal with that. Right now, I’m looking not to write the book, but to foster a career. Right now I’m taking the nerdier road, but I am okay with that.
For those of you wishing that I produce that book, I can only say hold on. For the rest, who are open to a story that is truly overflowing with truth, and who are willing to suspend the concept of reality for the betterment of understanding, then I’m working on book for you.
After all, my current work, Project Kingdom, answers more questions than it asks. It deals with being a soldier on the front lines of an empire. It deals with reality versus religion. It asks questions that I would have a hard time framing in a backdrop of reality. And it draws from a history of nerdy concepts.
And I’m okay with that.
