genre!

So there's this thing with "genre fiction" right? It's not considered "literary" and is much derided by the whomever, yet the NYT has gotten on board with its relevance in the here and now and are doing the serialized (quel anachronism) genre fiction in the Sunday magazine (along with the humorous 1st person essay and the graphic novel, these three things being some sort of zeitgeist as it were).

I, too, have gotten on board.

Among the five bazillion things my 19th c mystery lit class taught me:
a) Whatever line there is dividing genre fiction and literary fiction is stupid and imaginary.
b) How awesome it is that genre fiction can both have totally relevant commentary on anything at all and be fun to read. How much more I buy into said commentary when the writer obviously isn't taking her/himself waaaay too seriously as seems to be the case with most writers of mystery.
c) Though he may be one of these taking himself too seriously sorts, I can in fact enjoy the Dickens.

I confess my dilettante status in the canon of "genre fiction"--although I'm now quite well read in the 19th-c mystery, I'm not yet caught up to my Raymond Chandlers and my James Ellroys. My sci-fi is dismal at best. Some Ray Bradbury, fast forward to Jonathan Lethem, Ender's Game, and that about spells it out.

I just finished reading Octavia Butler's Kindred, her totally scary novel about time travelling to the antebellum South. And of course I feel crappy and bandwagonriffic for only hearing of her when she died earlier this year. In any case that book is going to haunt me for a while. So mostly I'm just saying read that book.