Can you imagine if we had chatroom transcripts of the beat poets hashing out their poetics with their fans and critics?
Novelist Jeff VanderMeer--one of the patron saints of this site-- pointed out a fascinating set of links arranged by Kathryn Cramer. Cramer has archived a sprawling set of web posts where different readers and writers debate the meaning of the much oft-debated experimental genre, the New Weird.
I'm not going to spend any time trying to define the genre, I'll just let this discussion thread introduce you to the sprawling topic:
"The New Weird grabs everything, and so genre-mixing is part of it, but not the leading role. The New Weird is secular, and very politically informed. Questions of morality are posed. Even the politics, though, is secondary to this sub-genre’s most important theme: detail. The details are jewel-bright, hallucinatory, carefully described...Vivacity, vitality, detail; that’s what it’s about. Trappings of Space Opera or Fantasy may be irrelevant when the Light is turned on."
No matter what you think about the classification of these literary works, you have to admit that's a gorgeous, inspiring tradition to join. If you want to read more, Jeff & Anne VanderMeer have edited an upcoming anthology of the writers in the genre.
Which famous literary movements do you wish we could study on such a molecular level?