Redefining Genre: Urban Fantasy?

I am inordinately proud of myself as I have managed to be productive on my days off from The Literary Agency thus far (we shall see how long this productive streak continues). Yesterday I was slightly derailed in my plans with the appearance of my friend Kristine, but I managed to make some crustless mini-quiches and vacuum the floors in my apartment before she came over and we hung out. I enlightened her to the insane awesome that is Alan Moore and LOST GIRLS as well as promising to lend her THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH after she’s finished reading ULYSSES. (Another James Joyce fan! I feel as though we are a rare and pretentious breed.)

Perhaps I can attribute my rise in energy levels to the rising temperatures. Today is even more gorgeous than yesterday and I’m hoping that spring has come to stay in New York at last. Of course, as soon as I celebrate this the weather is going deliver a bitchslap smackdown. March in the northeast sucks that way. It doesn’t help that my father texts me daily with updates about the gorgeous weather Los Angeles has been enjoying. I hate my dad. (No, I don’t. I love my father. He offered me beer money to tide me through these rough economic times. I declined. Mostly because I don’t drink. Book money? Now that I can most wholeheartedly use.)

Things still left on my to-do list:

1. Grocery shopping. It is about time I grew up and started feeding myself. Also, must lose weight. New Year’s resolution to lose 5lbs has become resolution to lose 10lbs to get back to my summer weight. 15lbs is ideal.
2. Laundry. Poor White-Harp; she needs a bath badly. She’s annoyed at me for keeping her in her prolonged state of filth. o(>.< )o
3. Deposit check from El Jefe’s party. Money is always good.
4. Make crustless mini-quiches for dinner and freeze the leftovers to take for lunch next week.
5. Revise my book. I have been much better about this in recent weeks. Remember to send out revisions to The Kitchen Girls and Rachel.
6. Spring redesign for Uncreated Conscience and Moot Point. And look into purchasing domain name.
7. WATCH LOST.
8. Do hot yoga with Sofa at Yoga to the People. I need to get back into my practice.

I am generally of a sanguine disposition but I have been even more cheerful of late. When El Jefe took me out for lunch last week he told me he was impressed with the editorial readers reports I’ve written for him and that if I wanted, I could stay on at the agency through the summer. If I can’t find a literary or editorial assistant position when the internship ends in May, at least I’ll still be working. The longer I’m in publishing the more I’m convinced that this is what I want to be doing. What was I thinking when I worked in finance for two years after university?

Well, I meant to discuss science fiction and fantasy as mode but instead rambled off into discussion about my life. Beg pardon.

When I was down in Highland Park last weekend to see Bear, I hung out Katranna and over a late lunch/early dinner (linner? dunch?) we discussed which sorts of books I would represent if I were a literary agent.

“Fantasy, of course,” I said, “And YA, although specifically YA fantasy. Middle grade. Literary fiction. Historical fiction. Historical non-fiction.”

All of which need some significant qualifiers. I am not a large fan of urban fantasy these days, even though urban fantasy in concept is my favourite sort of fantasy.

“Not urban fantasy?” she said incredulously. “But that’s my favourite kind!”

“Well, I was never much for vampires or werewolves or supernatural creatures in the first place,” I replied, “And I’m tired of seeing love stories between a mortal and a paranormal.”

“Well, yes,” she agreed. “But that’s not urban fantasy.”

It isn’t? I have mentioned before that I am uninterested in paranormal creatures in my fantasy and that I would prefer to see a purely human story in a fantastical setting. Most of the urban fantasy I see these days involve some sort of mortal vampire-slayer/paranormal hunter. Often there are romantic complications. This isn’t a type of story that interested me much in the first place (see also: my indifference to Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and right now I’ve reached saturation point on this.

“What do you consider urban fantasy then?” I asked.

“Neil Gaiman‘s NEVERWHERE.”

Funny that I’d never considered my magical uncle as an urban fantasy writer, although by definition many of his works fall into that category. NEVERWHERE is certainly a great example. AMERICAN GODS can be considered another. Urban fantasy is fantastic elements co-existing with “reality” like Charles de Lint’s THE ONION GIRL (which I really liked). This is why urban fantasy is my favourite sort.

The reason I initially excluded urban fantasy from my list is because tropes have begun to overshadow what I loved about the category in the first place. That’s the main problem with genre (thrillers, romance, and other types of commercial fiction included): tropes often overtake them. You mention “fantasy” to a group of people and a large majority of them will immediately think of sword-and-sorcery and other Tolkien derivatives (even though we are way beyond sword-and-sorcery now).

“Oh elves and hobbits and orcs,” they say, “Not my thing.”

Elves and hobbits and orcs aren’t really my thing either. (Not to belittle my love of ol’ J.R.R.) What is? What do I like in my fantasy? That’s a little harder to articulate. I like worlds. Worldbuilding is the most important element in what I read; I would extend this to other types of fiction as well. I like it when I can open a book and explore a world that is utterly intuitively whole. The appeal of books like HARRY POTTER and LORD OF THE RINGS to me is the completeness of the fantastic settings. You can practically crawl into the pages and explore corners of the world never shown in books, hence the proliferation of original-character fanfiction for both series. Readers care about the characters, yes, but self-insertion into fanfiction is really about wanting to live in that world. (I am guilty of not a few HARRY POTTER fanfics myself.)

So what is fantasy (and science fiction–which I really consider part of a larger speculative fiction umbrella) if not defined by tropes? The genre is really as broad as literary fiction; in fact many literary fiction books can be genre-fied. THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE by Haruki Murakami certainly has fantastic elements. KAFKA ON THE SHORE won the World Fantasy Award in 2005. Michael Chabon’s THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN’S UNION is really a sort of alternate-universe thriller. Why are they considered literary fiction (aside from the writing–although I would argue that many fantasy novels are just as literary such as Susanna Clarke’s JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL)? Is it because the fantastic elements are somehow less “complete”? I’m not sure. THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE and KAFKA ON THE SHORE seem more like magical realism to me, but HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD is fairly straight-up science fiction. Same thing with Audrey Niffenegger’s THE TIME-TRAVELER’S WIFE (although I read this as a romance, not science fiction).

Of course “fantasy as genre” is for marketing purposes. I know that walking by into the science-fiction/fantasy section of a bookstore, the novels on the shelves with have some sort of fantastic element to them. Admittedly I have a harder time finding books in the fiction section that I like, but more and more I’m having the same problem in the genre sections. Tropes overshadowing again.

I have no solution for this. Mostly just thoughts. I suppose I ought to amend my “list of genres to represent” to simply read: “amazing worldbuilding” and leave it at that.

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