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Genre
Today
- a conversation about genre - introduction to Dirty Realism - a story - Dirty Realism vs. what came before
What is genre?
Genre
Genre is important to us because: - We can make judgements about a text based on its willingness to fit with genre conventions - Texts that challenge or subvert known genres often have the desire to break new ground in terms of what a text should do, or who it should represent.
Dirty Realism
- a mid-1980s movement in American fiction, led primarily by Raymond Carver - a reaction to the more surrealist style that preceded it - as seen in the work of writers like Donald Barthelme (whose story The Balloon well have a look at as a comparison).
- placed emphasis on alienated characters, often drunks and wanderers - figures who are fundamentally alone
- interest in how characters discover, deal with, overcome, etc. that loneliness that plagues them - prose is sparse, which is to say direct and uncluttered by unnecessary detail - emphasis on telling real stories, telling the stories of the average Joe - narratives are often incomplete snippets of life, without an immediate purpose - often what is not told is just as important as what is
Language - To what extent is the language sparse and under-embellished? Where do you see this?
Tone - To what extent is the mood sombre? Where do you see this? Structure - To what extent is this a slice of life? How do you justify your thinking?