Three Highbrow Writers Who’ve Gone Paranormal
It may seem that the
division between what used to be considered “high” and “low” culture gets more
blurred all the time, but the fact is, it was ever thus. Writing about fairies
and ghosts and magicians never hurt Shakespeare’s literary cred (though in his
own time he was very much pop-culture).
In our own time, even as
the phenomenon of self-publishing has made literature more democratic, it seems
like the world of “literary” fiction, the kind of stuff discussed in the New
York Times Book Review, gets ever more rarified... like you need an MFA to
write a book the way you need a license to drive a car. Yet the writers
themselves are increasingly products of the postmodern generation, weaned on
rock and roll, Saturday Night Live, and the X-Men. Here are a fistful of
boundary-breakers who’ve made it in the ivory tower, only to go rogue and start
writing genre work:
1.
Mat Johnson
One of last year’s most
acclaimed releases was Pym, Johnson’s extremely funny fantasy drawn from
Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel. In addition to exploring the juncture of genre
and great American literature that Poe embodies, the book provides a satirical
view of academia and race, lampooning Johnson’s own experience as a biracial
college professor. Johnson is no stranger to paranormal and has also worked in
comics, including a stint with DC’s Hellblazer.
2.
Michael Chabon
A 25-year-old Chabon’s
MFA thesis became his first published novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,
and his follow-up Wonder Boys was adapted for a well-regarded movie with
Michael Douglas. After that, he devoted himself to a mission of recuperating
genre fiction as a pursuit for “serious” writers. 2000’s Pulitzer-winning The
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay explored the Jewish influence in
comic books, and Chabon followed it with the mystery The Final Solution
and the alternate-history novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Most
recently, Chabon was hired as a script doctor for Disney’s John Carter.
3.
Justin Cronin
Hailing from both
Harvard and the “Harvard” of the creative writing world, the Iowa Writer’s
Workshop, Cronin won the PEN/Hemingway Award with 2001’s Mary and O’Neil.
When the 2004 follow-up The Summer Guest failed to make much of a
splash, Cronin began work on an apocalyptic vampire trilogy, prompting a
bidding war for the anonymous manuscript (though he would ultimately release
the books under his own name, unlike the many literary lions who keep a special
pseudonym for dabbling in genre). The Passage was released in 2010 and
the second volume, The Twelve, comes out later this year.
The walls are indeed
coming down. Not only are established mainstream writers like these and many
more crossing over into genre fiction, but self-published books and even
e-books are becoming some of the best-selling and most-discussed in our
culture. Where it’s all leading, or what great novels await us, we’ll just have
to wait and see!
A born writer, Angelita
Williams loves to write short stories. Her second passion is education, a topic
that she covers incessantly as a freelance blogger. Though she has an
allegiance to online education, she’s dedicated to depicting all forms of
education equally, and she writes impartially about college courses online
and offline. Angelita can be found at angelita.williams7@gmail.com.
