The SF titles on the list (Slow River etc.) don't seem to have apologies embedded in the annotated text.

It's primarily a list of middle-brow fiction with fantasy elements, a list that betrays a miraculous misunderstanding of noir and GLBT fiction, if anything.

“The novel is set in the future, but Griffith offers neither explanation nor apology for her characters' existence in a difficult and complex world.”

Maybe it’s just me.

P.S. — How would you define “highbrow”?

I didn't read that as an apology for Slow River being SF, but just an accurate description of the book. She does just dive in and that makes for a bracing read. I don't buy that it is interstitial just because it has a queer theme to it though.

High-brow literature consists of the Received Classics (Latter-Day or Old) Not Taught In High School: Middlemarch but not A Tale Of Two Cities. Ulysses but not "Araby." The Jewel In The Crown but not Brick Lane.

I'm surprised this discussion is still going on. I assumed it would die out like most the heated topics on message boards. What has it been, a month now? There must be enough posts to fill two novels.

The Jewel in the Crown is a received classic? I had no idea. I’ve never read it; I guess I just tend to associate it with the Thatcher-era TV series.

Of Griffith I’ve only read Ammonite, but I wouldn’t say having a queer theme by itself crosses any genre boundaries. (I’m not using the word interstitial because, as far as I’m concerned, it means whatever they feel like defining it to mean.) You might as well say Stand on Zanzibar crosses boundaries because it has an anti-imperialist theme, or Queen of Angels crosses boundaries because it has a racial theme.

Simon — they just put up their new web site, and now people can start to see what they’re actually talking about; of course that’s going to start more discussions.

"I’m not using the word interstitial because, as far as I’m concerned, it means whatever they feel like defining it to mean."

I concur. American Gods is not interstitial, it's contemporary fantasy. Where there fantastical elements in Kavalier and Clay? I don't recall any. If not, I'd say its genre is Literature.

The two other related uses of "apologies" and "apology" in the reading list suggest that "without apology" is praise, short for "without apology for crossing genre boundaries."

I agree with y'all, though, that (much as I hate to argue with Ellen K) queer-themed sf per se is not boundary-crossing. If Slow River were closer to being in the loose genre of "queer fiction," I could sort of see calling it boundary-crossing, but I don't think it really fits that genre despite the queer protagonists. (Especially since, iIrc, the protagonists' sexual orientation is totally unremarkable in their future world, though I may be overlaying things I've heard Nicola say on my admittedly patchy memories of the book.)

Kavalier & Clay doesn't contain any overt/explicit fantastical elements, but I'd say it still bears a relation to sf in much the same way that, say, Andy Duncan's "The Chief Designer" (published as sf) does. K & C is concerned with comic books, costumed adventurers, super-heroics, escapism, and for that matter the legendary Golem; it's informed by sf and comic-book and pulp sensibilities even if it lacks explicit sfnal elements. Whether that makes it "interstitial" or not I can't judge, but I do think it's fair to say that it's not situated solely in the territory usually marked out as belonging to the Literary Fiction genre.

What I’m saying is that if they want to define interstitial as that which includes all of the above, I’m not going to argue with them, because in a literary context the word doesn’t mean much to me beyond “that stuff those folks at the IAF are interested in.”

You could say K&C is alternate history, and it does have a couple of speculative stories-within-the-story.

It got covered in Locus; that makes it SF.

"It got covered in Locus; that makes it SF."

Oh, sure, put all the pressure on us...

And, of course, "It's endorsed by the IAF; that makes it interstitial" is an equally valid statement.

My principal interest in the IAF lies in the hope that they'll point me toward good books I might have overlooked. It remains to be seen whether they throw good parties...

Ah, yes, I forgot about the Golem.

I think what bothers me is the word but. Like, “This book being set in the future, normally you’d expect explanations and apologies, but unlike the usual run of futuristic crap . . .”

It’s probably just me.

Anyway, I can’t claim to have read much queer fiction, but something like China Mountain Zhang, which does foreground its issues of sexuality and ethnicity, would seem to be a lot closer to what Ellen seems to be talking about. (Of course, it hasn’t been republished under a mainstream imprint the way River has.)

Hey, Tim, I probably wouldn’t have read either Kavalier & Clay or Carter Beats the Devil if not for Locus, so no complaints.

I think the parties are the main thing, myself.

It seems like C&K makes it simply because it was reviewed in Locus and read by many SF fans. The Ice Storm lays the comic book stuff on thick as well -- it's an ode to The Fantastic Four on one level -- but never seems to be mentioned in the interstitial discussions.

That's something I hadn't considered: interstitiality (?) could be based on who reads the work rather than the actual work itself. Interstitial fiction is what interstitial readers read.

Or what anyone reads, if they choose to read it in an interstitial manner.

There was a "clamor of denunciations" of the IA stuff? I missed it, I guess. I miss lots of things.

Oddly enough, I was just peering at the IA web site today, and realizing that although a bunch of people involved with this are personal friends or colleagues for whom I feel great warmth and respect, I'm not at all sure I agree at all with the basic presumptions of this movement. It seems thoroughly predicated on the assumption that genres have "borders" which are imposed from somewhere above or beyond. Whereas I think that genres are, by and large, highly mutable and tentative categorizations which emerge largely from the audience, driven by regular peoples' desire to, for instance, not have all the books in their local bookstore simply mixed into a single big heap in the middle of the floor.

No doubt I'm missing something, but see above.

Hi Patrick! I'm not sure there was really a "clamor of denunciations" either, though there was a lot of discussion about the practicalities of the IAF, both on my journal and in Forrest Aguirre's section of the Night Shade board. The biggest arguments seem to be how having such an organization will affect things in the real world, or if it's just another mode of discourse.

Right now, it still seems that Interstitial Arts is more concerned with the academic side than with actual book sales, but that brings up the question: why are they promoting it at places like World Fantasy and WisCon where many of the participants are non-academics? ICFA is ideal for this, since it's primarily an academic conference, but it does make me wonder why they're spending so much time and money on raising awareness for the foundation.

The best thing I see on the site right now (besides the very slick design) is the book list. I agree with Tim that this is a good resource to have, since it might point me to a novel I might have overlooked and might enjoy.

Here's my big secret: the whole interstitial-arts discussion is colored for me by the coincidence of when I first heard of them. Backstory: I used to be involved with an academic working group on literary studies of science fiction. Everyone else in the group did academic work about SF; they just liked having me around because I tended to know more about the field than they did. One of the last group meetings was on Gibson's second trilogy, and that meeting was the first time I encountered any serious use of the word "interstitial". We spent a lot of time talking about interstitiality in Virtual Light and in other cyberpunk-type books, and it was possibly the best discussion we ever had in that group, and that's kind of set my personal definition of interstitiality.

Which is to say, my personal definition of interstitiality is conceptually really different from the IAF's. Virtual Light is interstitial because, content-wise, it deals with people and concepts that exist in the undefined spaces between defined social objects. In that sense, Slow River is also interstitial--the whole underworld of Spanner's life, the things-unspoken in Ratnapida, and so on. It's a content definition, not a... not whatever the IAF definition is like. I like and respect all of the people involved in the IAF, and I trust that they're going somewhere good and doing something interesting. I just haven't been convinced yet that the idea of "interstital arts" is something that has any meaningful reality. I'm willing to be wrong about this, but I haven't been convinced yet.

I like that use of “interstitial” better. I tried to write a paper sort of along those lines in a modern Japanese lit class ten years ago at UCSC, talking about the common threads in 30s detective fiction, cyberpunk, and the work of Haruki Murakami, but I didn’t get very far.

Still, I learned how to use phrases like “extrafabulaic narreme”, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Patrick — it wasn’t a very large or widespread clamor, but I thought it was pretty clamorous for its size. See the links Jason posted above, and also this discussion on genre in Nick’s Night Shade area — though I should be clear that there’s more going on in those conversations than just denunciation of the IAF.

I am the person who recommended Slow River by Nicola Griffith for the IAF annotated reading list.

I wrote copy that Ellen Kushner edited.

My original thought was that Nicola Griffith did not explain or apologize for her main character' s sexual orientation. Griffith never does. It is one of many reasons that I like her books. It distinguishes her from many (but obviously not all) GLB writers writing GLB characters. The intent of the original statement was lost in the editing.

The Intersititality of the book may be in question from many of the poster's viewpoints. I understand that and respect your opinion. However, it was not in question from mine. I would be glad to discuss that further with anyone who is still interested.

SB — That puts a very different spin on it. Sorry to have you; I thought it was the future (and/or futuristic characters or a futuristic world) that you meant to imply Griffith might be expected to apologize for, not her character’s sexual orientation. Further evidence that my original complaint was the phantom of a fevered mind.

As for the question of what is or is not interstitial, since I don’t have any understanding of the term other than “that stuff the IAF points at,” I recuse myself from the debate. :)