"But genre fiction is, by definition, generic."

The genre v. literature debate reminds me of a conversation I have had with way too many people:

Random Music Snobby Pants Prone to Making Sweeping Generalizations:  All country music sucks.

Me:  Wow, so you think Johnny Cash sucks?

RMSPPtMSG:  Oh, he doesn't count as country music.

It's kind of like how Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie mysteries are quite often found in the regular fiction section, because, you know, she's literary.  So obviously she doesn't/wouldn't/couldn't-possibly write something as lowly as a mystery.

Along similar lines, Ursula K. Le Guin has an absolutely must-read review of Margaret Atwood's new book over at the Guardian.  As Margaret Atwood has said that she doesn't want her books thought of as science fiction (because, according to the review, "she doesn't want the literary bigots to shove her into the literary ghetto"), Le Guin says:

Who can blame her? I feel obliged to respect her wish, although it forces me, too, into a false position. I could talk about her new book more freely, more truly, if I could talk about it as what it is, using the lively vocabulary of modern science-fiction criticism, giving it the praise it deserves as a work of unusual cautionary imagination and satirical invention. As it is, I must restrict myself to the vocabulary and expectations suitable to a realistic novel, even if forced by those limitations into a less favourable stance.