ALICE IN BED - Fiction? Wishful Thinking? Why are the blanks filled in?

In class this past week, Professor Dalke informed us that Henry James Sr. Had given Alice James permission to kill herself. The transcript she provided us of the conversation consisted of a very few words. The (presumably fictional) transcript of the conversation provided to us by Sontag was a great deal more satisfying, and it leaves me, of course, to wonder whether or not there was more to Henry James Sr's permission slip than I was originally led to believe.

 The word genre has come to be understood as an encompassing set of characteristics that help readers to place a piece of literature into a category filled with works of a like kind. Yet, genres ultimately evoke much more thought and importance than the simple type-casting of literary works. Both Wai Chee Dimock and Stephen Owen imply that genres are no longer rigid guidelines that absolutely define every piece of literature; however, both respect the importance of genres to the world.

When reading Wai Chee Dimock's article "Introduction: Genres as Fields of Knowledge," I found myself agreeing with the author's theorization that the concept of genre in literature is meant to be seen as a general guideline to categorize things rather than a way to, as Dimock said, "put things into a pigeonhole."  Branching off that same idea, Dimock also expressed the idea that genre should not limit a work of literature.  Just because it's categorized as epic or lyric doesn't mean that the work has to entirely fit a certain format, and there is room for change in all genres that inevitably comes with time and the gathering of new knowledge.

As Dimock points out, theorists from Benedetto Croce to Jacques Derrida have objected to the concept of genre because something as complex as literature cannot be "anatomized ahead of time, segregated by permanent grouping." Categorizing literature may seem like an easier way of finding a specific read that fits one's interest; however this categorization of literature speaks closely to the human need to label. As these theorists have argued, literature is too complex to be broken down into different categories before they are even written. It is true that with the passage of time these categories have changed, but for a work of literature that is written in a certain period, it has to be placed within a genre, whether it fits perfectly or not.

In thinking more about and sharing the images we read in class on Tuesday, I found that the in-between nature of the images seemed to cause discomfort to me and others. Why should the existence of in-between objects elicit disgust? Similarly, our readings mentioned historical attempts by Westerners to either make other cultures' literary works fit into Western genres or establish those other cultures as deficient for not matching the Western pattern closely. Why is maintaining the open mind to the evolution of genre that Dimock and Owen call for so difficult? Do we need computers to do this for us?