Literary vs. Genre Fiction

Sometimes, it feels like genre and literary fiction are at war. Genre fiction is accused of being shallow and mindless, while literary fiction is blasted for being pretentious and boring. This debate has died and risen again more times than zombies in pop culture.

Shoving books into such an arbitrary binary may seem unnecessary, but it does matter in terms of public perception and awards (like the Booker Prize for literary fiction or the Hugo Award for sci-fi/fantasy). If you’ve ever taken a college-level course in creative writing, your professors might’ve said genre stories wouldn’t be accepted, as was the case in my undergraduate years.

In literary circles, the genre label comes with a stigma, which Neil Gaiman describes in an interview with Kazuo Ishiguro:

“By the time fantasy had its own area in the bookshop, it was deemed inferior to mimetic, realistic fiction…I was fascinated by the way that Terry Pratchett would, on the one hand, have people like A S Byatt going, ‘These are real books, they’re saying important things and they are beautifully crafted,’ and on the other he would still not get any real recognition. I remember Terry saying to me at some point, ‘You know, you can do all you want, but you put in one fucking dragon and they call you a fantasy writer.’”