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I’m willing to bet that Harold Bloom is wagging his meaty arthritic fist right now, decrying the declining influence of classical educations and the literary canon. Ah, yes, the classical education. Gone are the days when a crested Exeter boy was considered cultured if he knew his Greeks, could recite some Donne, and laughed at the right moments in As You Like It. I’m not going to say times were simpler then but…actually, yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to say. Times were simpler then.

People weren’t dumber and life wasn’t easier, but literary and cultural knowledge was more limited, because there were obviously limited choices. The average student these days is bombarded with countless opinions on how to feed a healthy brain, and as cultural content flows into the world at an exponential rate, it’s hard to know whether 20 hours are better spent reading Infinite Jest, watching Season 3 of The Wire, memorizing “The Wasteland” or listening to scratchy bootlegs of Robert Johnson.

This argument has surely been made before, and surely better, but as a writer I think it needs to be continuously addressed. Because for all the opportunities writers are afforded today, we are facing increasingly fragmented audiences. There are still perpetually curious folks out there, trying their best to sample everything from the buffet. My wife is one of them and her skills as a prolific devourer of books and media always astounds me. But the majority of people simply taste the king crab legs and decide, “well heck, king crabs are pretty darn good and thanks to those Deadly Catch fellas, we’re swimming in ‘em, so I might as well eat these long-legged SOBS until I go gentle into that good night.”

I speak of course of anyone who’s picked up some Stieg Larsson and decided that kinky and moody thrillers are the be-all-and-end-all, or anyone who’s buried themselves in paranormal romance and decided not to dig out until all the centaurs have found a hooflove, or…well, you get it. Genre has been around for a long time, but it’s more comforting than ever these days. Since there’s no such thing as a classical education anymore–since what’s deemed canonical is so daunting–you might as well become a specialist, an expert, a slavishly devoted fan.

I don’t really have a problem with this sort of fandom because I participate in it to a certain degree and, if I’m lucky enough to find my writing lumped into a zeitgeisty genre, I stand to make a few bucks and find a few readers from it. Yet it can be discouraging to a writer whose work doesn’t necessarily fall into a popular genre and sees his/her books added as #347 on peoples’ Goodreads “to-read” shelves and wonders, “when they heck are they gonna get to me? They still have all the Shopaholics, Tolkien and Dutch Transcendentalists to get through!”

Publishers know this better than anyone and that’s why they turn down some great writing in favor of some not-as-great writing. It’s a business, as you are constantly reminded, and market share ain’t necessarily achieved just because you can string together a better description of butterflies than Nabakov. If they can’t find a place to fit you into the “market,” then you’re left out in the cold.

One genre currently freezing its tuchus off is the comic novel f