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[cynthia_arrow]

Just finished a rough outline of my PhD dissertation prospectus. (A 'prospectus,' in American secondary ed terms, is a formal plan for your book-length research project in your field, called a 'dissertation.') Will start writing it this week. Eek. It's tiring just to think about writing this 15 page document. I can't imagine generating

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[cynthia_arrow]

You know, I have no idea if there's one common approach to genre in Academia in this country. I tend to be reader-oriented, focused on the making of textual meaning in the act of reading, which might account for my approach.

There is, indeed, a weird thing that happens when you put the average reader's expectations up against a critic's determination to clearly label/define things. The James Frey thing amuses me for just the reasons you say. (I'm familiar with Hayden White's ideas; he's on my "to read" list!) Makes it hard to be an academic sometimes; you feel like in carving out a niche for yourself, you're making things more complicated than they actually were. For example, most average readers could easily navigate a book of interconnected short stories and understand them in much they way I'd want them to--and they could also deal quite well with it being labeled a 'novel.' My need to demarcate the short story cycle as a concept is largely for academics, who can't read another genre as a novel without damaging it somehow, IMHO.

Your thesis sounds really interesting. Thanks for your thoughts on the subject and for the offer of help. I'm pretty well focused on American authors (just to narrow the field somehow), but some of the important q9th century short story and short story cycle writers in the background are European (or even Russian).