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| (c) Süddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung |
I came across this article on the
Guardian's webpage this morning. Here, Robert McCrum elaborates on new literary genres that have, necessarily, cropped up in the last few decades. I really enjoyed this list, so I'm sharing it here. For the entire article go to
Robert McCrum on Literary Genres (Guardian 19/11/2012)
And these are McCrum's categories:
"1. Lit lit
Two versions here.
a) Poetry. No higher form - a straight line from Shakespeare, Pope, Wordsworth, Hardy and Hughes.
b)
Fiction. Also known as "literary fiction"; a genre whose contemporary
exemplars include Julian Barnes, Philip Hensher and Zadie Smith.
2. Ghost lit
A
surprising number of successful books (bestselling memoirs especially)
are written by ghost writers. But there are also ghosted novels, too. By
definition these wraith-like creatures have no names and are known only
to their fellow spooks – and the publishers who depend on them.
4. Chick lit
The motherlode. There's far more of this lit than most readers realise. If, as some suggest, it began with Bridget Jones, there's now a second or even third generation.
5. Gran lit
A new entry: see my opening comments, above [Note: Please check the article link above for this.]
6. Erotic lit
The
quintessential expression of this genre is, of course, EL James's Fifty
Shades of Grey, which has now begun to acquire some respectability with
a nomination for a National Book award. My own guess is that it's a craze that will soon (if it doesn't already) seem embarrassing and ridiculous.
7. Booker lit
Fiction
that plays well with Booker prize judges is sometimes characterised as
unreadable and pretentious, with some justification. On the other hand,
the Booker's track record of winners is impressive. As a prize, Booker
is rivalled only by the Orange prize, now the women's prize for fiction. In a larger category – prize lit – Booker and Orange are the market leaders.
8. US lit
For
me, the big names here are still Philip Roth, Paul Auster, and Don
DeLillo. Of course, US fiction (and poetry) is too vast a canvas to be
reduced to a single frame.
9. Commonwealth lit
The
literature of the Commonwealth used to get a lot of commercial and
critical attention. Changing readership patterns in the world have
reduced the significance of "Commonwealth" writing, but it will probably
survive, in some form, for another generation. (see also: 10 and 11)
10. Oz lit
Australian
writing, a sub-genre of 9, used to be fashionable enough to deserve a
category of its own. The market leader is Peter Carey, followed by
Christos Tsiolkas, Kate Grenville and Thomas Keneally, among many.
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| (c) SC, welcometobookalley.blogspot.com |
11. Indian lit
This
could be seen as a subset of either Booker lit or Commonwealth Lit, and
is represented by Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and many
others. For a while, it seemed as if the English literary tradition
would be sustained exclusively by writers from the sub-continent.
12. Kids' lit
The
past 20 years have seen a wonderful flowering of writing for children,
from Philip Pullman and Julia Donaldson to Michael Morpurgo and JK
Rowling. Later generations will work out why this should have been so.
13. Translated lit
The
British reading public's appetite for foreign prose and poetry is
(compared with that of our European neighbours) patchy. There was a boom
in translated fiction in the 1980s (Kundera, Vargas Llosa, Márquez etc)
but that has slowed in the last decade.
14. SF/fantasy
Science
fiction is the cockroach in the house of books: it survives on scraps
and never goes away. Occasionally, as in the work of HG Wells and JG
Ballard, it becomes sublime.
15. Blog lit
A new entry to the field. Blogs that become books. The latest is
schoolgirl Martha Payne's blog,
which was published last week. Payne hit the headlines with her blog
on school meals, won the support of Jamie Oliver and went on to raise
£120,000 for charity after her local council banned her from posting
photographs and scathing critiques of her school dinners online. Her
book, written with the help of her father, takes its title from her
blog,
NeverSeconds. A more serious example of a blog that became a book
is
The Rest Is Noise, by Alex Ross.
Book blogs, generally, remain virtual: as they should."
