to claim that books are "fantasy" when they're rather firmly established as something else. Considering that I've seen this come from a lot of people who aren't very fond of genres, I think a reasonable conclusion to draw is that they're attempting to "legitimize" the genre of fantasy by taking "respectable" books and labeling them fantasy. It's a way of both attacking the genre system and getting "credibility" for the sort of books you read/write. Absalom, Absalom! just is not fantasy. It's Southern Gothic, which in some cases can overlap with fantasy, but Faulkner was not a fantasy writer. Calling him a "magical-realist" renders the phrase meaningless. If someone were going to use the much wider "speculative fiction" label (which is, as I have argued countless times before on these boards, an attempt at gaining "credibility" ), then putting Faulkner in that camp wouldn't be a problem. Same for things like the Odyssey; it's simply not fantasy. Tom wrote an excellent post in his "Defense of Other Fiction" thread on why epics by definition can't be fantasy. I'm hesitant to call The Once and Future King fantasy, since it's almost purely a retelling of the Matter of Britain, but I guess I can go with it on the grounds that White was well aware he was writing unreal things.


On a completely different note, I've very surprised there's only one Gaiman book on that list.