Is it time to scrap the concept of 'literary fiction'?

[Brian Clegg]

Literary fiction is a label I've never understood - it seems to be basically 'anything that a certain group of literati who vote for fiction prizes like'. I recently came across these remarks in a science fiction book by the excellent Adam Roberts:

More thoughts on this on my blog.

Personally I usually prefer what tends to get labelled genre fiction and would happily do away with the distinction. But what actually tends to happen, as the bottom quote suggests, is that good SF writers, say, are claimed by literary established and washed clean of the 'stink of genre'.

 

[Marc Joan]

I agree that the distinction between literary and genre is unhelpful and perhaps misguided. It can be difficult to find a home for sci fi, dark fantasy or horror work that is written in a literary style and / or more complex than normal for 'genre'. Lit fic markets don't want it, and genre markets can't cope with it. Where do you send more challenging 'genre' work? It's a problem.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

As I've observed before, we're all librarians—we compare things to other things and classify them accordingly; putting a label on anything is superficially helpful but also reinforces prejudices.

As Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes said: “Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.”

This article punctures the snootiness of so-called literary fiction:

Literature vs genre is a battle where both sides lose

 

[Boopadoo]

A Handmaid's Tale is arguably one of the finest works in Science Fiction ever, even winning the 1987 Arthur C. Clarke Award, yet Margaret Atwood has vehemently denied classifying it as such since the day she wrote it.

 

[Brian Clegg]

A Handmaid's Tale is arguably one of the finest works in Science Fiction ever, even winning the 1987 Arthur C. Clarke Award, yet Margaret Atwood has vehemently denied classifying it as such since the day she wrote it.

You could also add Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984, The Alteration and more, often not classed as SF even though they clearly are for the same snobbish reasons.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

A Handmaid's Tale is arguably one of the finest works in Science Fiction ever, even winning the 1987 Arthur C. Clarke Award, yet Margaret Atwood has vehemently denied classifying it as such since the day she wrote it.

I'd call it Dystopian Horror.

 

[echo.]

I have no idea what 'literary fiction' means but I'd be lost without the term because I have zero clue of how else to classify my work in cover letters. It's either 'literary fiction' or 'general fiction' which I fear sounds a bit like I have no idea what my book is actually about and while that's semi-true, I don't think it looks good on cover letters.

Usually I shove the word 'accessible' on the front to differentiate it from some incomprehensible Beckettian horror.

 

[Brian Clegg]

I have no idea what 'literary fiction' means but I'd be lost without the term because I have zero clue of how else to classify my work in cover letters.

I have no problem per se with there being a category 'literary fiction' - just with the practice of assuming something has to be either science fiction or literary, but not both - so as soon as the literary establishment find they like a piece of science fiction, they start denying that it is science fiction.

 

[Sea-shore]

Literary fiction is a label I've never understood - it seems to be basically 'anything that a certain group of literati who vote for fiction prizes like'. I recently came across these remarks in a science fiction book by the excellent Adam Roberts:

More thoughts on this on my blog.

Personally I usually prefer what tends to get labelled genre fiction and would happily do away with the distinction. But what actually tends to happen, as the bottom quote suggests, is that good SF writers, say, are claimed by literary established and washed clean of the 'stink of genre'.

Will be taking a look at Adam Roberts's books. Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Pass. I never think to myself, I fancy a read of some genre fiction. Likewise I never consciously seek out literary fiction. A past exception has been Stephen King but, brilliant as he is, he always goes too far for me, and ends up doing an overkill. Except perhaps for Misery and Cujo.

 

[Patricia D]

Literary and genre overlap, IMO; but I do "get" the distinction. To quote US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart (who was speaking about pornography in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 1964).) "I know it when I see it."

 

[Peggy Lou]

I suppose it's bit like lots of other categorisations which are normal. The whole MG/YA/NA divide also seems arbitrary and unrealistic at times. Different individuals have different reading levels and tastes.
Where do standard classics fit in? Since Oliver Twist is a small boy is it a MG book? Do kids have to wait till they are adults to read Shakespeare?
There is too much standardisation and formulae in the literary and publishing world.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Perhaps this cartoon illustrates the best way of defining literary and genre fiction:

 

[Peggy Lou]

A literary class system? Or is it more like caste?

 

[KG Christopher]

What about Gullivars Travels? I would love to know what genre it is other than classic fiction because it is so old?

 

[KG Christopher]

I'd call it Dystopian Horror.

I would have thought all Dystopian classed fiction has an element of horror in it? trying to think of something that doesnt.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Not all horror is dystopian.

 

[Felicity Wallis]

In literary fiction the reader does the work, in genre fiction the characters do the work. I read that somewhere but can't remember where - Wikipedia?

 

[Meerkat]

True, sad story:

I grew up obsessed with sci-fi. That was all the fiction I read. Discovered horror and fantasy at 13, started writing in earnest posthaste. Was quite happy writing that until the heartbreaking day when I was 17 that I read (in a cultural magazine I took as gospel) that no "self-respecting writer" would write anything but litfic. Anyone who wrote genre fiction (can't you just see the lip curl?), the magazine said. was a mere hack who did not know how to portray human experience without "resorting to cheap tricks."

I was aghast and followed the advice. Hey, I was young and impressionable.

I then wrote horrible litfic for a decade because I was convinced I was "supposed" to. And all the while, I knew in the back of my mind that I would not only much rather be writing sci-fi, but would probably be a thousand times BETTER at that.

Truth: Mostly, I despise contemporary litfic. I have dozens upon dozens of literary magazines and collections of literary stories . . . and I can think of exactly ONE story in all that that I liked.

Anyway. I finally got real (in the last year) and said oh so the hell what.

It's crazy how you can try and try to persuade yourself not to do what you know is right for you because someone you respect said you shouldn't do it.

I don't know if the junk I'm producing now is better than the old junk, but I certainly find it much more fun.

 

[Richard Sutton]

But Brian... if you took it away, what WOULD the academics do? How could they retain their mythic judgmental positions in the firmament if they didn't have a genre solely at their own discretion as to what it could possibly mean to be included? Where else would you toss the highly touted, lionized examples that are only read cover to cover by academics, since they are usually so over-written the story is lost or at least buried? Where would they find succor? Where? >sob<

 

[Patricia D]

Most distinctions like this require drawing a line somewhere on a continuum - where the line goes shifts with time and tastes and who's holding the pencil. That said, it seems to me that the action in literary fiction is largely internal while in genre fiction it is largely external.

 

[Monique GOLAY]

washed clean of the 'stink of genre'.

Hello Brian, what do you mean with "washed clean of the 'stink of genre' "? Please explain yourself. Do you mean that the concept of dividing into genres debases literary achievements? Je serai heureuse qu'on m'éclaire ma petite lanterne. Mon anglais mérite d'être dépoussiéré.

 

[Monique GOLAY]

What about Gullivars Travels? I would love to know what genre it is other than classic fiction because it is so old?

I've heard 'Gulliver's Travels' is an anti-British satire written by an Irishman, isn't it?

 

[Monique GOLAY]

True, sad story:

I grew up obsessed with sci-fi. That was all the fiction I read. Discovered horror and fantasy at 13, started writing in earnest posthaste. Was quite happy writing that until the heartbreaking day when I was 17 that I read (in a cultural magazine I took as gospel) that no "self-respecting writer" would write anything but litfic. Anyone who wrote genre fiction (can't you just see the lip curl?), the magazine said. was a mere hack who did not know how to portray human experience without "resorting to cheap tricks."
I think you should really first enjoy writing, or re-writing until you enjoy your writing. If you say of your own writing that it is 'junk', it may be a good auto-critique but you should work and work until you enjoy your writing, isn't it so?
I was aghast and followed the advice. Hey, I was young and impressionable.

I then wrote horrible litfic for a decade because I was convinced I was "supposed" to. And all the while, I knew in the back of my mind that I would not only much rather be writing sci-fi, but would probably be a thousand times BETTER at that.

Truth: Mostly, I despise contemporary litfic. I have dozens upon dozens of literary magazines and collections of literary stories . . . and I can think of exactly ONE story in all that that I liked.

Anyway. I finally got real (in the last year) and said oh so the hell what.

It's crazy how you can try and try to persuade yourself not to do what you know is right for you because someone you respect said you shouldn't do it.

I don't know if the junk I'm producing now is better than the old junk, but I certainly find it much more fun.

 

[Monique GOLAY]

Actually, you should never write for economic purposes, but always write for yourself first. If a Publisher likes your writing, then tant mieux.

 

[Monique GOLAY]

University professors are always asking their students: "What genre is this?"

 

[Monique GOLAY]

I believe the genre issue is a practical question to know in what shelves of the bookstore a book must be placed.

 

[Patricia D]

I've heard 'Gulliver's Travels' is an anti-British satire written by an Irishman, isn't it?

I vaguely remember being taught that in school

 

[KG Christopher]

Yes Gullivers Travels is anti-establishment. At the time, British society was strictly classified. Even though Swift was a landed, protestant Irish gentleman, he still would have found it hard to be accepted into London society. Many concepts in Gullivers Travels are still relevant today 'Endian Heresy' whether you should cut a hard boiled egg on the flat side or the pointy side is a reference to the futility of 'dogmatic wars', unfortunately still evident today, think Shia / Sunni split. 'Endianness' is still heavily fought over in computer science. 'Should I count numbers from left to right, or from right to left' it has an impact on how a computer calculates. (Numbers in this sense are the contents of a 'register' which is 8 bits, 1 for the sign, 7 for the 1's and zeros.) Lots of good stuff in Gullivers Travels. (Yahoos)

 

[Monique GOLAY]

Numbers in this sense are the contents of a 'register' which is 8 bits, 1 for the sign, 7 for the 1's and zeros

Thank you for your contribution, Christopher. You may then consider an entropy of information whose value is k ln 2, or appr. 0.693 k, to know whether you should read from right to left or inversely. For more explanations, I'll quote here my father physicist's work "Science and Absurdity":

"It was in the second half of last century that Maxwell, perhaps in all seriousness, perhaps with tongue in cheek, postulated his little demon, who, astraddle a sluice to which two types of molecules are fed, diverts nimbly the type A molecules to a left compartment, while diverting the type B molecules to a right compartment, the volumes of the two compartments being respectively proportional to the relative numbers of the A and B type molecules. At the end of this sorting operation the two compartments are in temperature and pressure equilibrium, but the difference between the two types of molecules permits one to extract energy from the system at the expense of the heat fed to it, as we have seen earlier, in order to keep the two gas volumes in temperature equilibrium with their surroundings and with each other [see fig.1 and 2]. And Maxwell asked: Is not the second law violated by the little fellow?

No one really thought that the system would work, or could work, yet no one for a long time gave a logically satisfying answer why Maxwell's demon just could not be. The thoughtful explanation which Maxwell's thoughtful paradox deserved, and the clever exorcism which his clever demon also deserved, did not come until over half a century later when, a little like the little boy exclaiming: "But the king has no clothes", the physicist Szilard said, in 1929,? "But Maxwell' s demon does not have the information he needs to time the opening and closing of his trapdoor". That did it.

It took some time, though, for Szilard's paper to be generally appreciated, and there is a question whether Szilard himself realized its full import. At any rate his paper was gathering dust on his desk and, had it not been for friends of him who noticed it and persuaded him to send it for publication, it might have remained unpublished. But eventually it became noticed and Rube Goldbergish machines were devised to show with theoretical experiments that the most efficient thinkable process of determining the favorable right and left shunting epochs of the demon's trapdoor involved increases in entropy no smaller than those the demon could offset with his discrimination. Actually, the inventors of these machines could have saved themselves the trouble for, even if the information about the molecules arrivals to the trapdoor from both sides were available at no expense of entropy increase, the very process of communicating this information to the demon with an ideal communication link would entail at least as much entropy increase as he could offset. The strong connection between the second law of thermodynamics and the attendant concept of entropy on the one hand, and the concept of information content on the other, was brought forward fully in 1948, 19 years after Szilard's original paper. It was then that Shannon introduced the concept of the entropy of information (see Appendix II), and developed formulae entirely similar to those of entropy, the only two differences being, firstly, one of sign: information is equivalent to an entropy decrease, and accordingly the term negentropy was adopted to designate the measure of ordcr brought about by information; and secondly a constant factor, for a "bit" of information, the dimmensionless information content which decides the one out of two choices, is equivalent to an entropy of value k ln 2, or appr. 0.693 k, where k, Boltzmann's constant, designates the unit of entropy."

By the way, Christopher, as you answered my former post, do you know the chances for a solicited manuscript to get published?