Sunday 3 April 2011

Generic Saturation

Reading about 'the Golden Age of whodunits' I encounter the same narrative: the genre is 'born', it flourishes, hits its peak, declines and then it 'dies'. This may not be the best way of thinking about it. Neither books nor genres 'die' after all. It's still all there. Indeed, if I started reading now I'd not have time in the rest of my life to read all the Golden Age whodunits written. That's the truth of it, I'd say: genres become saturated. You reach a state where there's simply no point in writing more Whodunits, since nobody alive could read all the currently extant ones.

2 comments:

filidhe@gmail.com said...

That's a really interesting point regarding saturation as the end of a genre's mviability or relevance. Thing is, even though there's no point, people still write, read and buy them. As long as there are people to feel a connection to certain stories, there will be people to read and write them.

Adam Roberts Project said...

That's certainly true.