is really fun to read.  it uses a tonal device that is kind of like a discovery channel show, or something on the nature channel but “boys” are the subject, not animals.    the language is usually, “some boys are like this…these boys can be seen…etc.”  it’s like a typology of boys. i like the way it moves from funny things to serious observations.  here is an example:

“some men hate women and only sleep with them to stop other men from having them.

some men do their best to destroy every relationship they come across.

a lot of these men eventually learn to play the guitar.”

i think another aspect i liked was that, even though it is using language that objectifies the topic, and makes each example so transparent, it also does things to complicate these ideas and then make them clearly about the narrator.  the book looks really nice too and it only costs two dollars.   email wonderlustzine@yahoo.com

This morning, I came across Matthew Cheney’s blog The Mumpsimus, wherein I got absorbed by this post, in which he addresses a recent statement by Tin House re: their position on “genre fiction.”

A reader wrote Tin House with this question:

I have read several issues of Tin House, including the most recent. Two vegetarians go on a hunting trip . . . enough said. I feel that I have several pieces that would fit the magazine, however, I am struggling with just one thing. This question is geared not only toward the magazine but the writing workshop as well. Do you accept genre fiction? I was also wondering how I might go about determining whether or not my piece fits into a specific genre and what general fiction is. Thank you in advance.
—Confused in LA

A writer for Tin House responded thusly.

I think Cheney’s criticism of the response raises many interesting questions. Why, for instance, in this day & age, are so many literary-types still so anti-genre, so myopic, so essentialist?

Here’s one example: Tin House on “what is genre fiction”:

My personal definition goes something like this: fiction that almost purposefully avoids the literary, in hopes of keeping the reader (or the writer, for that matter) from having to “work” too hard.

Seriously?

No, really.

Seriously?