Do We Need Genre?

 I think genre is a marketing tool, some place to lump books in a bookstore.

 Alyssa Carbutti's How Do We Draw the Limit on Genre? from Long River Review makes an argument appealing to my prejudices, and does in a way that I also find appealing:

Genre aside, when I’m reading any book, I simply focus on the writing. Does it capture me? Does it thrill me? Does it transport me past the time and place I think I’m in before I open up the pages? 

I can’t help but wonder if we really need the genre labels. Stylistically and structurally the genres are the same, aside from poetry. I think there is fiction in the truth, the made up embellishments. Or even fiction in what’s left untold. It lies in what the author can’t bring themself to jot down on the paper, sealed with shiny immortal ink. Fiction also contains truth. I think in order to accurately describe an emotion you have to know what it feels like. To describe a place, you have to have been somewhere like it or done an incredible amount of research. The writing will always reveal what is true and  what is imagined. Everything is simply creative work—a beautiful mess of words and feelings.

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