Borders also keeps African-American fiction in a different section from everything else, which is why I always make sure to call it segregation. Anything that cuts down on potential readers for Ralph Ellison pisses me off something fierce. I don’t know if they keep black science fiction and fantasy writers there, too, but Chester Himes’s Harlem Detective series, for instance, can be found on that set of shelves rather than in the mystery section.
Er, no. Half the posts in this thread are from those of us who can tolerate some sci-fi, or enjoy some genres with sci-fi-like elements, and publically distancing ourselves from the Babylon 5/Buffy/Firefly/Star Trek crowd. So far I have yet to see anyone actually tell anyone else what they should or shouldn’t like.
Every work of fiction based in the Victorian Era is “just plain silly”? Really? Have you seen The Prestige?
I don’t know how many ways it has to be said, but they do that because THE CUSTOMERS WANT IT THAT WAY. Fantasy and science fiction have their own section because the fantasy and SF fans like having them in their own section, easy to find Sales increase of fantasy and SF books when they have a dedicated area. Some people want one genre and they want it at their fingertips and they simply dont want to wade through fiction that isn’t the genre they’re interested in.
All bookstores and libraries are organized by the type of book; surely you don’t want them mixing together hope repair manuals with comic anthologies with Stephen King with preschooler’s books? Most customers come into a bookstore without having a particular book or author in mind; they’re usually just looking for books of a particular type.
Look, if I’m looking for some new books for the Small One, I want one section of the bookstore where there’s children’s books. If I want books on business, it’d nice to browse through a section of books dedicated to business. And my wife, who loves fantasy, likes that they have a fantasy section where she can paw through and see what’s out there. What’s wrong with that?
Huh? How in the world is every work of fiction set in the Victorian era steampunk?
Steampunk *is *just plain silly. But it’s a tiny subgenre even of f&sf set in the Victorian era, let alone all fiction set there.
So, in other words, you’re the sci-fi equivalent of a closet case? Nice.
Speaking as a former Borders employee, I must step in and explain that African-American Literature is in a seperate section due to massive customer demand. A lot of customers want to pop right in and find a section for African-American writers talking about African-American topics, and, in fact, a lot of those same customers (who were very excited about the material) even suggested more…vulgar names for the section.
I guess I must not have a solid grasp on what, exactly, steampunk is. Mea culpa.
Let’s be fair - Lamia was the only one who said that before you did, and the people who posted after her agreed with me. I realize that sales statistics are not on my side, but I’m arguing based on the way that I read and the way that I shop for books.
There’s a large percentage of the book-buying public who, upon entering a store, make a beeline for the “classics” or “literature” section, right? Say I’m going to look for books in the Modern Library Top 100. I’d expect to find those in the classics section, but I will never be completely successful. The Maltese Falcon is going to be over in the mystery section, and I could have predicted that, but Invisible Man and Native Son are going to be in the African-American Literature section. That one’s not as obvious. That’s like putting all of Gore Vidal or Marcel Proust in the Gay and Lesbian Literature section. If I were working just off the list, without any knowledge of the authors’ lives, I’d never find anything, especially in used stores without computers that keep track of each book’s location.
Meanwhile, Light in August, which has a very similar plot to Native Son, but happens to have been written by a white dude, will be with the rest of the classics. I understand that there are people who go to the store to look for books about black people written by black authors and expect to find them in a specific section. But doesn’t this seem like they’re being marginalized? Why isn’t there a Jewish-American literature section for Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud?
Roth had a good line about that, when someone asked him about the Jewish-American literary tradition, or something similar. He called it out as bullshit, saying something like (I’m quoting from memory here), "The Adventures of Augie March doesn’t begin, ‘I am a Jew, New York born;’ its first line is ‘I am an American, Chicago born.’ " Bookstores let Augie March speak for everyone. Why can’t that be the same for Invisible Man, which almost everyone agrees is more than just a book about African-Americans?
Most of that makes perfect sense. But your trip toward the business books won’t contain novels written by business executives, which stay in the business section, no matter what their subject may be, just because of who wrote the book.
Meanwhile, the mystery section in my local Borders keeps Children of Men because PD James wrote it, even though it’s about a near-future dystopia where mankind has become infertile… The general literature section has Mikhail Bulgakov, despite The Master and Margarita’s fantasy elements (Satan is a major character, there’s a talking cat, and characters can occasionally fly, etc.) and The Heart of a Dog and The Fatal Eggs being perfectly legitimate (and in fact very good) science fiction novellas. There’s also McCarthy’s The Road, Michael Chabon’s mysteries The Final Solution and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Philip Roth’s alternate history The Plot Against America, and so on.
I can’t produce many examples from the perspective of SF, fantasy, or mystery novelists staying in their sections because I don’t know them. The reason I don’t know them is because they’re in a completely different section from the other places I browse. And yet there are obviously books that I’ve read and liked that belong there. If bookstores didn’t keep all these boundaries between literary fiction and genre fiction, odds are strong that my reading list, and a lot of other people’s reading lists, would have a lot more variety.
Look, I completely understand why things are the way they are. There are plenty of readers of romance novels, mystery novels, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. who only want to browse within the range they’re accustomed to. There are plenty more who do the same with non-genre novels. People don’t want to browse through an infinite selection, and that makes sense. I’m not arguing that non-fiction and fiction should merge willy-nilly like some of the examples in your post imply. I’m pretty sure that everyone, with the exception of this one particularly disorganized used bookstore I used to go to, feels the same way there.
Even though we may be outnumbered, as Lamia’s account implies, and sales figures no doubt back up, there’s still a sizable portion of the reading public composed of people who want to choose between a larger selection of books. As for me, I’m bitter because I didn’t read Native Son until last year, almost entirely because it wasn’t on the same shelf as other classic novels. Lurkmeister and burundi obviously have had similar problems finding books, and we’re people who knew what we were looking for. I want to know what I’ve been missing because it’s been stuck in a section where the name implies I won’t like it.
Here’s a Michael Chabon interview where he talks about this kind of thing:
Thanks for the first-hand account. (You, too, Lamia.) This, along with the separate gay and lesbian section, is the division that makes the least amount of sense to me. It seems to increase the chances that only African-Americans would be reading those books. If that’s the main demographic that’ll always be buying them, I guess that makes sense, but it seems a little counterproductive from a marketing standpoint. But what do I know?
Sorry for to Argent Towers for starting this hijack.
Anything a big chain does, especially an MNC like Borders, is the result of careful study of sales patterns. I guarantee that everything they’ve ever decided to do or consciously not do since getting big has followed test periods in a variety of different markets, from shelving decisions to employee dress code, and watching how those changes affect sales. Those books are in their own section because they sell more there than they do in any other section, which arguably means that more people are being exposed to them–but that part doesn’t matter anyway, since Borders is a business and not a community service organization. This is mostly anecdotal, but my experience leads me to conclude that Borders can afford to lose every single customer who doesn’t like their shelving practices, since most people prefer it the way it is.
By the way, lest you think that the “segregation” cuts any deeper than best sales practices–and I don’t think you do, but that choice of words implies something more sinister–Borders is recognized as one of the world’s best employers for minorities of all kinds. I can’t cite any numbers off the top of my head, but I can tell you that the company was named as one of the 100 top employers for LGBT workers by (I think) Fortune and my experience there absolutely confirms that. In fact, I’ve never encountered a more egalitarian and inclusive atmosphere in any other workplace, except maybe the Democratic National Committee.
It’s too bad I’ve been away from my computer for a couple days; this is a thread (or nearly, anyway) that I’ve wanted to start many times.
Like any genre, in any artform, the genre’s devotees seem to tend to lower their standards of quality for works that fulfill their genre expectations. Chief among them, I think, being familiarity.
I think some of the greatest works of fiction ever created–on paper or film–are science fiction. But I also think that hardcore fans of the genre go overboard in praising works that are merely indulgences of familiar cliches, rather than actual worthy works of art.
For me, the biggest challenge when deciding if an SF work is going to be worth my while, is reading between the lines of those who recommend it. To try and determine if they are praising its familiarity or its genuine worth.
I’ve been burned so, so many times when a work gets overpraised by a genre aficionado that I, like many people, get a little “twice shy” when I see something that’s obviously SF being recommended on these boards. I usually wait till I see it praised outside the context of SF fandom before it interests me.
I don’t see what’s stopping any of you from “choos[ing] between a larger section of books”. The “African-American”, “Science-Fiction”, etc., sections are all still in the same bookstore or library. You have a large selection of books to choose from, and because there’s such a large selection it’s overwhelming to patrons/customers if they aren’t divided up somehow. But there’s nothing to keep people from wandering freely from section to section. If you limit yourself to looking only in “Classics” then that’s your fault. If you’re looking for something and don’t find it in the section where you think it belongs, ask someone for help. The people who work there get paid to handle that kind of question.
It isn’t practical to keep multiple copies of the same book in different places, so even books that could rightfully fall under several categories can only go in one section. It would be great if there were a single way of organizing books that would make everyone happy and that everyone would instantly understand, but there isn’t. And believe me, there are systems that are far more frustrating for the average book browser then what you’ll find at Borders or a typical public library. The Library of Congress system (used in most American academic libraries) classifies literature based on a lot of different factors, but for novels it mostly comes down to which country the author is from and in which time period they were written. This is great for students doing a course on 18th century British literature. However, someone looking for whatever they consider to be a “good novel” is unlikely to be pleased with a bookstore that has nearly everything in two big sections, “British” and “American”.
Are you sure you haven’t been whooshed? It’s not like you’re exactly supposed to take it seriously; you should approach it as a light-hearted take on magic realism…except that rather than magic-become-real, it’s science-gone-gonzo.
Hell, two-thirds of the same writing team that came up with steampunk (Powers & Blaylock–the third was Jeter) also published a cookbook in which one recipe is for haggis cooked in a pair of Sigmund Freud’s trousers.
I thought that was the point of steampunk.
Oh, teach me to read the whole thread:
What you said.
Steampunk isn’t EXACTLY fiction in the Victorian era, the Victorian themes play a large role, but the thing that makes steampunk steampunk is modernish (or sometimes futuristic, i.e. robots) technology running off of steam power. This stuff isn’t advanced of course, it’s usually a primitive “early prototype” form with laundry lists of limitations and potential failures, either due to archaic design or the steam itself. There also may or may not be magic, a lot of times there is but it’s not a rule of the setting. Also, things tend to be really, really strange or over the top (hence the “silly”).
I know, I know, I’m just saying what it’d all be like if I had absolute power over bookstore organization. I fully realize that there are many fantastic reasons why any bookstore I’d own would be an unsuccessful one. I just spend most of my free time in bookstores and libraries so I’ve developed a special set of pet peeves.
Cool. Really, my only significant complaint with the Borders nearest me (which might be the one nearest you, too, judging by your location) is that every time I manage to find an open seat not in the cafe, it’s directly underneath one of the speakers. Everything else I can live with.
Anyway, having never met anyone who chooses his or her fiction based on any demographic other than gender, I just wasn’t aware of a significant demand for different sections of that nature. Thanks to both of you for telling me why it is how it is.
(I still think Chester Himes would sell more copies in the mystery section, but since he’s been dead for a while now I won’t lose any sleep over it.)
Sounds like Mission Valley. You’re lucky there are places to sit outside of the cafe at all. (Not that you can ever get a seat in the cafe.)
While I have a lot of sympathy for your point of view, the cold, hard fact is that there is not the slightest evidence that such a “sizable” portion exists. All the evidence we have is that the portion is “negligible,” “tiny,” “next-to-nonexistent,” “nigh extinct,” or “you.”
Oh, well played, sir.
Yep. But the libraries here beat the last two systems I was stuck with, so it all evens out.
It may be that the referenced thread was doomed to be sci-fi/fantasy heavy because of the word “awesome.” To me, “awesome” implies awakening my inner twelve year old. Cool battle scenes, very simplistic good guy/bad guy showdowns, etc…
In grown-up entertainment, the highest quality stuff is very rarely going to be classified as awesome. Consider two pitched battles and how you would describe them. The Star Trek TNG finale with the advanced Enterprise decloaking was clearly awesome. Or whatever large-scale Star Wars battle you prefer. Compare those to storming the beach in Saving Private Ryan. Awesome is not a word I’d use to describe that scene. Gut-wrenching, powerful, severe, brutal; any number of words come to mind, but not awesome.
IMO, awesome implies a lack of nuance, which in turn earns the “childish” label from me.
ETA:
I’ve been trying to come up with a explanation ever since I saw your question. (Which, ironically, is the question of a child: the single solitary word “Why?”) The above doesn’t do a great job, but it’s the best I’ve got for now.