These posts were prompted by a very interesting panel at the very interesting Vancouver Writers and Readers Festival. During that discussion -- about whether 'genre' authors feel aggrieved by the labels that are attached to them -- my fellow Macmillan author, <a href="http://www.chelseacain.com/" target="_blank">Chelsea Cain</a>, told an interesting story. It was about how a 'proper' writer once came up to her and asked, 'Aren't you going to write a <em>real</em> novel one day?'

I didn't mention it to Chelsea at the time. But I've had exactly the same conversation, with a different 'proper' writer. I confess that I was lost for words at that moment.

People who ask you this kind of thing are nothing more than genre vigilantes. They come in two guises. Those inside the encircled genre wagon train firing out. And those outside, firing in. Both are tiny in number -- most book fans, whether they feel themselves to be a part of a genre or not, are generous souls, far too intelligent for such nonsense. But these strange creatures are out there, honestly, and sometimes they're very vocal indeed.

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Those outside inhabit that la-la land where fiction exists primarily for refined people capable of understanding and appreciating it. The purpose of literature, therefore, is to separate the clever from the stupid, the educated from the boneheaded masses. People who think like this have a very easy way to define the target of their arrows. If it can be categorised as a genre work it's populist and therefore bad. End of the story. Cue that condescending question, 'When will you write a real book?'

Here are a few thoughts for any such folk who happen upon this post. What about Shakespeare? Is he literary too? I think most of us would go along with that idea. Yet Shakespeare wrote popular plays for a broad public, performed in a repertory theatre that was the Elizabethan equivalent of a soap opera. <em>Most of his audience was illiterate. <span style="font-style:normal;">Yes, you did read that correctly. Shakespeare was an incredibly well-read individual who used countless classical and historical sources as inspiration for his work. But he was watched, in the main, by the equivalent of the Saturday crowd that today tunes into <em>X-Factor </em>or<em> American Idol.</em> Most couldn't even read. Only a handful would understand the intellectual and literary references Shakespeare threw in there for the benefit of his artistic mates buying the beers after the show in the taverns of Southwark. </span></em>

<em><span style="font-style:normal;">There are writers who deliberately aim their work at a limited intellectual audience, not the world at large, and I defend absolutely their right to do so. But Shakespeare wasn't one of them. He didn't want a tiny audience of cognoscenti. He craved, and reached, a mass audience.</span></em>

In short he was a popular writer, a working hack. As was Homer, Swift, Dickens... any number of past greats we now define as 'literary'. Would any of today's genre vigilantes have dared turn round to Mark Twain, cast a disparaging eye at <em>Huckleberry Finn</em> and asked, 'Are you going to write a real book one day?' I'd love to have witnessed that encounter. I'm not suggesting Chelsea or I are on a par with Twain. Merely pointing out that the idea that something popular must be dumbed-down too is of recent origin and would have been ridiculed by a good number of the literary greats whose work is now taught in universities.

People who think this way are snobs, nothing more. So are their counterparts inside the wagon train, just the other way round. They're the tiny bunch of hard core genre fans who light a candle each morning to their beloved idol, be he Raymond Chandler, Edgar Allen Poe or whoever, then set out to match every new book that comes along against the work of their preferred dead god. This attitude is most visible some areas of so-called book criticism on the web. The Internet is a wonderful thing. But let's be honest, as <a href="http://michaelmarshallsmith.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/customer-reviews-suck-—-nuff-said/" target="_blank">my good mate Michael Marshall Smith argued only recently</a>, it has, on occasion, empowered voices that would really should have remained silent. Proper critics view each book as it comes, a work of its own, influenced and comparable with others, but an individual effort that deserves to be judged separately not simply weighed against something that went before. The vigilante attitude is simpler: The way of Chandler-Poe-Whoever is the only way. Follow it and we will worship you. Break the rules and you're rubbish.

In an essay on his art Chandler wrote something that now gets trotted out time and time again at conventions. It's usually restricted to the first sentence. Let me give you a little more so you can get the flavour...
<blockquote>Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.</blockquote>
Note that word 'must'. I loathe the word 'must'. It reminds me of school.

I once heard an author read out that first sentence at a convention and declare that all crime fiction stemmed from this statement, and anything that didn't wasn't crime fiction. Well my work doesn't come from there. Nor does that of an awful lot of people I know. Yet we still get invited to 'crime' conventions because, let's face it, our books sell. I'm happy to go too. They're a lot of fun and usually a lot less narrow than the genre label stuck on the side might suggest.

I don't claim to be a crime writer though I don't object if people see me that way. In the eyes of the general book-buying public, most of whom barely think about the idea of genre at all, I'm simply one more player in a very broad field alongside crime, thriller and mystery writers of many different kinds. It's ridiculous to convert Chandler's personal opinion of fifty odd years ago into some blind rule to be applied to everything that comes after and then damn any book that fails to conform to some antiquated so-called norm.

And I do wonder: what would he think of that statement now? Raymond Chandler was an inventive and original writer. We remember him because, alongside people like Dashiel Hammett, he wrote great books that broke new ground. If Chandler were alive now the last thing he'd be looking to do would be to knock out Raymond Chandler readalikes. He'd surely be striving to write something original, not trying to rework a style that dates from more than half a century ago. There are plenty of Chandleresque writers around. They're popular, often improvise with his original theme and I wish them well. We need people working inside established traditions. But we also need writers who are brave enough to ignore those traditions completely. I bet that's where a young RC would be headed if he were around today, though the Chandler diehards would probably damn him for doing so because he didn't follow their precious conventions.

One overriding trait joins both these strange ideologists. As out and out snobs they see the primary purpose of their rules as being to maintain control, to keep out those of whom they disapprove, and to make sure any still in or outside the wagon train continue to deserve their place there by conforming to the established mores of the community.

Exclusivity is important which is probably the daftest part of the whole business. If I've learned one thing over the years it's that a spirit of inclusiveness, of generosity to others, lies at the heart of this strange craft. It's hard for most of us to write about people if you hate them. There's a lot to be said for books that are fired by anger and a sense of righteous outrage. But not for the ire of meanness of spirit, of small-mindedness and spiteful, narrow thinking. Writers who are brave enough to be different, to refuse to conform, to test our intelligence and, at times, our patience, should be welcomed not measured to see if they 'fit' and condemned if they fail to conform to type.

The scope of modern popular fiction is narrow enough as it is. More restricted, I feel, than it was even twenty years ago. The rigid promotion of genre stifles the rush of adventure we should feel when we pick up a book. Instead of looking for the new, all too often we seek the familiar. In the end, that's not good for readers, writers or literature as a whole. And we really don't need the sly pressure of the genre vigilantes to constrain the field still further.

Thankfully most readers, whether they're genre fans or not, are too intelligent and generous to indulge in these shenanigans. They buy what they like and leave to one side the titles they don't. Good for them. Reading should be a pleasure, not a crusade.