Early on in this blog’s life, I wrote a post about how genre is like root beer. Long story short, it seems like every story has some element that stuffs it into a genre, no matter what else is included in the story. (For example, if there’s aliens, no matter how small a part, it’s science fiction.)
I’m starting to rethink this a bit.
I’m currently reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. (Yes, I know I’m a few years behind on this. It’s what I do.) If you are unfamiliar with the story, it is an extremely long, very well researched story, essentially about Dracula and what he’s doing in the modern (if by modern, you mean the 1970s, and I do) day. It’s told mostly from the viewpoint of a teenager, though there are stories within stories – her father’s, and her father’s advisor.
It has vampires. Should it should be fantasy, right? Or at least paranormal, according to the root beer theory.
But I don’t think it is – and neither, apparently, do the people who have reviewed it on Amazon. The top tags for the book are: historical fiction, vampire, mystery. (Both “adventure” and “literature” show up before either fantasy or paranormal do.)
Between examples like this, which could, I suppose, be called “literary fantasy” or “fantastic literature,” if I felt like making up subgenres, and the work I did on the Subgenre Studies last year, I’m beginning to change my opinion. Maybe there doesn’t have to be a root beer in a story. Maybe the author’s intent, and the themes and style of the story, are what determine genre, and not what’s in it.
What do you think, Squiders?
