LA
Author
LATRAME
@latrame
Let's make a bet, cold.
Every era has despised the literature people actually read. The novel in the eighteenth century, the serial in the nineteenth, crime fiction and sci-fi in the twentieth, each time the guardians of good taste swore it wasn't real literature. Each time, the years proved them wrong, fifty years late.
So the fun question isn't whether it will happen again. It's : what are we sneering at today, in exactly the same way ?
Fanfiction. The twelve-volume fantasy saga. The romance selling by the million while critics look elsewhere. Interactive fiction. Stories written for and by online communities no academic reads yet.
We don't know which ones will last. But if history has a lesson, it's that today's list of "subgenres" almost certainly contains a classic or two our grandchildren will study. Contempt has never been a good indicator of value. Just a good indicator of the era.
Every era has despised the literature people actually read. The novel in the eighteenth century, the serial in the nineteenth, crime fiction and sci-fi in the twentieth, each time the guardians of good taste swore it wasn't real literature. Each time, the years proved them wrong, fifty years late.
So the fun question isn't whether it will happen again. It's : what are we sneering at today, in exactly the same way ?
Fanfiction. The twelve-volume fantasy saga. The romance selling by the million while critics look elsewhere. Interactive fiction. Stories written for and by online communities no academic reads yet.
We don't know which ones will last. But if history has a lesson, it's that today's list of "subgenres" almost certainly contains a classic or two our grandchildren will study. Contempt has never been a good indicator of value. Just a good indicator of the era.