Literary Categories

A Novel Approach to Literary Categories

Why do we categorize novels as we do? Fantasy, Chick Lit, Crime, Romance, Literary, Gothic, Feminist… I want to propose a different way of categorizing novels—something that came to me after reading Dickens and Chekhov in quick succession.

May 25, 2020

Indulging with Control in Fiction

Could it ever make sense to include Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground in the same narrative category as E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey?

June 24, 2020

Novels of Freedom and Disaster

Here is the force field of values and emotions that gives us our third category—a yearning to be free held in tension with an intense trepidation for the consequences.

July 10, 2020

The Fiction of Winners & Losers

Am I being reductive? All of narrative fiction, I’ve suggested, can be sorted into four grand categories.

July 28, 2020