What is literary fiction?

[Jo Zebedee]

Nope. And, to be honest, I'm yet a little too gunshy to do so.

Post a note at the start to that effect and we know yo be gentle

 

[hitmouse]

But is classic the same as literary?

No. Sherlock Holmes ( and I have read and loved it all) is top-notch genre defining popular fiction which is deservedly classic. I dont want to get to hung up on the genre thing, but Conan Doyle was not writing lit fic in the way that extollagar has appropriately described above.

Another easier example: Jules Verne. Imaginative and engaging hack-work, and classic, but not literary.

 

[psikeyhackr]

What Margaret Atwood strives to have her works classified as?

That is only slightly joking. She needs to be abducted by talking squids from outer space.

 

[Toby Frost]

A small, vaguely relevant point.

The last episode of the TV show Breaking Bad isn't exactly a bucket of laughs, but it does resolve a lot of plot points in a very satisfactory way. I've seen a critic suggest that the last episode doesn't really happen, and should be considered a fantasy in the mind of one character.

I'm sure this is because it would be more "literary" to leave the story with a confused and completely miserable ending, and, as that's what "literary" stories do, Breaking Bad should have done that.

Conan Doyle was not writing lit fic in the way that Extollagar has appropriately described above.

I'm not sure that "literary" fiction as a genre really existed before 1900 or thereabouts.

 

[Guillermo Stitch]

Aha! Nearer and nearer … I see a lot of agents talk about wanting fiction which straddles the divide between literary and genre. But saying a thing and meaning it are two beasties of different complexions.

Word. In the course of my submissions I've read any number of guidelines which professed to invite the most innovate, mind-and-genre bending, sui generis stuff out there, but at the other end of that publisher's production line will be ponderous, dull, staid literary fiction.

 

[ZlodeyVolk]

Actually, the bush around which I was beating is the idea that the English language is something to avoid at all costs.

 

[Guillermo Stitch]

A distinction I've often thought about is that between work which seeks to provide the reader with a respite from their reality and work which seeks to deepen, and perhaps make more immediate, their engagement with that reality.

It's a binary simplification of course and a lot of excellent work can be said to encompass both drives, but I'm convinced that something is going on along that spectrum that speaks to whether fiction is 'serious' or 'light'.

Of course this is only related to the question of what is literary fiction, it isn't the question itself.

 

[ZlodeyVolk]

A distinction I've often thought about is that between work which seeks to provide the reader with a respite from their reality and work which seeks to deepen, and perhaps make more immediate, their engagement with that reality.

Well put. Many years ago, I had a nice chat with one of the people from the marketing department of the now-defunct SF Australia cable channel; and I answered his question about "What is sci fi?" in similar terms, although not so elegantly.

Simplification or not, I feel you're getting to the heart of the matter: that which we're seeing, in modern literature, is a tension between the kind of fiction which gives readers an opportunity to escape the problems of the workaday world and the kind that wants readers to think about the problems, perhaps with a view toward resolution. The vast majority of fiction, nowadays, seems skewed toward "escapism", for want a better term; and there's nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. Everybody needs a break. But this doesn't mean that the other kind of fiction is necessarily bad; it's just not so immediately gratifying.

 

[Guillermo Stitch]

... it's just not so immediately gratifying.

...or marketable, or lucrative...sigh

 

[ZlodeyVolk]

Yes, well, I didn't want to raise that particular disappointment. Even if "marketable" follows from "immediately gratifying".

 

[Extollager]

Is there any 19th century work that we both still read and wouldn't consider "classic"?

Is anyone now ready to respond to Onyx's question?

My own opinion is that, in this context, there are classics pure and simple. Crime and Punishment is a classic, without qualifications. But A Study in Scarlet is not. It's a classic of detective fiction.

So, are there 19th-century works that are still read that are not classics in the sense that Crime and Punishment is a classic? Indeed there are, lots of them, such as all the Sherlock Holmes stories published in the 19th century, or Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, or Sheridan Le Fanu's "Green Tea" (ghostly tale), etc. They are genre classics but not classic literature like the Dostoevsky novel.

Then are there works that are neither classics pure and simple nor genre classics, that are still widely read?

Determining that could be tricky!

 

[psikeyhackr]

How much of this is just cultural?

You go to school and your elders Tell You what is "literary". And being a good impressionable child wanting a good grade you BELIEVE them.

What Chinese and Japanese writings are "literary"? Do they even think about it that way?

Maybe western barbarians need to tell them what is and isn't "literary". LOL

 

[Randy M.]

Is anyone now ready to respond to Onyx's question?

My own opinion is that, in this context, there are classics pure and simple. Crime and Punishment is a classic, without qualifications. But A Study in Scarlet is not. It's a classic of detective fiction.

So, are there 19th-century works that are still read that are not classics in the sense that Crime and Punishment is a classic? Indeed there are, lots of them, such as all the Sherlock Holmes stories published in the 19th century, or Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, or Sheridan Le Fanu's "Green Tea" (ghostly tale), etc. They are genre classics but not classic literature like the Dostoevsky novel.

Then are there works that are neither classics pure and simple nor genre classics, that are still widely read?

Determining that could be tricky!

Just to be contrary:

I've read where classics tend to be defined in two ways: First, those who have some cultural cache -- critics, academics, etc. -- determine one level of classics. Work by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, George Eliot, Melville and others would probably qualify for this. Second, classics are also those books that still get read by the vast reading public for years, decades even, after first publication, often in spite of scathing critical reviews by those at the time of publication with cultural cache. Think Dracula, maybe Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, though I believe those and H. G. Wells' early novels were well received. And, Extollager, even a snob like Edmund Wilson granted that the Holmes stories were minor classics. Remember, there wasn't a category of "detective fiction" or "mysteries" until the unparalleled success of the Holmes stories generated them, so they are by some standards sui generis in the way that The Lord of the Rings is sui generis for fantasy fiction.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

Just to be contrary:

I've read where classics tend to be defined in two ways: First, those who have some cultural cache -- critics, academics, etc. -- determine one level of classics. Work by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, George Eliot, Melville and others would probably qualify for this. Second, classics are also those books that still get read by the vast reading public for years, decades even, after first publication, often in spite of scathing critical reviews by those at the time of publication with cultural cache. Think Dracula, maybe Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, though I believe those and H. G. Wells' early novels were well received. And, Extollager, even a snob like Edmund Wilson granted that the Holmes stories were minor classics. Remember, there wasn't a category of "detective fiction" or "mysteries" until the unparalleled success of the Holmes stories generated them, so they are by some standards sui generis in the way that The Lord of the Rings is sui generis for fantasy fiction.

I agree with your point. Just wanted to put a word in for Poe being the father of detective fiction rather than Doyle. Even the character of Holmes is somewhat similar to Poe's Dupin from The Murders in The Rue Morgue. I can't explain Inspector Clouseau though.

 

[Randy M.]

I agree with your point. Just wanted to put a word in for Poe being the father of detective fiction rather than Doyle. Even the character of Holmes is somewhat similar to Poe's Dupin from The Murders in The Rue Morgue. I can't explain Inspector Clouseau though.

Good point, and even Poe had predecessors -- currently reading Martin Edwards' The Life of Crime and a little surprised by how many predecessors Poe had -- and Wilkie Collins came before Doyle. But after Sherlock became popular, the genre started forming as one writer after another tried to create a new Great Detective. Fortunately, a few, like G. K. Chesterton, came along and expanded what the detective story could look like and the weight it could carry. It's funny, but while the present genre of mystery/detective/crime story started developing first, there seems to have been similarities in its track and the track of the present genre of sf/fantasy. What started out as mainly entertainment in short story form over time became more sophisticated as new generations of writers expanded the genre, pretty much gutting the criticisms leveled against it by critics from previous generations.

I can't explain Clouseau, either.