Ian McEwan secretly writes romance. He’s supposed to be a lit fic author, but most of the books of his I’ve read — The Innocent, Atonement, and Sweet Tooth — all function like category romances, with a bit of meta-fictional trickery (which isn’t exactly foreign to category romance either. The last of these I read, Sweet Tooth, even works as a kind of love letter to the fan fic wing of romance. The book is narrated by Serena Frome, a low-level operative in MI-5 tasked with secretly funding propaganda funds to likely anti-communist literary sorts. She falls in love with Tom Haley, a novelist she’s gotten into the program…and then (spoiler!) it turns out at the end that she isn’t actually the narrator; instead, Tom is the narrator writing as her. The romance trope of switching between male and female protagonist consciousnesses is both tweaked and perfectly fulfilled, as is the fan fic genre trope of telling the same story from different characters perspectives. It’s a tour de force, not because it upends romance conventions, but because it fulfills them so gleefully and perfectly. Quite possibly McEwan doesn’t read category romance or fan fic—but he has enough common roots with the genre that he understands them, and loves them and makes them his own— or, if you prefer, lets them make him theirs.
So it was with some disappointment that I read McEwan’s “Solar”and realized that it was not a romance. It’s just literary fiction. And you can tell it’s literary fiction not because it dispenses with genre tropes, but because the genre tropes of literary fiction are all in place. The aging priaptic professor and his string of wives; the jabs at academic politics, the ironies, the metafictional asides (the main character, Beard embellishes a story “not because, or not only because, he was a liar, but because he instinctively knew it was wrong to dishonor a good story.”) And of course the inevitable, drearily happy unhappy ending, where everyone figures out that the main character is a horrible person and all his lies catch up to him, and so we’re left dangling in media res with disaster delightfully coming. Yawn. It’s almost as drearily cliché as the end of Edward P. Jones’ “The Known World” where the last scene is of the characters literally gazing at a rich tapestry. No, really.
Genre fiction, and especially romance, is generally thought of as predictable and structurally uncreative. Lit fic requires idiosyncratic genius. But for McEwan, at least in the four books I’ve read, the opposite is the case. Romance seems to inspire him to play with the genre; to stretch it out and move the bits around, to see just how far he can push his characters and his readers while still retaining their love. In lit fic, though, the pretense of no formulas seems to mean he can’t even see the formulas, and so he just goes trudging through them, without even bothering with variation or wit or invention. The box you know is there becomes an inspiration; the box you refuse to see is the one that holds you.
This isn’t to say that Solar is utterly without merit; there’s an incredibly funny bit involving sub zero urination and the consequences thereof. But the amusing set pieces never add up to anything interesting, because lit fic’s non formula-formula robs McEwan of invention as surely as his main character is (inevitably) bereft of inspiration and genius. Without genre, lit fic is at the mercy of its formulaic conventions.
‘Romance seems to inspire him to play with the genre… In lit fic, though, the pretense of no formulas seems to mean he can’t even see the formulas, and so he just goes trudging through them…’
Excellent.
I know you hate lit fic and are always looking to champion romance, but are you reading anything marketed as lit fic written by somebody younger than you, or even just a decade older than you? Sure, McEwan has covered ground that “literary” writers have been bleeding their pens into since Miller, but he’s literally an old geezer. Like most battles waged against pop culture, pop culture won. Junot Diaz, Karen Russel and Michael Chabon aren’t writing the books you’re fighting against.
I’m not enough of a regular participant in the world of literary fiction to feel certain, but my sense is the idea of lit fic as a bastion of middle aged men writing about fucking around in vaguely academic settings is seriously passé.
You spend so much time in the vanguard of social criticism that it’s jarring when you decide to storm the some long-abandoned outpost of culture past.
I’ve dipped into Chabon without much pleasure. I’m reading Jo Baker now, which is lit fic (though romance too) and quite like that. Also mentioned Edward P. Jones here, who’s relatively young I think. I like Percival Everett, who’s a lit fic author…so, you know, I read around here and there.
Also, as I’ve said, I generally really like McEwan. So this isn’t exactly a “loathe lit fic” post. More thinking about the way it does and doesn’t interact with genre.
@London Crockett
Junot Diaz is writing the kind of books that Noah is “fighting against” (I haven’t read anything by Michael Chabon or Karen Russell). Not about middle aged men fucking around in vaguely academic settings – though Jonathan Franzen is, and he’s only four years older than Chabon – but Noah’s basic subject was formulaic books that don’t know how formulaic they are.
Though I’m a big fan of Atonement and The Innocent, I found Sweet Tooth to be one of McEwan’s least interesting books. Solar, on the other hand, has a series of fantastic humorous set pieces (sub-zero urination top of the list, but the bit where he steals Douglas Adams’ story about borrowed crisps is also great) and a compelling view of climate change. I’ll take Solar over Sweet Tooth any day. You may be the at the end of the “Romantic” McEwan books. Maybe Saturday and/or On Chesil Beach qualify? But I don’t think so. The early, grisly/macabre McEwan is probably not what you’re looking for, though I would say they are more genre-y. More horror than romance. The Comfort of Strangers is probably the best of those, though the Cement Garden is also very unsettling.
Actually…The Child In Time might qualify as a romance in your world. Very sad, but has a (somewhat) happy/romantic ending. It’s a great one. Enduring Love, also great, but not a romance (more of a mystery). I’d stay away from Amsterdam, though that’s the one that won the Booker. It lacks any depth of emotion and goes straight for the cynicism. And Black Dogs is probably the most lit-fic of them all.
The set pieces are fun. The view of climate change is pretty bog standard, as is the view of academic politics. The structure of the book is boring, and the overall message is stupid. (Even the sub-zero urination, funny as it is, boils down to aging academic castration fears. Hard for me to really be especially impressed by that.
I think what Sweet Tooth does with the romance genre, in terms of point of view, is brilliant and lovely.
I like horror. So worth trying at least…
@Graham Clark: I”m at a loss as to why you think The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is formulaic. Maybe there’s a glut of books dealing with geeky immigrant kids and I just don’t know about it.
@Noah, I’m a little (emphasis on little) surprised that you haven’t like Chabon. He plays with genre a lot, is usually funny, and his books have a genre-fiction-like focus on plot. Not to mention that his books are usually weird.
Have you read Jojo Moyes yet? Marketing-wise, she’s in between category romance and contemporary fiction (and maybe lit fic: she gets reviewed in lit-fic-y pubs). Story-wise, I suspect she’s pretty much genre romance. Beyond being a wonderful writer, she is also a great chronicler of the day-to-day trials of being working poor. I’m not broadly read enough to really make a sweeping statement, but I haven’t encountered many writers who put poverty in their novels as just a thing. In my experience, writers addressing poverty treat it the way most writers deal with disability: it’s either non-existent or it is the story—the character only exists to be poor/disabled. Poverty in Moyes is omnipresent, but back story and environment. Even in One Plus One, where the plot is triggered by the protagonist’s inability to pay for a trip, she never dips into “poverty novel” mode.
Well, I haven’t read a ton of Chabon, honestly. Maybe I should try again. Moyes sounds pretty interesting. Just read Longbourn by Jo Baker, which handles class issues really well, I think.
My most recommended Chabon: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. And his essay collection he published with McSweeney’s gives some intriguing insights into the false lit/genre divide.
Oh, and the lit course I teach in the fall includes lots of late 20th fiction that is regarded as highbrow lit fic, but in fact is completely dependent on genre formulas.
@Chris
Out of curiosity, what texts specifically are you teaching?
Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley
Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5
Silko, Ceremony
Delany, Tales of Neveryon
Atwood, Handsmaid Tale
Morrison, Beloved
Moore, Watchmen
Le Guin, Unlocking the Air
Somewhere in his essay collection The Fun Stuff, James Wood takes McEwan to task for plotty gimcrackery (or something… it’s been a while and i don’t have it in front of me). Anyway, he chides McEwan from what I take to be a pro-lit fic perspective.
Yes that sounds right. “Too much genre! Not enough boringness! For shame, Ian! For shame!”
Ha! Well, I like Wood a lot, but he did inspire me to scoop up a few McEwan books, which probably wasn’t his plan.
I’m not as well read as you guys, but I really do think that realism can be way more compelling than genre. A while ago I read If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler and thought the most genre-ish part–the framing plot about cutesy secret societies spying on and fighting each other over their varying views of reading and writing–was the dullest part. I’ve never read Pynchon, but I understand that he’s really into cutesy secret societies, too, which makes me want to stay away.
Chris, on another thread you advised a poster to refute his anti-superhero classmates by pointing out that Time Magazine named Watchmen as one of the greatest works of fiction in the last 100 years. I can’t resist pointing this out: Time Magazine sucks and so do the vast majority of superhero comics! Watchmen isn’t one of them, but still. Here’s a great take on Time: http://www.theonion.com/video/time-announces-new-version-of-magazine-aimed-at-ad-17950
Jack, very true. But, rightly and wrongly, the magazine has accrued cultural cred, so their top 100 is useful to bolster the argument. And the majority of superhero comics are bad literature/art. I mostly study them as cultural artifacts, with some very good lit/art popping up here and there.
Genre isn’t anti-realism, exactly. Romance novels can be pretty realistic (even to the part where people fall and love and marry. This is something that happens.)
Yeah, I was thinking about genre and realism. One reason why the British version of The Office had a big impact on me is that it really captured my life as a miserable office worker, with each episode’s opening credits showing the tedious morning commute and the melancholy closing music signaling the end of another unsatisfying day. But at the same time, it was definitely a sitcom. It introduced and resolved at least one funny plotline with each episode, and it gave you a constant stream of jokes throughout. Maybe I just like genre that’s somewhat grounded in reality.