Where is the line?

Here's the thing: genres are not mutually exclusive. I haven't read the Dresden files, so I cannot comment. But "dark fantasy" and horror is good example. Horror is not a self-sufficient genre. Every horror book will also be another sort of genre: fantasy, science fiction, thriller... Not all horror is "dark fantasy". Serial Killer Stylised horror isn't. The Alien franchise isn't. Your work can accumulate multiple genres without ever being interstitial.

"Walking the fine line between..." means that the genres are still identifiable. In such a case, you're simply not interstitial.

Hal Duncan, on the other hand, especially Vellum/Ink, engulfs genre in a way that could be viewed a transforming operation. What's the core of these books? The "Bitemites" (nanotech)? The "Book of all Hours" (what is that religious allegory? Metafiction?) The angels? Alternate Worlds? The skin/blood metaphor? A Harlequinade (much like Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories?)?

I'm in the odd position that I never had much use for the terms "interstitial", "slipstream" etc., but that I generally like the works that get cited by people who use the term. To me, the question "what is it?" misses the mark from the get go. That's often the impetus to starting these terms, but it's a self-defeating technique: as soon as there's a name people go "What is it?"

Kitteh would like a Venn Diagram please!

Kitty Pryde said:

Kitteh would like a Venn Diagram please!

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It's like that: if a Venn Diagram is useful it's not interstitial.

Dawnstorm said:

It's like that: if a Venn Diagram is useful it's not interstitial.

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doh!

I'd like to point out that the Magic Detective is a very common trope of urban fantasy. Dresdan is Urban (Contemporary) Fantasy. Yes, it is a mixture between fantasy and mystery, but since it already fits into a very popular sub-genre, it is not defined as interstitial.

I'm afraid my knowledge on Duncan and Valente is a bit more limited.

I realize I may be picking nits here.

Speaking of Duncan:
http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/features/arc/2008/nz12293.php

Great article on the formation of genre that makes some interesting connections to interstitial and mainstream writing.

I'm with Dawnstorm on this, though perhaps for slightly different reasons.

Horror is a treatment that adapts to all manner of subjects just by finding the unthinkably dark side of that subject. Fantasy too is a treatment which you can apply to almost anything just by taking a subject and adding whimsy to it. Likewise with Thriller, if you add danger and suspense, or Mystery if you turn your subject into a problem to be solved.

However, Crime, Science, Love, War, Politics are subject-matter. They admit all manner of treatments.

When you settle on subject and treatment then you begin to get genre. Some treatments (like Horror or Fantasy) are so recognisable that they form genre almost regardless of their subject. Some subjects (like Love) are so recognisable that they form their own genre almost regardless of treatment. Genres have a lot of lore about how to apply certain treatments to certain subjects. That's one reason that genre can be quite predictable, even formulaic at times.

But if you mix subjects or apply multiple treatments (or even try to create your own treatment) then you begin to confuse what people perceive to be genre. Which means that it may slip through cracks in marketing, which presumably makes it 'interstitial'.

What I like about such stuff is that it provokes thought. Anything that provokes thought I tend to call 'literary' if the quality of writing is decent -- so most decent interstitial stuff counts as literary for me, along with the more thought-provoking, well-written genre and mainstream stuff.

But like Dawnstorm I don't find much use for the name -- it's not a reflection of subject or treatment (as for instance, SF or Dark Fantasy are), but of how people react to it. Today's interstitial may be tomorrow's genre. The Dresden Files is a case in point. To one reader it might look interstitial because we don't usually see a fantasy treatment applied to film-noir crime stories. To me it looks like a natural extension of existing genre lore. I see a repeatable method, so there's clearly a sub-genre budding there.

badducky said:

Liosse, one should also mention that Hal Duncan's blog is practically a Master's Thesis on Genre... And... Like, dozens of other fascinating topics...

http://notesfromthegeekshow.blogspot.com/

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Like I said, I'm not too familiar with Duncan. I just remembered having read that article at some point, and I thought some people might find it relevant to the discussion.

I don't know. I feel like mystery is included in most fantasy stories with suspense. That Jim Butcher's Dresden is a P.I. is what draws attention to "the mystery" genre. Without that, he's another MC with a POV trying to figure out What's Going On so that he can attain his goal. But, let's be honest, there's very little original about the Dresden Files-- and I would argue that's what makes them so entertaining. I'm never surprised, but I'm generally involved. Butcher has heightened the mystery aspect inherent in numerous fantasies with a title: Dresden, Wizard P.I.

Interstitial generally goes beyond doubling popular tropes. If Butcher fell between the two, rather than combined them, perhaps I'd say different.

As far as your work goes, Badducky, if we admit that it is "fantasy" then I expect to be able to pull 10 books off the shelves and find tropes familiar to those books and yours. I don't expect it to happen. I've read too much fantasy and too much "literature" to think that your work is anything other than interstitial. Your work is in a fantasy setting, but the story's told in a way that cannot, even vaguely, fit the genre of romance fantasy. If we must, we should compare your attention to prose of that of even Jim Butcher. Sorry, but he doesn't his prose doesn't come close. I mean no offense: fantasy requires less musicality and interest than literature. It's often that simple. And I think it is now, too.


AMC

badducky said:

Fantastical elements have long been a major point to science fiction stories, from all the way back to Vonnegut and Asimov, so the presence of angels and demons does not diminish Hal Duncan's SF-ness. In many ways the story suggests that there is a "technology" of creation and some people can take control of it. (Like the Matrix, except fantastically better.)

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I agree, basically, with what you're saying here. I don't doubt that the duology can be read as SF. But, on the other hand, the "technology" is based on meaning production; couple that with a background of Judeo-Christian myth and get a fantasy reading. Not "technology" but "magic". (You still have the wasteland with the bitemites, though. Er, bitmites? Bitemites? I forget...)

Personally, I'd be perfectly happy to place it within SF. I don't think that's the whole story, but then neither do I think that genre is destiny. Alternately, I could try to analyse the novels via genre-constellations (and why not?)

It's a messy term.

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I suppose you mean "interstitial"? Yes, it is. And it always will be. If it wasn't we wouldn't need it. It's devoid of content. The best you can do is look for commonalities in the writers who self-consciously use the term; it is the name of a movement. And I know far too little about it. But I'm pretty confident that the movement does not make a genre, in the same way that New Weird didn't make a genre, nor the New Wave before it.

This is markdly different from movements like "mundane SF", for example, who have a clear program of prohibitions.

What is the line and where is the line are both the same question, as the relation they have to the literature is more about crossing and blending and tight-rope walking, which require the same sort of knowledge, and are more concerned with the presence of a line than an appropriate method of approaching that line in the interrogative.

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Maybe. But I think they're less concerned with "bending" and "crossing" than with writing the story they want to write, regardless of genre restrictions. If the end-result is genre, so be it. It might sound paradox, but look at reviews of various anthologies, and you'll find people wondering why certain stories are in it.

Why not have a Venn diagram? That actually would be useful.

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Well, if someone manages a convincing Venn diagram of "interstitial" I'd be interested as well. The problem is that if you manage to pin down a systematic relationship between sets, you're basically making the name redundant, as you've described what's there sufficiently in terms of genre.