Buying the Book: An Exploration of Neurosis and Genre

Within a relatively short period of time, I was called upon to make two purchases that I didn’t feel entirely comfortable asking for help on. The first was a hot dog toaster. I wandered all of the Houseware sections within the Cambridgeside Galleria, scanned the shelves, and tried to make sure my giant backpack didn’t knock anything over. The second purchase, the one relevant to this blog, was Flowers in the Attic. I strode confidently into the Fiction/Literature section at Borders, after all, FITA is a classic and it ought to be with the “real” books. No dice. Fiction contained nary a trace of Ms. Andrew’s pre or posthumous oeuvre. Clearly it had been relegated to Genre.

Last spring, I went to MIT to watch Neil Gaiman speak. Among other things, he provided his definition of genre, calling it a “loose contract between author and audience.” He went on to say, “If the plot is a machine that allows you to get from set piece to set piece, and if the reader felt lost without the set pieces, it is genre.” I strained my summer vacation brain to what I remembered about FITA so as to identify Neil’s “set pieces” and ultimately use the power of my mind to determine the Borders classification. The machinery quickly spat out “siblings having sex… blonde people,” before it groaned a bit, such was the effort of retrieving memories from sixteen years ago. “An attic?” I looked around furtively, I didn’t want to be recognized, and headed to the Romance section. (Located quite boldly in the center of the store.) I peeked longingly over the shelf to the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section where I would have felt much more at home and allowed myself a moment to listen in on the geeky employee talking about Star Trek novels. I sighed longingly but was on a mission. Alas, it was for naught. Our fair saga was not in fact considered a romance novel, despite what my remembered “set pieces” indicated.

I briefly thought about asking the geeky employee for helped, but pride and social phobia dictated otherwise. I decided to hit the Customer Kiosk instead. I’d hesitated to use these because despite the fact that they are clearly labeled as “For Customer Use,” I feel a little bit like a bookstore hacker and don’t want to get in trouble. I punched Flowers in the Attic into the title field. If the computer could have talked it would have said, “Ugh, we don’t have any of those in the store, but if we did, it would be in the Horror section. Duh. Would you like to try some of these more recent titles ‘written’ by VC Andrews. I’m sure they probably have a little bit of incest too. You didn’t look in Romance did you? Also, if you want to wait 6,000 years, I can order one for you.” Chatty little thing, that imaginary computer.

I could riff for pages about how I identified the remembered “set pieces” as Romance and completely overlooked the Horror elements of the plot: child abuse, murder, torture. How I reduced what generous sources call as Gothic novel to golden haired children finding lust in a sunny attic. I could go into a complicated cross textual comparison of literal monsters in horror novels versus figurative ones, and ultimately determine that all monsters are literal, even if they take figurative form. (Proving this thesis would require a lot of posturing on my part.) Instead, I’ll tell you about how I went home and ordered it from Amazon, along with a copy of the Gaiman/Pratchett classic, Good Omens and the soundtrack to [Title of Show]. The latter, ironically, is a meta-musical commenting on the genre of the musical. My mind is blown, but I digress.

Returning to FITA, I will close this entry with one more quote from Gaiman’s genre talk: “Life does not obey genre rules.” Speaking for all of us with siblings, thank god