pianoman5 said:
For me, insight is the reason I read, and write, and it's one of the factors that distinguishes literary work from other genres. (Not that it's absent from other genres, only that it's a sine qua non of literary pieces.) Most of the time it's evident from reading a few paragraphs at random from a book. It's not overt "look at me, aren't I clever?" raisins in the cookies as JAR puts it, but elemental truth about 'us' woven seamlessly into the fabric of the prose. And it doesn't have to be elaborate prose, far from it; in fact, that seems to be a turn off for most people -- an unworthy attempt to show off for the sake of it. But it does have to be elegant prose, or powerful, or witty, or economical, or stylish; or at least something better than utilitarian.
There's a regular flow of innuendo on these (and other) boards that suggests literary work is plotless. While that's sometimes the case, it's an absurd, and dare I say, an ignorant observation, used as a cop-out defence by people who can't be bothered to embrace the finer points of their own culture. What is generally going on there is that so-called literary writers are not hostages to the tyranny of plot. While they are obliged to tell stories mindful of pace and drama, they don't necessarily have to follow the dreary old three act structure, with a setback or corpse appearing in the first few pages followed by a series of deepening crises and concluding with a satisfying denouement and triumph. (Yawn)
I'd urge all you Yanks who've never read any (e.g.) Philip Roth or Saul Bellow to at least try them. And all patriotic Poms ought to take a look at Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. You don't have to like them, but you might appreciate what they're doing with the written word. Whatever you might think they lack in terms of story, they make up for it in insight, craft and style.
Well, I want it all, story, characters, insight, craft, and style. The best literary writers certainly do this in spades, but so do the best genre writers. Just as many put down literary writing, many also put down genre writing, and in reality there is no difference between the two, when done by a great writer.
As Sturgeon said, "Ninety percent of everything is crud." This applies to both genre and literary fiction. Much literary fiction is plotless, clueless, and horribly written, just as most genre fiction is over-plotted, clueless, and meaningless.
If you look at all the classic novels of the last two hundred years, a huge percentage of them would be classifed as genre fiction today. Breaking fiction up into literary and genre is a very modern notion, and a false one. Doing so was a marketing decision to make life easier for bookstores, libraries, and readers. It was never meant to indicate quality, or lack thereof.
Now, I'm not overly fond of Roth, but it isn't because his writing lacks quality. He simply writes about people I have trouble relating to, and about a culture that doesn't seem come alive for me. But he is a fine writer.
I will say this, however. I don't care what kind of writing a person does, if the story is lacking, the fiction is meaningless. Good literary writers don't fall short on story, and do follow the three act structure just as closely and as well as any genre writer.
The best, and most lasting, literary writers are always mindful of story. I think what many of them do that irritates so many readers lies in lack of perceived action. No one is getting killed or beat up often enough, there isn't enough romance, and nothing goes boom every so often. Without these elements, many see lack of plot.
Not true, of course, but action elements aside, story has to be there, else the "literary" writer has failed just as surely as the "genre" writer.
