Leverett Butts - Musings of a Bored English Teacher

Occasional web log from Southern writer Leverett Butts.

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Location: Temple, Georgia, United States

English Professor in Georgia. Writer of Southern lit

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Could someone tell me why Borders has Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles in their literature section while Stephen King, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, and J.R.R. Tolkien are stuck in science fiction/horror/fantasy?

Not that I have any high-brow, snobby preconceptions about these fine genres. Quite the contrary, I believe these genres are shamefully under-appreciated critically. I do, however, realize that the world at large tends to turn its nose up at these types of fiction in favor of something called "Literature," a nebulous concept at best which studiously avoids definition by pointing out what it isn't rather than what it is: Literature isn't shallow. Literature isn't trite. Literature isn't fantasy or science fiction (with the exception of some crossover titles, such as 1984, Animal Farm, and Slaughterhouse-Five , but even they quickly change from science fiction to Distopian, Utopian, or Satiric Fiction).

The assumption is , therefore, that if a book appears in the Literature section, it must clearly be somehow "better" or deeper than its colleagues residing merely in science fiction, horror, or fantasy.

Again, I have nothing against Mrs. Rice, and I wish her all the best in her new designation. I believe, in fact, that Interview with a Vampire and The Witching Hour are among the best in Vampire and Witchcraft fiction. I just don't understand why King, Gaiman, et al are not joining her on the hallowed Literature shelf.

Perhaps its the dearth of homosexual vampires in their fiction as that seems to be the only difference I can find between her fiction and others . Apparently in Rice's universe, all vampires become either homo- or bi-sexual (with even one case of possible incest) after their change. King's vampires simply become blood guzzling monsters. Tolkien barely has sex at all, and Adams' characters may as well be monks. Gaiman, on the other hand, has all sorts of sex in his fiction: homo-, hetero, bi-, and even necro-. So what gives?