Maps, Legends and Literary Borders
Boldtype’s latest issue includes an interview with Michael Chabon, about his forthcoming nonfiction collection, Maps and Legends. His explanation of “writing at the borderlands” caught my eye:
The primary sense that I’m interested in is the borderlands among and between various genres of literature that tend to be thought of as being pretty distinct and somewhat impermeable. These are borders that are enforced very stringently in the bookstores of America — where what’s mystery must forever remain in the mystery section; what is science fiction must forever remain in the science-fiction section; and Doris Lessing’s science-fiction novels are shelved under literature because they’re considered “literary.” Those borders can seem so firm, but they’re actually fairly arbitrary and not especially helpful or descriptive. As soon as you start looking at some of the greatest works of literature of the 20th century, and now the 21st century, it becomes tricky to assign them with any kind of certainty. I think that’s actually a mark of the fertility and creativity that can be derived from hanging out along the borders, allowing influences from different sorts of genres to cross over into the work that you’re doing. I’m not saying they’re meaningless terms at all. They do describe patterns and conventions and formulas and so on. But I think they’re granted too great a degree of descriptive control over what writers do and what is considered to be literature.
I’m envisioning various genre-specific maps that delve into the geographic implications of where literature is grouped — by the publishing industry as a whole, and all the way down to the physical landscape of particular bookstores. It would be cool to creatively and artistically attempt to map some of this (and I’m sure there are folks who already have.) What would a map of “true literature” look like? Which genres would border each other? What would the legend contain? Or shall cartography be disregarded altogether in favor of simply “hanging out along the borders” where things can get murky?* This nomadic spirit (who usually prefers to be lost in place) and now spends most of her time in a bookstore — has discovered yet another way to go exploring off the beaten path.
(*Murky is interesting, but lying just perplexes me. Where does the growing genre of faux memoirs fit on the map?)
