One of the most fascinating things about the South Carolina Book Festival was that I got to hobnob with all sorts of different writers--not only literary writers like George Singleton and Sheri Joseph and Man Martin--but also thriller-writers, children's book authors, even a man who wrote what he called "Redneck Noir," whatever that is. To be frank, it was super-strange to have a chat with Harlan Coben about our both having gone to Amherst College; for some reason, genre writers and literary fiction people just never seem to mix. The oddest experience was when I did a reading with two thriller-writers and a woman who edited a book of letters; the thrillers were fast-paced, with little description--in comparison, my reading, from Monsters, was all about tone and language. The contrast was wild. People were left blinking with confusion.

But I thought the experience incredibly rich--when else would I get to meet someone like Jeff VanderMeer, whose book 'City of Saints and Madmen' is a cult classic, and so full of literary references and obvious influences that even though I was two knocks from death's door with the flu in the airport on Sunday I just couldn't put it down (that means a lot). I could see Nabokov and Borges in the book--and yet I think a lot of people who only read literary fiction wouldn't pick the book up because they don't think that "fantasy" is a valid genre. Which drives me nuts.

It has to be said that a sort of highbrow snobbery just reinforces itself--case in point was a panel discussion in which I was in the audience, where I was so wildly irritated by an old man who shall go nameless who said all sorts of preposterous stuff. He was supposed to be a 'literary writer', though his claims to literariness were mostly that he stole a title of one of his books from a character in the Anthony Powell work 'A Dance to the Music of Time'. Some of his remarks went: 'I never write unless I'm inspired.' (bullhonkey--he'd never have a single book to his name if that were true); 'No good books make the best-seller list' (I guess he's too good for Cormac McCarthy and Geraldine Brooks); 'A literary writer is one who doesn't give a hoot for a reader--it's all about the work.' (if that were true, some of his own influences--Faulkner, for one--would never even have published any work. Yes, literary fiction is primarily about the work itself, but if you don't care about a reader, you'd never submit the book for publication. Such tripe).

Here's what I think: there's phenomenal literary fiction in the world, and phenomenal genre fiction. We all know there's horrendous genre fiction, but there's also incredibly poor, formulaic literary fiction that takes comfort in its lack of daring and ambition by calling itself 'literary.' If I have to read one more depressed meditation about some midwestern divorcee staring into the winter-bleak fields and thinking about her terrible childhood, I may very well boot the whole library of such books out the window. There are also people blending genres, to electrifying results: think Michael Chabon, Kelly Link, Karen Russell, Kevin Brockmeier--they get an enormous amount of energy and resonance from the scorned genres they're borrowing from and working within. A good book is a good book, regardless of what you call it. We need fewer people in the world like the nameless pretentious panelist above, and more like Michael Chabon--willing and excited to look again at the possibilities of fiction and stretch it beyond where it has traditionally been. Think open, not closed; think joyously, think wildly. Think about it.