A brief treatise on the notion of hybridisation as contribution to specific genre, in regard to the novel Snow Falling on Cedars and the genre of crime fiction.
...pe of crime fiction by mating it with other genres. This is preposterous, upon further consideration, as this supposed diversification of crime fiction is only evident to one who refuses to discern distinctions between elements of crime fiction and a novel that contains elements of crime fiction. In this way, when considering the benefit of diversification and hybridisation we can only evaluate such claims by standards of overall literature. When looking solely at the genus, to use a biological parallel, any inter-breeding will only be seen as a dilution of the pure-breed, even if this inter-breeding strengthens the species. Similarly in literature, although a cross between romance and crime may strengthen fiction in general, it remains that the genus, or genre, of crime itself can only be seen as weakened and bastardised. So this is not a positive contribution, if any. The only way in which we can consider this diversification to be a contribution is if we consider Snow Falling on Cedars to be, ipso facto, crime fiction, mutually exclusive of other genres, such that the other features of the novel are mere adaptations of the purist model. This is no doubt a bigoted perspective to take, as the first sign of alternative genre would demand by the same logic that this is the original genre, to be influenced by crime, among others. In this way, we would also have to consider Snow Falling on Cedars to be ipso facto romance with wartime influences and ipso facto wartime story with courtroom drama influences and ipso facto courtroom drama with crime influences, ad absurdum. This absurdity would be synonymous with labelling Aristophanes as “tragedy with comic influences” or Sophocles as “comedy with tragic influences”. Although both are strongly of one particular category, they both contain elements of each o...