"A Novel"

Refusing the genre reveal

I have a strong memory of being in grad school, and my (illustrious, MacArthur-winning) PhD advisor talking to us about the then-new (?) trend of putting “A Novel” on the cover of novels. We were discussing theories of the novel, and genre, and the history of form, and, well, post-structuralism was still cool, so there was much to analyze with this whole stamping of the genre on the front of an example on that genre. We laughed at the absurdity —hahahahaha.

A few weeks ago, when David Wilson and I were discussing the cover design for Belt’s first novel, publishing in 2022, David asked if we were putting “A Novel” on it. Now, this question was in some respects surprising, as David has never asked me if we should put “Non-Fiction” (aka “Not a Novel”) or “A Memoir” or “A Researched Argument” on any of our other covers. But he clearly knew that these days, most novels scream their genre to potential readers. I was quick to respond: “No! I hate that convention of adding ‘A Novel’ to cover…