Update: Jason Sanford has a response to Matt Cheney’s post here.

Someone named Jason Sanford wrote an article for the New York Review of Science Fiction, complaining about how the literary establishment is willing to pilfer ideas from genre fiction, but is unwilling to then give genre fiction any credit. This annoyed several people, starting with Matthew Cheney; his response can be found here.

So, the order of battle: Sanford claims that the literary establishment doesn’t value science fiction. Cheney responds by saying, “There is no mafia literary establishment.” Okay, I’m kidding. Actually, he says, “The problem with any argument about ‘the literary establishment’ and ‘the literary elite’ is that those things don’t really exist.”

The basis for claiming that there’s no literary establishment is an emphasis on the fact that book reviewers must be taken as individuals, with their own individual tastes, and do not constitute an establishment. In other words, you can’t gin up an “establishment” by referring to a single, sweeping generalization based on a single example.

Then again, the post ends with, “Readers like Sanford love to think that they’re part of a special, marginalized club, but the marginalization comes as much from within their own martyr complexes as any real-world action.” And a flaming tornado of generalizations follow in the comments.

Generalizations and smug attitudes are fine tools for appealing to the emotions (where would political rhetoric be without them?), but they’re a little tricky; it’s obvious that Cheney was profoundly irritated by Sanford’s essay. Substantially, I feel, because Sanford could very well be incredibly wrong.

After all, what is a genre? Is it a collection of concepts, tropes, plots, or character types? Are there textual signifiers that, depending on their context, mark a work as being part of a genre? And if so, how many signifiers does there have to be, for example? Is this a fine point that should be debated by academics, the only people that have the time for this sort of thing? Yes, yes, yes, genre is all of that. But, mostly, it’s marketing.

As James Burke once said, let me suggest something with which you may violently disagree: beyond all the talk about tropes and whatnot, genre classification is largely about selling books. That’s why publishers and book sellers have so much say in how books are sorted.

Imagine for a moment that you’ve just sold a novel. It’s a touching story about human emotions, et cetera — but one of the characters in it is a robot. Depending on lots of factors, your publisher might decide to sell it as part of their “literary” line, or they might choose to put it out as science fiction.

Does it mean that during all those sleepless spent grinding out your art that you were thinking, “I’m writing science fiction”? Come to that, does it mean that your novel is science fiction just because it’s called science fiction? No, not necessarily. So what does it matter?

It matters a lot — to your publisher. Non-genre novels often come out in hardcover and can cost $25 to $30, with less expensive trade paperbacks to follow. First time science fiction authors may not get a wide hard cover release, and in some cases, the first printing might be a mass-market paperback. Each of these formats costs a different amount to produce, and the royalty structure can be different as well. What’s more, your novel’s classification determines its placement at the book store.

Novels are usually placed into various sections by genre, and consumers have been trained to shop using this system. If I might be allowed to mix up my posts, propters, and ergos for a moment, I’d like to suggest that this is method must be effective: If book sellers could make more money by simply shelving every novel in alphabetical order in one big section, regardless of genre, then they would do that without a moment’s thought.

If there is an establishment out there, obsessed with classification, then it’s a capitalist one. And, as a writer, if you get lumped in with the sci-fi crowd, you might find publishers reluctant to market you as anything else. How successful did Kurt Vonnegut or Harlen Ellison have to get before they could insist that the sci-fi label be taken off of their books? Being called a “sci-fi author” can be similar to what happens to an actor that gets typecast. Some people would rather not be in that situation. Better to be referred to simply as a writer, they say. And good for them.

So, why this long post in response to Cheney’s post, which I substantially agree with? Well, as much respect as I have for him (which is quite a bit), I question the wisdom in responding to a polemic with a polemic. Especially in this case, wherein he replies to an accusation of disdain with disdain. He could have thought it through a bit more, been the bigger man, but let’s face it: anyone on Sanford’s side could easily take it as proof of the original essay. Still, it was spirited defense of the … hmm, what’s the word I’m looking for?

But I do disagree with Cheney on one point; there actually is a literary establishment, you know?

His name is Harold Bloom.

Link via Ed