Mr. Maxwell, however, isn't sending up an established genre.
Published first in 1980, Lorde's book predates the popularity of the cancer memoir, now an established genre of sorts.
With its "A is for this, B is for that" structure, it quickly became an established genre.
It was followed by a mock recantation, the Remedia amoris, also a burlesque of an established genre, which can have done little to make amends for the Ars.
Like most of the Coens' comedies, "Burn After Reading" is something of a shaggy sendup of an established genre and conventions, in this case the espionage flick.
The challenge for any writer working within an established genre, especially a genre with a reputation for high camp, is to bring something new to the table while adhering to tradition.
The relationship between Mike and Sulley unfolds within the established genre confines of a college movie, with fraternities like Roar Omega Roar (ROR) and its president, a strutting big monster on campus, Johnny Worthington Nathan Fillionn).
But the headlines that followed in the western press are part of a now established genre that morphs the everyday behaviour of Arab and Muslim women as being something impressive and counterintuitive.
In its giddy fixation on lip gloss and sling-backs, "Cancer Vixen" is less a contribution to the established genre of cancer literature than it is the inauguration of something marginally novel: Sick-Chick Lit.
Combined with an existing record of a similar usage in the O.E.D., the new examples suggest that this was an established genre of dessert, like lemon-meringue pie is today, according to Philip Durkin, the dictionary's deputy chief editor.
What Nichols pulls off here will, for some, fall squarely into the WTF category, but for just about everyone, it will be altogether WJH (What Just Happened?), so audacious is its climactic flouting of established genre boundaries.
