This made me realize that the reason I don't resonate with suburban malaise novels is they are campus fiction, but with too much homogeneity and not enough of the power differences that create the tensions in all the variations you mention. Closed system, forced interactions, that is the stuff of beautiful friction.
I might be missing the point, but this reminds me a bit of Jane Austen's comment that "3 or 4 families in a country village is the very thing to work on." That principle can apply to novels with lots of people house-sharing as they make their way into adulthood in the Big City. Creating a world bound together by something specific, whether it's geography, or getting a degree, or how to deal with Henry VIII as he gets more and more mental, lets you see lots of bigger forces so much more clearly. You know who else maybe writes campus novels? Dickens. London is a campus. People arrive on stagecoaches and tumble out of windows and pick their way down its muddy streets, all sharing the challenge of being part of the crazy quilt. (And "Real Life" was brilliant, and I've preordered "The Late Americans.")
I thought about including Dickens, but to me Dickens is a social novelist and Austen is writing domestic fiction, which are both genres with distinct characteristics. I think Dickens fails to be a campus novelist because his purview is so broad. It's the whole city, the whole country, the whole world. The domestic space can be a kind of campus, yes, but I think domestic fiction is domestic fiction because it deals in the home and with the particular rigors of family and social life, which dominate the theme of like, different cross-sections of society brought together into a para-social space.
I was just coming back after a big bout of work to say, "Oh I see what you mean actually - you're right." It's an agree-a-thon! :)
I do see a distinction though - any society has rules, and is going to generate tensions and give people different stuff to deal with. But sometimes the rules are shared and commonly understood, whereas in a "campus novel" people bring their own social rules with them.
Dickens came to my mind though (and yes, I was thinking of "Bleak House" most of all!) because out of the mad whirl of the city, he usually creates a household of refugees, misfits, unfortunates and refuseniks who withdraw from the madness and come up with a way of living. (The city usually wins; if you move into it, you get disappeared - that great great last line of Little Dorrit....)
Also, Mansfield Park! which I have just been re-reading.
Yes, agreed! Love that. Talk about bringing your own social rules with you - pure Austen! And MP and BH have both always struck me as great novels for retellings, perhaps because of this "campus" aspect. Obviously retellings are big in the Austen space. This is maybe weird to say but it only just occurred to me that I have a notebook full of notes on a retelling that would put BH on an actual college campus in Missouri! It's been years since I looked at the notes. If I ever write that retelling, it'll be just because it's what I really want to read!
I'm semi-embarrassed to admit I did not know campus fiction was a distinct genre until...just this minute. I'm just out here reading books I like? But I see what you mean - the phrase "transcending genre" implies that the genre wasn't enough in the first place. Which, pfft.
Don't feel bad, I feel the actual genre is talked about much more than actually written, and I'd much rather read Brandon's views on campus novels than actually read campus novels (except perhaps for Brandon's campus novels, lol)
I'm with you on this completely. I gather reviewers resort to saying this because they think some of their readers, who would enjoy the book if they gave it a chance, will pass on it out of prejudice/snobbishness, etc., but it seems an easy enough fix if you just said it was at the top of the genre alongside [name of other books previously said to "transcend" the genre but ought to be considered a part of the genre].
thank you for this — campus fiction is my favorite genre of, well, everything, and thinking about office fiction as part of the broader campus fiction genre is useful. this clarifies exactly the chord struck by some of the fiction i most enjoyed last year for campus novel reasons but that don't automatically fit the genre (the ensemble, lessons in chemistry, winter in sokcho, the everlasting, leaving the atocha station, among others). i kept thinking of them together but couldn't name why.
and also thanks for additional thoughtful vocabulary i can apply to my love for the latinist, painting time, and the leigh bardugo yale novels.
agree with everything--life is a campus novel!--and that transcending genre/hybridity is a scam. what is wrong with being *just* anything??? that said, what campus webtoons would you rec? 👀
I love this. As an exercise in..something, I don’t know, having new experiences, I’ve been listening to the weekly new music playlist on Spotify. If something piques my interest I’ll tap through and read a little about the artist, and the one thing that stands out is how many of their statements include claims about “transcending” genre. Aside from the eyerollingness of it all, I wonder if any of the people writing that copy have any real sense of which genres are being transcended in what ways. I suspect not! It’s just the same “I’m not like other girls” business that’s happening in literature, like the only way to be original or interesting is to define yourself against something you more or less openly scorn (but whose existence you then must depend on in order for your claims to cohere). I know brains like to sort and categorize but they are also capable of nuance, and genre offers such a wonderful space to be curious about that and enjoy the pleasures and (delightful) frictions of recognition and surprise.
This was so much fun to read, thank you. It's reassuring to read your posts and know someone else feels this strongly about books without needing other people to agree. I have VERY strong opinions, but I don't want them to actually get in the way of people making things that are different than what I like.
Can’t believe you get accused of “doing harm” simply by having an opinion! And your expansive definition of campus fiction is an eye-opener for me. My first novel, Wild Walt and the Rock Creek Gang, was a campus novel, set in the strange, hidden world of Rock Creek Park in DC. Damn, if I’d realized that sooner might have been able to get an agent. (Several agents were put off that one of main characters is a freed slave, a black man in a novel written by a white man, but that’s a different story).
Campus fiction! An epiphany! One time I tried to write a story inspired by the particular exhaustions and wack perspectives within a school I used to attend. It started as a "write what you know" situation, but the label of campus fiction makes it clearer to me what I was trying to do. I was trying to explore dynamics that rise up in the pressure-cooker of microcosm, that might be diffuse or milder in greater society, but are still very present... right down to how people deal with death or choose each other. Maybe I'll try it again, this clarity is inspiring. Thank you
This is my first time hearing the term "campus novel" and I really appreciated your breakdown. I especially liked when you said: "Genres are fine. They are capacious. They are much more interesting and nuanced and complicated than some people seem to think." A very thought-provoking piece - thank you!
I love how you've talked about the range of the word "campus" and pointed at the en vogue desire for weirdness in fiction, that a work of fiction must be odd and many things to be fully imagined. For me the problem is in the "just", like a thing can't be a thing, it must move between different things, otherwise it's "just" a thing. Hurts my head. Your piece here is wonderful and especially this part: "For some writers, their whole artistic life is a prolonged exercise in being misunderstood. What matters most is that your own conception of yourself and what you’re doing stays within sight and that you can pursue your own interests with intention and urgency and clarity and passion and, yes, sometimes, even happiness." Thank you, again!
This made me realize that the reason I don't resonate with suburban malaise novels is they are campus fiction, but with too much homogeneity and not enough of the power differences that create the tensions in all the variations you mention. Closed system, forced interactions, that is the stuff of beautiful friction.
Yessssss.
I might be missing the point, but this reminds me a bit of Jane Austen's comment that "3 or 4 families in a country village is the very thing to work on." That principle can apply to novels with lots of people house-sharing as they make their way into adulthood in the Big City. Creating a world bound together by something specific, whether it's geography, or getting a degree, or how to deal with Henry VIII as he gets more and more mental, lets you see lots of bigger forces so much more clearly. You know who else maybe writes campus novels? Dickens. London is a campus. People arrive on stagecoaches and tumble out of windows and pick their way down its muddy streets, all sharing the challenge of being part of the crazy quilt. (And "Real Life" was brilliant, and I've preordered "The Late Americans.")
I thought about including Dickens, but to me Dickens is a social novelist and Austen is writing domestic fiction, which are both genres with distinct characteristics. I think Dickens fails to be a campus novelist because his purview is so broad. It's the whole city, the whole country, the whole world. The domestic space can be a kind of campus, yes, but I think domestic fiction is domestic fiction because it deals in the home and with the particular rigors of family and social life, which dominate the theme of like, different cross-sections of society brought together into a para-social space.
Tho Bleak House probably qualifies.
And Mansfield Park! Thanks for this, amazing insight as always.
Madeleine getting me to think about Dickens did lead me to ponder Mansfield Park too. I think you're right!
I was just coming back after a big bout of work to say, "Oh I see what you mean actually - you're right." It's an agree-a-thon! :)
I do see a distinction though - any society has rules, and is going to generate tensions and give people different stuff to deal with. But sometimes the rules are shared and commonly understood, whereas in a "campus novel" people bring their own social rules with them.
Dickens came to my mind though (and yes, I was thinking of "Bleak House" most of all!) because out of the mad whirl of the city, he usually creates a household of refugees, misfits, unfortunates and refuseniks who withdraw from the madness and come up with a way of living. (The city usually wins; if you move into it, you get disappeared - that great great last line of Little Dorrit....)
Also, Mansfield Park! which I have just been re-reading.
Yes, agreed! Love that. Talk about bringing your own social rules with you - pure Austen! And MP and BH have both always struck me as great novels for retellings, perhaps because of this "campus" aspect. Obviously retellings are big in the Austen space. This is maybe weird to say but it only just occurred to me that I have a notebook full of notes on a retelling that would put BH on an actual college campus in Missouri! It's been years since I looked at the notes. If I ever write that retelling, it'll be just because it's what I really want to read!
I'm semi-embarrassed to admit I did not know campus fiction was a distinct genre until...just this minute. I'm just out here reading books I like? But I see what you mean - the phrase "transcending genre" implies that the genre wasn't enough in the first place. Which, pfft.
Don't feel bad, I feel the actual genre is talked about much more than actually written, and I'd much rather read Brandon's views on campus novels than actually read campus novels (except perhaps for Brandon's campus novels, lol)
I'm with you on this completely. I gather reviewers resort to saying this because they think some of their readers, who would enjoy the book if they gave it a chance, will pass on it out of prejudice/snobbishness, etc., but it seems an easy enough fix if you just said it was at the top of the genre alongside [name of other books previously said to "transcend" the genre but ought to be considered a part of the genre].
The Bible is a campus novel. I needed that laugh.
thank you for this — campus fiction is my favorite genre of, well, everything, and thinking about office fiction as part of the broader campus fiction genre is useful. this clarifies exactly the chord struck by some of the fiction i most enjoyed last year for campus novel reasons but that don't automatically fit the genre (the ensemble, lessons in chemistry, winter in sokcho, the everlasting, leaving the atocha station, among others). i kept thinking of them together but couldn't name why.
and also thanks for additional thoughtful vocabulary i can apply to my love for the latinist, painting time, and the leigh bardugo yale novels.
now also thinking about restaurant novels as campus novels
So glad you mentioned the Latinist. Enjoyed it very much but it had slipped from my memory. Must check out the others you mention.
agree with everything--life is a campus novel!--and that transcending genre/hybridity is a scam. what is wrong with being *just* anything??? that said, what campus webtoons would you rec? 👀
I, too, love campus fiction. Pre-ordered your book, so you gotta stop sobbing.
I love this. As an exercise in..something, I don’t know, having new experiences, I’ve been listening to the weekly new music playlist on Spotify. If something piques my interest I’ll tap through and read a little about the artist, and the one thing that stands out is how many of their statements include claims about “transcending” genre. Aside from the eyerollingness of it all, I wonder if any of the people writing that copy have any real sense of which genres are being transcended in what ways. I suspect not! It’s just the same “I’m not like other girls” business that’s happening in literature, like the only way to be original or interesting is to define yourself against something you more or less openly scorn (but whose existence you then must depend on in order for your claims to cohere). I know brains like to sort and categorize but they are also capable of nuance, and genre offers such a wonderful space to be curious about that and enjoy the pleasures and (delightful) frictions of recognition and surprise.
This was so much fun to read, thank you. It's reassuring to read your posts and know someone else feels this strongly about books without needing other people to agree. I have VERY strong opinions, but I don't want them to actually get in the way of people making things that are different than what I like.
Can’t believe you get accused of “doing harm” simply by having an opinion! And your expansive definition of campus fiction is an eye-opener for me. My first novel, Wild Walt and the Rock Creek Gang, was a campus novel, set in the strange, hidden world of Rock Creek Park in DC. Damn, if I’d realized that sooner might have been able to get an agent. (Several agents were put off that one of main characters is a freed slave, a black man in a novel written by a white man, but that’s a different story).
Survivor is a campus novel
I've never felt more seen re: hybridity.
Sometimes it's so beautiful and sometimes the girls are just doing a prolonged exercise in ekphrasis
Campus fiction! An epiphany! One time I tried to write a story inspired by the particular exhaustions and wack perspectives within a school I used to attend. It started as a "write what you know" situation, but the label of campus fiction makes it clearer to me what I was trying to do. I was trying to explore dynamics that rise up in the pressure-cooker of microcosm, that might be diffuse or milder in greater society, but are still very present... right down to how people deal with death or choose each other. Maybe I'll try it again, this clarity is inspiring. Thank you
This is my first time hearing the term "campus novel" and I really appreciated your breakdown. I especially liked when you said: "Genres are fine. They are capacious. They are much more interesting and nuanced and complicated than some people seem to think." A very thought-provoking piece - thank you!
I love how you've talked about the range of the word "campus" and pointed at the en vogue desire for weirdness in fiction, that a work of fiction must be odd and many things to be fully imagined. For me the problem is in the "just", like a thing can't be a thing, it must move between different things, otherwise it's "just" a thing. Hurts my head. Your piece here is wonderful and especially this part: "For some writers, their whole artistic life is a prolonged exercise in being misunderstood. What matters most is that your own conception of yourself and what you’re doing stays within sight and that you can pursue your own interests with intention and urgency and clarity and passion and, yes, sometimes, even happiness." Thank you, again!