Saving a book from its readers

So, back to our favourite subject. Last week I asked what a science fiction novel would look like if it could "think the totality of what it projects". That is, in the words of Blanchot scholar Michael Holland, "total transcendence in the here and now". To my surprise, not one comment arrived despite the frenzy when sci-fi was discussed elsewhere. Anyway, my own answer was "Literary fiction".

This needs clarification. By literary fiction, I don't mean the kind of books you see on the Man Booker Prize shortlist. It is unfortunate that these frequently very conservative novels are classed as literary fiction when really they are part only of the calcification called Establishment Literary Fiction. Genuine literary fiction escapes genre, including its own. Now "escapes" needs clarification.

It's been said that Cormac McCarthy's literary prize-winner The Road could not have been written without the tradition of post-apocalyptic science-fiction novels which has been ignored by literary prize committees. No doubt this is true. The inference is that what the literary readers regard as unique in The Road is actually very common and that lack of recognition for what came before is due only to ignorance or snobbery. (It might be conceded that McCarthy is distinct because of his prose style yet, ironically, this is what threatened to ruin it for me as I explained at the time. And anyway, fine writing is hardly worthy of a major literary prize. If it was, plenty of genre writers should have won a top literary awards by now.)

What makes a novel like The Road different, however, is its attempt to think of the totality of what it projects. In this case, the apocalypse has destroyed narrative as much as it has destroyed the landscape. Very little remains. The father and son seek a future as the reader seeks narrative comfort. My doubts about some passages in the book point towards where McCarthy loses conviction. Perhaps this is an inevitable failure. Beckett's post-apocalyptic Endgame, however, is an example of where the author's nerve never falters. Does it say something that sci-fi fans have never tried to adopt this play as their own?

This is the trouble with the debate. Genre fans, such as those mentioned above, seem to be drawn to the specific features of genre: the technological changes of the future, space travel, the particulars of forensic science, the horror in Horror, homo-eroticism in Westerns, and when they appear in fiction called Literary, they can't see the distinction. Hence Wikipedia's indignant summary of the perceived differences. Yes, Crime & Punishment is a psychological thriller but that does not mean that the latest hackwork with a disturbed young male protagonist is Crime & Punishment. Fortunately, Dostoevsky's book doesn't need to be saved from such readers. But others do.

I have tried to save Richard Ford's trilogy from the Establishment Literary Fiction label by writing an essay on it. Tao Lin's Eeeee Eee Eeee needed to be saved from Cult Fiction, so I wrote a long review, while Roubaud's The Great Fire of London needed to be recovered from the Hypertext fiction basket and David Markson's This is Not a Novel from its solitude. I'm as open to genre as I am indifferent. For instance, I would like to help Nick Tosches' In the Hand of Dante up the purgatorial mountain of Crime fiction, but I need to re-read it. Save to say here, the ostensible "Crime fiction" chapters of the book are what helps it to escape the pile. No doubt some of you will think I have missed many others. Persuade me.