Let's begin with definitions. Genre's difficult that way. Northrop Frye had a great line about how even on a casual glance the word 'genre' sticks out in an English sentence as the alien and unpronounceable thing that it is. By my count there are at least three, and possibly four, different definitions of the word 'genre' in common usage. The first, most technical, comes from academic literary criticism and refers specifically to poetic form: lyric, epic, dramatic (further subdivided into tragic, comic, and historic), and so on. Criticism based on this understanding of genre -- 'generic criticism', and never mind how damning the term sounds -- is often of debatable value. It's associated with the pedantic critics (largely neo-classical, largely French) who attacked Shakespeare for not respecting the 'unities' and mixing his genres. (Consulting M.H. Abrams' Glossary of Literary Terms, I'm reminded that Shakespeare satirically anticipated them in Hamlet, in Polonius' speech outlining successively weirder genres of drama.)

Eighteenth century dogma that genres were pure, immiscible, and set in stone was never borne out by experience, and generic criticism looked set to die a gentle death as critics focussed on qualities not native to any given genre but potential in all of them, qualities like 'sincerity,' 'seriousness,' 'maturity,' and so on. Structuralist critics of this century revived the idea of generic criticism, though, defining genres as sets of codes embedded within a given work. These codes might include aspects of plot, setting or character -- if the setting is the future, that's a code that belongs to the science-fiction genre. If the lead character has a tragic flaw, that's a code belonging to tragedy. Note these two codes do not exclude one another. Genres can coexist and mingle. Their taxonomy and classification becomes some kind of intellectual sport, perhaps to the detriment of true criticism.

As I understand it, this is one aspect of the argument against a biographical genre. The presence of a certain set of generic codes led people to accept It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken as autobiography, and confuses people aware of those codes when they read Stuck Rubber Baby or For Better or For Worse. Further, a biography frequently contains other genre codes within itself; aspects of romance, or war, or even horror or mystery. But works can fall into more than one generic category (science-fiction mystery, horror western, tragic war story, and so on). And while it may reasonably be suggested that biographical codes aren't clear enough or numerous enough to really be said to constitute a 'genre' on their own, this is debatable, and may in the end come down to an individual's taste. The line between 'trend,' 'movement,' and 'genre' is not hard and fast. That said, let's consider other definitions of genre.

One simpler use of the term initially categorised mass-produced popular literature, specifically pulp fiction. This is where familiar genre names come in -- science-fiction, fantasy, mystery, romance, and so on. Not all of these terms are useful. There's no overall agreeement on a precise definition of the phrase 'science fiction,' for example, which limits its usefulness as a term of criticism. 'Fantasy' is much worse, a horrible baggy word that would seem to encompass -- well, theoretically, it could encompass at least half the canon of Western literature. Faust, Peer Gynt, The Tempest, The Faerie Queene, all these things are Fantasy so long as you insist on having Fantasy as a special genre. Of course these works weren't called 'fantasy' when they were created; they would have been described as 'Romantic,' a term used in opposition to 'Realistic.' Romances in prior centuries were typically long, marvelous fables or epics -- the form that more-or-less evolved into the novel, which is why the French word for novel is 'roman' and why some authors give their novels the subtitle 'A Romance' (cf: Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt). Nowadays, of course, the word 'Romance' has mostly devolved to a genre name, indicating a work whose main focus is a love relationship. But then, like Fantasy, that description too could include at least half the works of the Western literary canon.

This collection of loose, baggy genre names was basically useful in allowing pulp magazine editors to determine, define, and describe characteristics about the plot and setting of the stories they published - to indicate very specific codes. Readers of those magazines sound found the terms useful themselves, and so we now have 'genres' being referred to as though anybody should know exactly what they are. Even if nobody's been able to put together a coherent definition of any of them. Even if they contradict each other, or tend to subsume each other. What is notable is that, especially in comics, a lot of critics seem to believe or imply that any work produced under a 'genre' label is, ipso facto, no damn good (c.f.: Pekar, Harvey). These critics often seem to have a third defintion of genre.

This definition emphasizes the popular and commercial aspect of 'genre literature,' and tends to exclude works that superficially seem to have characteristics that would situate them in a given genre, but whose artistic ambition separates them from pulp writing. In other words, Orwell's 1984 or Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale don't count as science-fiction, even though they're both set in the future, because, when you get down to it, they're too damn good. This argument suggests that part and parcel of genre work are codes that specifically aim the work at a mass audience and which tend to eliminate literary ambition in the writer. Subtler codes than 'it's a story set in the future, therefore it is science-fiction, a genre work'; these codes read something like 'it's a story set in the future, in the third person but with a young male protagonist as the point-of-view character, with violence presented in an "adventurous" style to engage the readership on a superficial level...' and continue on at length. (Take a look around at some SF book publishers' guidelines if you want to see these codes set out in unironic detail.)

This use of 'genre' tends to ignore the fact that good work can spring from commercial sources -- consider the critical re-evaluation of much hard-boiled fiction. What many critics now realise is that talented writers took the codes of their genre, however commercially minded, and incorporated those codes in a creative way. This is not unprecedented. When Milton wrote Paradise Lost, for example, he incorporated certain genre characteristics of previous verse epics into his own poem. The catalogue of opposing armies, for example, or the invocation of the muse. That's a bit of an extreme example -- certainly Milton also played around with form more than any pulp writer, however high-minded, could have -- but the fact is, genre codes are not necessarily impositions placed on a writer. They're an aspect of fiction that can be manipulated -- the way that Kurt Busiek manipulates the superhero idiom in Astro City, or the way Seth manipulates the autobio codes in It's A Good Life.

Okay, so what have we got at this point? We have genre as a collection of codes; the clever manipulation of those codes by writers; and a reminder of the sloppiness inherent in this categorisation of literature. But there is one more use of genre: genre as its defined by bookstores (more than libraries, I think). This is admirably simple. Books are what the bookseller, or their catalogues, say they are. A Study in Scarlet is Mystery. 1984 is literature, not science fiction. Maus is history. See how easy it is? But odd though this categorisation might be, it does have the values of simplicity and use, the reason why many contemporary genres (science-fiction, fantasy, romance) were created in the first place. You know what kind of book you'll find in these sections; you know what the codes are. And what do you find when you go to the Biography section of the bookstore?

You find non-fiction books of historical research focussed around one person's life and times. They are researched and documented, with a whole apparatus of footnotes and documentation. They are informative before they are artistic (most of them, anyway). In other words, they're quite different from what we usually call Biography or Autobiography in comics; most Biographical and especially Autobiographical comics are better described as an extension of the personal essay, perhaps by way of first-person journalism. Basically, for whatever reasons, comics biography and comics autobiography have evolved their own codes; they have their own sets of expectations. Possibly most significant is the fact that biographical comics, specifically the biographical comics under discussion now, tend to put artistry before information. They are, in other words, a separate genre than prose biography, dealing with separate concerns, and probably should be treated as such.

Okay, let's take a stab at a vague definition: comics Biography and Autobiography use similar methods and tropes to similar ends, most notably harnessing superficially pedestrian, 'real-life' episodes to create a sense of verisimilitude, often at the expense not only of so-called 'genre' elements such as mystery and romance, but also more common dramatic elements such as plot. However, these elements do enter the work where the sense of verisimilitude is not threatened: either because the incidents really happened to the cartoonist (Joe Sacco's reportage) or because the cartoonist is adept enough at using the traditions of biographical comics to make a fictional work appear in every way real. In other words, I'd include It's a Good Life... . as a biographical comic, because of the way it manipulates the codes of the form; but I don't see that same manipulation happening in works that simply have a 'biographical flavor' like Stuck Rubber Baby or For Better or For Worse -- they're not concerned with their own realism. Something like Maus, intimately concerned with its own realism and lack thereof, stretches the boundaries of this 'biographical genre,' just as it stretches 'holocaust survivor story' and 'war story' to the breaking point.

Returning to Northrop Frye, I'd agree with him that "The purpose of criticism by genres is not so much to classify as to clarify... traditions and affinities, thereby bringing out a large number of literary relationships that would not be noticed as long as there were no context established for them." (Anatomy of Criticism, p. 247-8) Frye here establishes precisely the value of generic criticism - even if his definition of genres (the academic one) is different than ours. The question becomes: Is there a value in establishing a term such as 'artistic biography' as a genre description? Will this aid us in generic criticism, that is, in drawing out the connections between not only creators close to each other (Seth to Chester Brown), or reasonably assimilable (Seth to Harvey Pekar), but also to creators in other forms, or removed in time, where a direct influence may not exist but where an affinity may be discerned (Seth to Thomas de Quincy)?

Well, before running off to compare I Never Liked You and The Prelude, we might want to look at something simpler, and consider the distinction between Biography and Realism. Abrams' Glossary has it pretty succinctly (under 'Realism'): "Casanova, T.E. Lawrence, and Winston Churchill were people in real life, but their histories, as related by themselves or others, demonstrate that truth can be stranger than literary realism. The typical realist sets out to write a fiction which will give the illusion that it reflects life and the social world as it seems to the common reader." That's to say, the realist privileges the average over the exceptional: middle or lower class protagonist, everday experiences of life, and so on (Many critics have noted that this in itself represents a generic code, but never mind that for now). In comics, consider the difference between Dennis Eichhorn and Harvey Pekar. Eichhorn writes stories that 'really happened' but whose interest comes from the excitement or adventure inherent in them; Pekar uses his autobiography to take literary realism to its farthest extent, focussing on the minutiae of life, using fact to create the sense of verisimilitude. Two different approaches, two different sets of concerns, but two creators frequently, even usually, grouped together. It is the genre that is the point of congruity. In other words, the genre term here allows the similarities between two superficially unalike artists to be described.

So there we have it: the phenomenon of comics biography and autobiography, begging for a proper analysis of its codes and the ways it produces its effects. A useful critical concept, effectively a genre, suggesting certain relationships and affinities. Perhaps worth celebrating: artistically-oriented biography is not necessarily something that only began with comics, but may be as a genre perfected within the form.

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