Feeling Poorly?

Image Peter de Seve Sketchbook via NHS doc blog.

I've heard Jonathan Karp speak on panels before, and I've been impressed by his candor. I'd never suggest that he isn't super-sharp or doesn't know the world of books well, and given the very positive responses to this article in the Washington Post, lots of other folks are similarly persuaded by his publishing acumen. If you haven't yet, and you'd like to read it before we get to the thorny patch, I'll wait... The something Karp predicts without preamble or explanation must seem perfectly sensible to other people, because feathers weren't ruffled and craws weren't stuck on it that I read anywhere else. But I didn't quite get it:

Many categories of books will be subsumed by digital media. Reference publishing has already migrated online. Practical nonfiction will be next, winding up on Web sites that can easily update and disseminate visual and textual information. Readers of old-fashioned genre fiction will die off, and the next generation will have so many different entertainment options that it's hard to envision the same level of loyalty to brand-name formula fiction coming off the conveyor belt every year. The novelists who are truly novel will thrive; the rest will struggle.

I suppose if I think of old-fashioned as being the last 30 years, he's right. I think genre publishing in e-forms and otherwise will change its face, but I doubt seriously that it or its fans will all conveniently die off to cleanse the slate once again for the higher-quality fiction that humanity needs. I'm not accusing Karp of implying exactly this, he doesn't, but I hear this kind of implication echoed by lots of industry folks while I'm standing around eavesdropping, and so it caught my eye as provocative.

If I think of genre specifically as stories that can be grouped by a certain setting or premise, say the Greek plays of comedy or tragedy, epic poems of battle, romantic sonnets or the adventures of Dumas, it's plain that genre is what lasts when delivery systems change. As of last summer, you could get an adaptation of Beowulf in convenient 3D IMAX form!

Here's another example which Karp even mentions, the media tie-in novel. Some booksellers consider this its own kind of subgenre, shelving them together so fans of popular franchises can find them easily. And yet, other than Star Trek novels which have been written for decades, the growing abundance and importance of this group is a recent phenomenon. There's Monk, CSI, Buffy the Vampire Slayer in comic and novel forms. There are others and more on the way. The movie tie-in book's become a bigger deal, too, meaning the ones written after the successful film, not providing the basis for one. I even know people who are not regular "old-fashioned" genre readers who enjoy a television series, and therefore, try the books for more of what they enjoy. Why's this happening?

People like fresh experiences within the context of ones they've previously enjoyed. People like genres. However, I'd say another part of the reason is because people don't completely trust publishers to give them the experience they want or themselves to be able to find it among the sea of similar-seeming, golden-hyped, vaguely-described titles. I can blindfold you and ask you to eat something I swear will be wonderful, but you might not want to open wide without a bigger hint. Is it something you already know you hate? Is it prepared in a way that you're allergic to? Is my idea of wonderful and beneficial different than yours? What if I just tell you it's a chocolate-covered strawberry? You'll know if you're in for that. And how is that so terrible? Well, it means you'll have a right to be peeved if it turns out to be dog kibble.

If a better job were done of describing the kind of experience to be expected between the covers, there'd be a lot fewer disappointed readers, I think. And frankly, I'm hearing a spate of that from other readers recently. I think that's why people are gun-shy about trying new authors and why they're heading toward series that have at least some foundations they know they'll like. When people like a premise, they'll give another creative type a try at creating a version they'll enjoy, even if its in a different format. Sure, I like lasagna. Lay your recipe on me. Premise IS genre, and the emotional, transporting experience of fiction for most people is about the STORIES, not the delivery systems.

These are some related simmerings, addressed to the general you. If this isn't You, please ignore.
1) It isn't necessary, in fact it's condescending as hell, to try tricking people into reading what you think's good for them, like sneaking castor oil down their throats.

2) It isn't the bleakness of the ending or the body count or the explicitness of the torture that gives street cred or denotes quality. Even happening to fake people, extended or graphic cruelty where it's not purposeful can make an author seem to readers to be less, not more, in touch with the sorrows of being human.

3) If you've come to hate your series and characters so much that you're suddenly compelled to mistreat them horribly or dramatically deform their personas, take a vacation or start a new series instead. Otherwise, expect loyal readers to find it a jerky move, not the product of innovative risk-taking. If you'd done it in Book One, there wouldn't be loyal readers.

4) You don't have to hope for genre readers' mass die-off to give you a new crack at higher-minded folks. Frankly, the young comic readers should disabuse anyone of that notion, and good for them! Find ways to share great stories in the coin of the realm.

5) Almost all of what we now consider classic fiction is a combination of mystery/suspense or romance/adventure. Current bestsellers and award-winners are, too.

6) Genre lives because great characters and storytelling hang in there, defying reports of their demise like ivory-billed woodpeckers. Our most beloved classics of the last couple centuries were often considered low-brow or rabble-rousing crapola in their times. Genuine crapola was also considered crapola. It wasn't the premise that decided the difference, but the execution.