Wednesday, June 10: Tune It Or Die!
THIS IS A NO TRANSCENDING ZONE
by Robert Lopresti
I read a book review today and jacked up my blood pressure by about ten points.
It was a favorable review of a mystery novel and things seemed to be going along merrily enough until the critic threw out what he must have thought was the highest compliment in his quiver. Some of you already know what it was, I’ll bet.
He said the book transcended the genre.
Anti-Transcendentalism
Now, I have nothing against Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson (except that, as a friend of mine once said, Henry wrote as if each of his sentences was supposed to be stitched on a sampler and hung on the wall). But please don’t start telling me about transcending the genre.
I will translate that phrase for you: Genre literature is garbage and I am far too cultured to tolerate it. However, I liked this particular work so it must go far beyond mere genre into true literature.
In a word: yuck.
There is such condescension in that phrase that it infuriates me. It is the ultimate left-handed compliment. This is really excellent, for crap.
Kurt Vonnegut once wrote “I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled ‘science fiction’ ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”
I despise the idea that our field is a guilty pleasure and that a reader has to find excuses for liking it. I feel the same way about review media that move successful writers out of the mystery column and treat them as “mainstream.” Elmore Leonard, Harlan Coben, etc. (Understand this is not the fault of the authors.)
And the editors think they are doing the author a favor, honoring them by promoting them to the mainstream.
Considering how few reviews I’ve received this may read like sour grapes. But at least I can assure you that these grapes haven’t transcended a damn thing.
My mother had a horror of science fiction, comic books, and Mad Magazine, but she loved mysteries and my Dad, who liked science fiction, comic books, and possibly Mad Magazine. However, it was my favorite aunt, a professor, who consumed every mystery she could could get her hands on. Her attitude was everyone should like mysteries and if one was too snooty to enjoy them, screw their pedestrian tastes.
Besides, I’m a big guy– not as huge as Travis, but no one breathes a negative word around me. Ask James, I’m a badass.
Ask James, I’m a badass.
Rather like Winnie-the-Pooh is to Piglet.
I grieve over this sort of thing on long winter evenings — it is winter and I have actually been doing it of late. In this country (NZ), genre writers are ignored, scoffed at, and ignored some more. I listen to book reviews on the local national radio service. Reviewers always preface their review of genre works with a giggle and: “I don’t ordinarily read this sort of thing…” Blood pressure up, indeed. Ngaio Marsh came from this country, but, around here, you wouldn’t know it.
It seems to me that people like that have an inferiority complex and try to sound more important than they are.
I had an Ivy League cousin, a physicist who would listen to nothing other than classical music and read only “literature.” He thought mysteries were for poor fools. I happened to be reading Woolrich’s “Black Curtain” at the time. He picked it up, probably intending to make fun of me. He read the first couple of paragraphs and then stayed up all night finishing the book.
Laughing at puffed-up people is always a pleasure.
Stephen, so why don’t you write an essay for us about the mystery scene in NZ? Make James (and us) happy.
Dick, your story reminds me of a time, many long years ago, when I came home from my freshman year of college. A high school friend bragged that he hadn’t watched any tv all year and was no longer interested in it. I invited him to see a tv movie that was being rerun that evening. A little thing called DUEL by a new director named Spielberg…
Got an anecdote to expand on yours, Rob.
A couple years ago I caught the premiere episode of Columbo, “Murder by the Book.” I’m a big fan of the show, but I had never seen this one. Halfway through it I was struck by how good the direction was. Nothing real flashy, just a few well-chosen angles and interesting uses of light. I made a mental note to check who did it.
The first line in the ending credits: “Directed by Steven Spielberg.”
Duel–still love that movie. It was written by Matheson…and was a short story.
I enjoyed your article as it has hit a sore spot not just for this genre but many.
People who have high opinions for themselves often don’t have opinions worth sharing i.e. they are borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring!!!
“It transcended the genre.” Translation: “If you do it really well, you aren’t really doing it.”
Great column. I agreed with every word.
Rob, yes, I will.
Labels are good when you’re looking for a jazz c.d. in the music store or a classic whodunnit in the Library. Not so good when they’re used to slam somebody. Mr. Ross, I can vouch that we in the U.S. don’t know bean dip about the literary life in N.Z. Someplace I have a magazine with an article about Science Fiction in Australia during WWII. I want the whole story!
Stephen, thanks for agreeing to write the NZ piece for us, and Rob, thanks for asking him!
I’m looking forward to it.
(Great column, Rob. Like Jon, I agree with every point you made.)
Boss, I love your delicate use of simile above.
As a reviewer who has used the phrase on occassion, I never once used it as you and others believe it to mean. Instead, it meant that sometimes a mystery book becomes something more than a mystery, thriller or whatever. It was and is always a compliemnt as the rest of the review no doubt would make clear.
Having not read the review in question, I don’t know if that reviewer was doing what I do or doing what you suggest. Without question, if a phrase was lifted out of one of my reviews out of context, it could appear to mean something far different than what was intended.
Of course, when I do a review and think the book is crap, I do really say so.
The point, Kevin, is that because a book is “something more” than a thriller, mystery, etc., doesn’t mean that it “transcends” the genre. It means that it represents the best of what the genre has to offer.
It is insulting to those of us who labor within certain conventions to assume that the conventions we adhere to are not relevant to mainstream life.
No, it means it is in a different class. The funny thing is you never hear about James Lee Burke, Stephen King, David Morell, etc. claiming an insult when their works are referred to in this way. In fact, when one author asked DM about the issue at HHCC a couple of years ago he said something about how an author should feel flattered and move on because the most important thing was to be working on the next novel.
In this day of false outrage, it is always sad when folks see an insult where there really isn’t one.
To state JLW’s point a little differently, the insult is not to the author being reviewed, who the reviewer is obviously seeking to compliment, but to the whole genre being “transcended.”
Or just to put it in “Texan” and referring to reviewers rather than authors……
“So-and-So transcends the role of a reviewer with greater understanding and depth of perception. You are just half-ass good.”
I rest my case.
Like I haven’t heard that before. lol!
Ah…so you’re a Texan?
This seems more than “in a different class” (which seemingly means a different genre):
Main Entry: tran·scend
Pronunciation: \tran(t)-?send\
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin transcendere to climb across, transcend, from trans- + scandere to climb — more at scan
Date: 14th century
transitive verb
1 a: to rise above or go beyond the limits of b: to triumph over the negative or restrictive aspects of : overcome c: to be prior to, beyond, and above (the universe or material existence)
2: to outstrip or outdo in some attribute, quality, or powerintransitive verb : to rise above or extend notably beyond ordinary limits
Come on, Kev. Admit it. That reviewer was a suck up.
Wait. I think we have two different points here.
For example, if we look at Huxley’s Brave New World, it’s at heart a science fiction book, and God knows how many people go out of their way to avoid reading science fiction. But BNW transcended its genre to appeal to an audience both broader and narrower– broader in scope, narrower in taste. Likewise, Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is a spy novel at core, but the novel is more than that.
So, both James and Kevin are right. While some pseudo-intellectuals might sneer at genre fiction like Dick’s cousin, occasionally we catch them reading genre fiction and enjoying it.
“Ah…so you’re a Texan?”
Yep. Native Texan as well which is increasingly rare in these parts.
And some would say I am also a half whatever reviewer.
Sorry, Leigh, but as far as I’m concerned, you can’t have it both ways.
To transcend means to go beyond. Therefore, “transcending” a genre means that the work so described has moved beyond the scope of the genre. This assumes that the genre has inherently constrained qualitative values. But genre fiction is not defined by its quality; it’s defined by its form and content.
Consider verse. On the one hand, you have naughty limericks and doggerel. On the other, you have Shakespeare and Milton. All of these fit within the definition of poetry, and it is worth noting that exemplars of the former significantly outnumber exemplars of the latter. So do Shakespeare and Milton transcend the genre of poetry? Of course not.
I concede that there is something being transcended when a reader encounters a work that so completely exceeds his expectations that it makes him view things in an altogether new light. But I submit to you that it is the reader’s experience of the genre that is being transcended, and not the genre itself.
I will also note in passing that the very expression “transcending the genre” has become a cliché, and ought to be retired for that reason alone.
“So do Shakespeare and Milton transcend the genre of poetry? Of course not.”
Umm…yes, they both do. Without question. Granted, that might say more about me and how I look at things than anything else…..
Kevin
(who, once upon a time, was way thinner, had way more hair and was a double major of English and History)
> there is something being transcended when a reader encounters a work that so completely exceeds his expectations that it makes him view things in an altogether new light. But I submit to you that it is the reader’s experience of the genre that is being transcended, and not the genre itself.
Yes! That’s true.
When you look at dirty doggerel, Shakespeare made sexy sonnets beautiful and in his plays, he laid down ‘off-color’ puns to make a schoolteacher blush. Well, not the schoolteachers I know, but some school board member somewhere. It was the ‘dirtiness’ Shakespeare transcended.
Dante also laced his opus with ‘obscenities’. Umm… there’s a point somewhere there, but I’m not sure what it is.
Perhaps the problem is the word ‘transcended’. If we mean a work laterally expands outside a genre’s usual pattern, I could accept that context. Hammett and I think a lot of noir writers embed social commentary as does that other Forida writer, what’s-his-name.
Umm…yes, they both do.
Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree there. I might call Shakespeare and Milton (S&M? — shame on me) transcendent verse in an aesthetic sense rather than a technical sense, and I would say they proved what’s possible in the genre rather than go beyond it — just as I wouldn’t say that Beethoven or Stravinsky transcended music, but rather expanded its vocabulary.
JLW
(who has also added more than a few pounds to the willowy frame of his youth, but luckily still has a full head of hair. White hair, but what the hell, who’s complaining? And not coincidentally also a Texan, although alas not native-born — but then again, neither was Sam Houston.)
Dante also laced his opus with ‘obscenities’.—–
hmmmmm, I use tequila myself.
Native born, no worm, lots of lime and salt, light on the ice.
(laughing)
“S & M” ??!!!!
James, if not for my quick reflexes I would have covered my computer screen with my mouthfull of soda, I was laughing so hard!
This sort of conversation is why I read this blog and love it!
Well, this is the most comments I have ever recieved on a blog entry, not even including my own. Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
Kevin, great to see you here (as opposed to Short Mystery Fiction for a change). I hope you find it useful as a critic to learn that what you consider a compliment some of your readers think is an insult. A complicated language we are stuck with but as T.S. Eliot said “I gotta use words when I talk to you.”
And the comments on S&M (har) reminded me of one of my favorite poems by Don Marquis. The title refers to the poet-cockroach, archy.
archy confesses
coarse
jocosity
catches the crowd
shakespeare
and i
are often
low browed
the fish wife
curse
and the laugh
of the horse
shakespeare
and i
are frequently
coarse
aesthetic
excuses
in bill s behalf
are adduced
to refine
big bill s
coarse laugh
but bill
he would chuckle
to hear such guff
he pulled
rough stuff
and he liked
rough stuff
hoping you
are the same
archy
Rob:
Thanks for the warm welcome. I recently stumbled across this site (I think I saw it listed on CrimeSpace) and felt moved to comment. I normally don’t comment much on blogs and rarely do on SMFS anymore. I am a bit of a contrary opinion at times and many folks don’t want to hear a different viewpoint. Also, especially with blogs and this would be the case here, I don’t want something I say to trigger such a big reaction that there end up being many more comments than the actual blog piece. When that happens, it threatens to over take the original piece.
It is always interesting to read how some folks perceive stuff. Their reactions say as much about them if not more than the piece being considered. Hopefully, if somebody (even me) is doing a good job on writing the review and the whole thing is taken into context the point is made well.
Kevin