I totally agree with you and your mom that "literary" and "mainstream" are themselves genres. I think it was tehta who always used to talk about "New-Yorker-type stories." I used to laugh at this because I knew exactly what she meant!
The thing is that every "genre" has its own conventions and trends. Literary is no exception to that. And each has its quirks that are utterly annoying to an outsider.
For example, my next-door neighbor loaned me a novel written by an old girlfriend of his. It's literary. I decided to give it a shot and found my fingernails gouging my palms more often than not because one of her PoV characters is a stodgy blue-collar factory worker who is nonetheless prone to flights of rambling introspection and navel-gazing. I kept wanting to say to the author, "No one thinks this way! Even I don't think this way, and I'm a writer and more prone than usual to rambling, introspection, and navel-gazing!" But hey, some people like this. It's no worse than the sci-fi convention that stories are based on scientific concepts, which annoys some and delights others.
Also, genre occurs on a continuum, and pretending otherwise is (imho) naïve. For example, is Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale literary or sci-fi? I was once told by a professor that sci-fi takes place in a horrific future world. So THT is sci-fi then and we can stop treating it seriously? Now what about LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness? It has aspects in common with THT, yet it is solidly considered sci-fi. Surely, most of the professors who taught me don't take TLHoD seriously. Maybe they should. It's more insightful than the literary novel I read before it. Joyce Carol Oates writes stories that span literary and horror. I suppose that we will stop taking her seriously now too because she writes "genre fic"?
Even between o-fic and fanfic, the line becomes blurred. Neil Gaiman has published stories based on The Chronicles of Narnia. I've read them; the only reason people don't call them "fanfic" is because … well, it's Neil Gaiman. If I wrote the same story, though, it would only find home on ff.net.
Also, genre occurs on a continuum, and pretending otherwise is (imho) naïve.
Yes, indeed! Sometimes I think that some of my "sci fi/fantasy" stuff is only sci fi/fantasy because the characters have funny names and live on some place (and time, perhaps) where our history and culture (or knowledge of other cultures) doesn't apply (and sometimes I don't even mention it's on another world). It's not wholly "fantasy" because there's no magic or super unfamiliar creatures (or dragons or unicorns) or impossible things, and it doesn't fit the whole "futuristic machinery and space ships or science gone wrong" ideal of science fiction. I have a hard time saying, "It's fantasy/sci fi simply because that setting doesn't exist," since lots of "regular fiction" settings don't exist, either. So I guess the difference between "fiction" and "science fiction" or "fantasy" is simply "How close to our reality the story's world seems" or something? (But then I have to argue that a lot of "fiction" or "literary" stuff seems less real to me than the lives of people on other planets :P)
I can see the reason for marketing stories as certain genres and all, but the idea of "this genre should be taken more seriously than that one" is rather silly. A character being hurt in a fantasy setting is just as "serious" or profound as a character being hurt in a "literary" story.
The thing is that every "genre" has its own conventions and trends. Literary is no exception to that. And each has its quirks that are utterly annoying to an outsider.
For example, my next-door neighbor loaned me a novel written by an old girlfriend of his. It's literary. I decided to give it a shot and found my fingernails gouging my palms more often than not because one of her PoV characters is a stodgy blue-collar factory worker who is nonetheless prone to flights of rambling introspection and navel-gazing. I kept wanting to say to the author, "No one thinks this way! Even I don't think this way, and I'm a writer and more prone than usual to rambling, introspection, and navel-gazing!" But hey, some people like this. It's no worse than the sci-fi convention that stories are based on scientific concepts, which annoys some and delights others.
Also, genre occurs on a continuum, and pretending otherwise is (imho) naïve. For example, is Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale literary or sci-fi? I was once told by a professor that sci-fi takes place in a horrific future world. So THT is sci-fi then and we can stop treating it seriously? Now what about LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness? It has aspects in common with THT, yet it is solidly considered sci-fi. Surely, most of the professors who taught me don't take TLHoD seriously. Maybe they should. It's more insightful than the literary novel I read before it. Joyce Carol Oates writes stories that span literary and horror. I suppose that we will stop taking her seriously now too because she writes "genre fic"?
Even between o-fic and fanfic, the line becomes blurred. Neil Gaiman has published stories based on The Chronicles of Narnia. I've read them; the only reason people don't call them "fanfic" is because … well, it's Neil Gaiman. If I wrote the same story, though, it would only find home on ff.net.
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Yes, indeed! Sometimes I think that some of my "sci fi/fantasy" stuff is only sci fi/fantasy because the characters have funny names and live on some place (and time, perhaps) where our history and culture (or knowledge of other cultures) doesn't apply (and sometimes I don't even mention it's on another world). It's not wholly "fantasy" because there's no magic or super unfamiliar creatures (or dragons or unicorns) or impossible things, and it doesn't fit the whole "futuristic machinery and space ships or science gone wrong" ideal of science fiction. I have a hard time saying, "It's fantasy/sci fi simply because that setting doesn't exist," since lots of "regular fiction" settings don't exist, either. So I guess the difference between "fiction" and "science fiction" or "fantasy" is simply "How close to our reality the story's world seems" or something? (But then I have to argue that a lot of "fiction" or "literary" stuff seems less real to me than the lives of people on other planets :P)
I can see the reason for marketing stories as certain genres and all, but the idea of "this genre should be taken more seriously than that one" is rather silly. A character being hurt in a fantasy setting is just as "serious" or profound as a character being hurt in a "literary" story.
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