"Rock me mama like a wagon wheel, rock me mama any way you feel..."-Old Crow Medicine Show, Wagon WheelAlright, it's Friday, I'm exhausted, and I'm thus cheating on my blog post today. The folks over at Tor.com posted a great one about fantasy versus magical realism, and it wanders all over the sticky question of what exactly constitutes a genre and whether they matter or not.
In the honor of the character whose costume I'll be wearing tonight (and bonus points for guessing his name), lemme sum up: genres matter more to critics than to readers, because critics need a set of criteria by which to judge whether something is good. Different novels in different genres have different goals, and since whether they are good or not depends upon whether they achieve those goals, the critic must lump every work into a genre in order to figure out what its goals are.
The reader doesn't have to do the same, and is oftentimes most attracted to things which defy the genre constrictions laid out by critics. Writers can write whatever the hell they want, as they're the ones who actually decide what they want to accomplish with their work.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a nap to take and a six-fingered man to find.
Happy Halloween!
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