Pac-Man: The Movie. The world always needs more silliness and more Pac-Man. I hope there is a Ms Pac-Man sequel.
On a more serious note, translit. Have you heard of it? I hadn’t until just now, or rather, a few minutes ago. It’s supposedly a new genre that “collapses time and space as it seeks to generate narrative traction in the reader’s mind.” What I am wondering is, does that count as a genre or a narrative technique? And why create a new genre for something that is also described as a “boundary-breaking kind of novel that shatters all the too-often pigeonholing categories we use to compartmentalize modern fiction.” To call it a genre sorta puts it back in the genre box. When books transcend the usual genre boundaries, instead of calling them a new kind of genre, wouldn’t it be more useful to have a discussion on the artificiality of genre categories instead?
Isn’t this the trend now? Fusion food, hybrid cars, trans whatever. So why can’t lit works? I think sooner or later genres could become obsolete. Why pigeonhole them? In films, there’s a term in recent years called ‘dramedy’, a film that is both a drama and a comedy. It makes sense to allow these two to fuse in a film. The article from your link mentioned Nick Harkaway being a translit figure. Interesting that his father John Le Carré was shortlisted last year for the Booker International Prize, which he turned down. Case in point, a spy thriller that is also recognized as literary fiction.
It gets to be a bit crazy doesn’t it Arti? Dramedy? What’s wrong with tragicomedy? Why reinvent the wheel on that one? I’d not heard of Harkaway before. Very interesting that his father is Le Carre! As you point out with Carre, books wander outside genre categories all the time. I guess people like to invent new names for the wanderers because we like our world to be tidy and identifiable, eh?
Oh yes … just sounds like a new genre (like Margaret Atwood describing her some of her books as “not sci fi” but “speculative fiction”). I rarely think in terms of genre when I read because I choose books on bases unrelated to whether they belong to a genre. The notion of genre can have some practical value as a shortcut description but I do find categorisation overall to be rather limiting and often results in more obfuscation than clarification!
(BTW, his definition of “translit” sounds very much like the novel I’m reading at present!!)
Not sure why translit has gotten up my nose like it has. Maybe it’s because at first I thought the article would be about a mini publishing trend in trans-gender books. That would have been so much more interesting! I agree the notion of genre can be a convenient shorthand when one is wanting a book that fulfills a certain set of expectations – romance, mystery, thriller, science fiction – but even then I always enjoy most books that do something unexpected. I understand there are readers who prefer otherwise though. Your BTW has me very curious about what book you are reading now!
We’re on the same page – I also thought it’d be about transgender writers, before you mentioned genre. Got to say it sounds like straightforward genre cross over to me, maybe distinct because it involves cross over into multiple genres, possibly with a bit o’ the New Weird thrown in (depending on setting). Not sure it needs a new genre definition, at least experimental would do for me.
Exactly Jodie, it doesn’t sound so very complex or different that it needs its own genre definition. Maybe it’s a bit of clever marketing on the part of the authors who are writing the books that are “translit” or is that too cynical?
You’ll have to wait for the review! It’s a small press book set in the Philippines.
As for genre shorthand … I find it useful usually to help me know what to avoid in bookshops that classify by genre … I go for the lit fiction shelves. Not so much lately though as I seem to have so many books I rarely browse in bookshops these days.
Such a tease! That does tend to be the case with genre, doesn’t it? We use it to avoid certain areas of the bookstore. But, like you, I seldom seem to browse in bookstores these days unless it is a secondhand shop.
it’s weird really, how much my book buying habits have changed … I just hope those changes mean that I’m still supporting writers and publishers.
I know exactly what you mean. I worry about that a bit too!
Translit. Interesting, I read the article. We love to name and categorize things, I guess. I just like finding books I like, and reading them — I never fuss too much about what genre they fall into.
Mind you — I do shy away from “westerns”.
Even so, I’ve read some Zane Greys and Louis L’Amours that I… liked.
Here I was just getting a handle on what “metafiction” is and they come out with another genre!
Gotta keep on your toes Cip! metafiction is so yesterday!
Any books in that genre that you’ve read? I’d not heard the term before I saw it here. When I first saw it I was thinking literature in translation…maybe not.