As I wait for my hair to dry...
Jan. 21st, 2005 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lareinenoireWhereas you’ve pointed out that much “great literature” bears many affinities with what nowadays gets called “genre fiction.”
Right. Shakespeare was a genre writer, down the line, never wrote outside his genre. He was not an innovator. Because it’s really quite a recent idea, that the best books have no genre. You know, if they’re literary fiction, then they have to be genre-free. It’s a very, very new idea. And most of the books we study as academics are firmly within one genre or another. Not to compare myself to Shakespeare. But I think you’d have to be a fool as a writer not to apprentice yourself to the very best in your field.
To read the rest of the article, go here.
Take *that*, Creative Writing programme!
::flounces off to pick up seminar readings::
Right. Shakespeare was a genre writer, down the line, never wrote outside his genre. He was not an innovator. Because it’s really quite a recent idea, that the best books have no genre. You know, if they’re literary fiction, then they have to be genre-free. It’s a very, very new idea. And most of the books we study as academics are firmly within one genre or another. Not to compare myself to Shakespeare. But I think you’d have to be a fool as a writer not to apprentice yourself to the very best in your field.
To read the rest of the article, go here.
Take *that*, Creative Writing programme!
::flounces off to pick up seminar readings::
