[Wōdnes-dæg] Wild Things Are Beyond Genre Classifications

Introduction
If Genre’s a Guide, Keep Reading Your Map
What’s Behind the Words
Closing
References

{Colbert and Sendak in a mid-interview dramatic pause. Image from chron.com}

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Introduction

In memory of the late Maurice Sendak, today's entry is all about the arbitrariness of genre. Sendak's own take on the matter is nicely encapsulated in an exchange he had with Stephen Colbert during Colbert's interview segment "Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1" on 24 January of 2012:

“Colbert: Why write for children?

Sendak: I don’t write for children.

Colbert: You don’t?

Sendak: No. I write. And somebody says, that’s for children.”¹

With age comes wisdom, and Sendak nailed it when he gave this brief explanation of how what he wrote was classified.

But if genre is something that “somebody says” it is, where does that leave the writer?

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If Genre’s a Guide, Keep Reading Your Map

As a mysterious writer decipherable only as "CH Tung" points out, genre can help to guide a writer by giving a sense of direction or purpose.² This is true, and a good point to be made about the classification of writing, but it seems to be saying something different from Sendak’s quick explanation.

Like a painter who decides to paint a landscape rather than a portrait, a writer who decides to write a novel rather than a short story helps to give him/herself direction, but beyond that the definition of “genre” ceases to be useful in literature - especially in today’s mixed literary scene.

After all, are the books in the Harry Potter series children’s books, young adult books, or can they be said to hold an ageless appeal?

The magical elements in the series mark it quite clearly as fantasy, but each one also contains a central enigma or mystery that is usually solved by each book’s end - so are they also mystery stories?

And taken as a whole, the series very obviously shows at least some growth of its central characters, so could an omnibus edition also be considered a bildungsroman?

This is the application of genre to take issue with, that which tries to pin a work to a narrow field of interest or audience.

It's also good to be wary of the academic sense that the term only extends so far as the essential kinds of writing (poetry, prose, drama), and yet can also be used to refer to fantasy, science fiction, and mystery all lumped together as one, like some kind of literary equivalent of the word “cancer” meaning both a constellation with a celebrated and storied past, and a terrible disease living off of and destroying its host.

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What’s Behind the Words

At the heart of the issue of classification, and maybe what Sendak was poking at with his assessment of what being someone who 'writes for children' meant with Colbert¹ and elsewhere,³ could be the idea that classification to such a degree isn’t what writers do, but is instead what readers - or sellers - of books do to make sense of all the literature found in the world. Writers merely write, and though they might call their works one thing, those generations that come after them may call them another.

Given things like Pottermore and the Harry Potter theme park being built in Japan, in fifty years maybe that series will be classified as a work of trans-media/revenue-seeding fiction.

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Closing

Check back here Friday for a hunt for the good in the Knightley and Farrell flick London Boulevard.

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References

Be sure to check out the wikipedia article on Maurice Sendak for an overview of all of his works (as writer, illustrator, and both).

1. Colbert, Stephen. Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1. 24 January 2012 -from- Oldenburg, Ann "Stephen Colbert talks politics, sex with Maurice Sendak." USA TODAY 25 January 2011.

2. CH Tung. “The Value of Genre Classification.” 1986.

3. Barber, John. “The Globe's interview with author Sendak: Portrait of a cranky old man.” Globe and Mail 24 September 2011.

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