Cross-Text Connections

SAT Reading and Writing· difficulty 4/5

Text 1: Critic Park argues that genre fiction — mysteries, thrillers, romances, science fiction — has been unjustly excluded from serious literary consideration. The conventions that define a genre, she contends, are not weaknesses but tools; the best genre work uses them with the same intention that literary fiction brings to its own conventions of character and theme.

Text 2: Critic Singh agrees that genre fiction deserves serious attention but warns against simply collapsing the categories. Genre conventions create reading pleasures — suspense, satisfying closure, recognizable types — that depend on those conventions being honored; literary fiction often works precisely by frustrating such conventions. The two traditions overlap, but they pursue different aims.

The authors most clearly disagree about

  • A

    whether mysteries and romances are genres.

  • B

    whether genre fiction deserves serious attention.

  • C

    whether genre conventions and literary conventions should be regarded as essentially the same kind of thing.

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  • D

    whether genre fiction has been read by many people.

Explanation

Both accept that genre fiction deserves serious attention. They differ on whether to collapse the distinction. B captures the dispute.

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