Category: Art

While finishing Love & Sleep, the second novel in John Crowley’s Ægypt cycle, this week, I came across the word, “rufous.” I checked with my dog Rufus to see if he knew what it meant, but he was as clueless as I was. Probably moreso, since he’s just a dog and he only gained his name a week earlier. According to Merriam-Webster, it means “reddish.”

I don’t mind archaic word choices — “rufous” crops up in a werewolf scene in 16th century Bohemia — because I always enjoy hunting down words and learning their derivations and histories. And since this series of books contains a novel-within-the-novel about Giordano Bruno and Dr. Dee, I have plenty of opportunities to learn.

No, Love & Sleep‘s oddest word choice actually comes from its back-cover copy, which tells us that the book “is a modern masterpiece, both extraordinary and literary.”

I was perplexed by the combination of those two words, which were part of the publisher’s description, not a reviewer’s blurb. I thought, “Why shouldn’t an extraordinary book be literary? What on earth does ‘literary’ even mean in this context?”

Then it hit me: “literary” wasn’t the odd term; “extraordinary” was.

Books get described as “literary fiction” all the time! But those books tend not to include a scene of werewolves in 16th century Bohemia (along with some esoteric witchcraft, what’s looking like a demonic possession, and an astral projection or two). Under “ordinary” circumstances, that would classify this book as Fantasy, and since it appears that those novels remain in a ghetto — it’s 2008, ferchrissakes! — the publisher must’ve wanted to reassure nervous readers that this is “literary fiction,” so they wouldn’t feel duped buying a series of novels praised by Harold Bloom.

So, with the novel’s “literary” cache affirmed (I think its writing suffices on that front, but that’s another reason why I’m not in publishing anymore), it looks like the publisher needed to come up with some adjective to cover its fantasy aspect. Hence the completely out of place “extraordinary.”

This compulsion to try to lift “good” fantasy (or other genre) writing into the “literary” arena has pissed me off for years. I remember laughing at someone who described his fantasy novel as belonging to “literature of the fantastic.”

I think Crowley’s Ægypt books are extraordinary. They may also be literary, depending on how you define that. They’re definitely at play in fantasy, just like Crowley’s best-known work, Little, Big. They’re also intimately familiar with esotericism, filled with characters whom I find compelling, and capable of sustaining my interest long after a lot of other contemporary novels wane.

I’ve got 6 weeks to wait till the third volume gets reissued. Meanwhile, you oughtta read Michael Blowhard’s ruminations on the subject of literary vs. popular fiction.