(no subject)

[owlectomy]

WANTED: A moratorium on people claiming that literary fiction is nothing but boring plotless stories of sad failed writers and academics having sad affairs.

At this point I've heard it repeated so many times that whatever grain of truth it had in it has worn off. And how is it different from claiming that fantasy is nothing but reactionary daydreaming about dragons and poor boys who are secretly the heir to the throne?

Comments

[cesario.livejournal.com]

I hear this a lot too, and I have a visceral "this is wrong" reaction to it, but efforts to codify just what literary fiction is and what makes it different from other kinds, in ways that aren't insulting to one party or another...well, it's just freaking hard. I think last night I came up with the closest thing to an answer I've ever had---the quality of being literary is the quality of mining deeper and deeper layers of perception, where perception is the point of the story.

But that probably doesn't even make sense outside my head, so don't quote me.

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

Certainly -- if you try to define it as well-written fiction, that implicitly defines genre fiction as badly written; and if you try to define it as well-written fiction that doesn't have any overtly fantastic elements, what do you do about "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" or A Tiny Feast (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/04/20/090420fi_fiction_adrian) (which just appeared in the New Yorker, of all places)?

In the end, as with most genres, I feel more comfortable defining literary fiction as fiction that's in conversation with other literary fiction, rather than trying to fashion a reliable litmus test; but if I were going to try for a litmus test, perception would probably be it.

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

(Not to mention, of course, something can be extremly badly written and still be in the genre of literary fiction -- it's just that it's not going to be badly written in the same way as a James Patterson thriller.)