Literary Writing II

You said "It's just good writing." It may be, in fact, it may often be, but I don't think the equation "literary writing = good writing" works. Especially if you check it out as "good writing = literary writing". To me literary writing isn't a phrase conveying the quality of the work. It's about exploring different forms of prose and ideas about people. Sometimes I think it's devalued into being a catch all for general works which don't fit into a genre.

FWIW, I believe that the category for general works is 'mainstream/contemporary,' not 'literary.'

They simply don't mean the same thing, at least not from what I can deduce.

Cool it Folks, don't leap off the deep end.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. You don't have to agree with it. You won't understand it completely unless you have stood in that person's shoes all their life and experienced what they have. Please try to be tolerant of their opinions especially as here on this Board the opinions are not a matter of life and death, of grave harm to other people or of world damaging importance. The fact that someone disagrees strongly with your opinion doesn't make them right and you wrong nor is it a personal attack on you. These are opinions we are discussing so please everyone take a deep breath and talk about the points raised not the people who've made them.

Before I do that I'd like to comment on some of the opinions:

1. Mike Coombes makes some strong comments about Fantasy and SF. He merely reflects what many people think. 'Fantsy is not true, it's about things that don't exist, it's pure escapism.' Therefore many people think that readers of SF or fantasy are escaping from reality because they are not good at coping with real life. 'They're losers!' They think that Fantasy readers want 'magic wand solutions' when the average person knows that this is: 'wishful thinking and a load of codswallop! Life's not easy like that!'

2.
The majority view of the Romance genre is the same. The fact that it is the last remnant of the Mediaeval knight's code of honour watered down into our century's thinking is lost. Romance writers get it in the neck for writing a load of 'sentimental rubbish' but they and their readers know it's a dream world that makes a nice escape from nappies, housework and paying the bills. I actually know of a marriage counsellor who prescribes a list of Romance books to some of the husbands so that they can understand what women value in a man!

3.
Women's Writing, Chick lit, these genres are sneered at. Good old MCP chauvinism is alive and well although heavily disguised as reputable book reviewing.

4.
Literary writing is held up as the best, even the only way of writing. The attitude is a hang over from the days where education was for the priviledged and the size of your vocabulary and ability to speak in complex structures meant that you were not one of 'the ignorant great unwashed' or 'the working class'. There's a strong remnant of this opinion still in academia and the publishing world.

I teach my students that the Literary Genre is about ideas, universal themes of importance to all people. In the Literary Genre the characters will be memorable, the theme one that leaves the reader thinking. I believe that a good literary novel is not self indulgent navel gazing by a writer but makes a universal statement that is true. Honesty, the writer's honesty is one of the keys to the Literary genre. It might not be your version of the truth but it is the author's and it makes you think.

Literary writing can been seen in many types of fiction. PD James' crime novels, in some of Patricia McKilip's fantasy novels, in John Irwin's mainstream fiction, to name only a few.

Literary writing is more complex than every day writing, using what my linguistics prof used to call 'the language beyond the lexical bar.' That is the writer can use Latinate words and complex structures. At one end of the literary writing scale there are literary writers who are experimenting with language in the use of words and structures so that to the ordinary reader the writing becomes impossible to read or understand. At the other end are those so full of a love of language that they write prose like Gerard Manley Hopkins's poetry.

I find myself writing the literary genre because ideas are important to me. I hope I also write in a literary way. I get drunk on words! As a Kiwi I'm often depressed by the state of writing in my country. Only the correct NZ style Literary Genre is valued and it's not always the best of literary writing. Our Arts Council grants and our New Zealand Society of Authors all encourage the belief that only their NZ literary genre written in their NZ literary style has value. Unfortunately this means the more pretentious and arty-farty, particularly about New Zealand's 'deep dark underbelly' or 'Maori consciousness' writing the more it is preferred with grants and publicity.
James MacDonald's comments reflect on the similar attitude that seems to exist in the States. It is extremely frustrating to see some story or first novel lauded as a great literary triumph, and the author presented with grants and great reviews when the ordinary reader will never read the story or novel. The Literary Genre has become a form of intellectual snobbism to the detriment of the genre and its writers.

egem said:

I'm starting this thread over, and I will not say one bad word to James. We will take it outside.

I think that literary writing is about us. It is about everyday problems and people and it tells us about ourselves, but you can't really define it like a genre. It's just good writing. Kafka doesn't write anything like Joyce, but they are both literary writers. Long after people have forgotten about Stephen King or John Grisham [grief from others] people will still be reading David Foster Wallace or Junot Diaz.

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I wouldn't go that far for a second. Odds are about ten to one that Stephen King will still be read long after David Foster Wallace has been forgotten by the general populace.

Good literary writing is important, and it does have meaning that most genre fiction ignores. Dismissing either literary or genre fiction out of hand is patent nonsense. Both produces lasting fiction, and if you take a close look at classic fiction that has lasted for hundreds of years, a sizable chunk of it, perhaps the majority, could be considered genre fiction front to back.

What matters is what the fiction has to say, and how well it's written. Genre fiction can say just as much about the human condition as literary fiction, and it can be just as well written. It usually doesn't and isn't, but it can, in the hands of the right writer, do both.

Most genre fiction is crud that will, in a few months or a few years, disappear without trace, and good riddance. But the same thing can be said of most literary fiction.

The best literary fiction, and the best genre fiction, will both last for centuries. The only test of good fiction is the test of time, and none of us are likely to be around long enough to see which writers will pass the test. At most, we'll watch as writer after writers fails the test and fades into oblivion, but we won;t be around to see who is still being read a hundred years form now.

But this I can say with certainty. Some of the writers still being read in a hundred years will be literary writers from today, and some will be genre writers from today, and in all likelihood, the genre writers who last will outnumber the literary writers.

Fiction is fiction. It isn't any better because it's literary, and it isn't automatically crap because it's genre.

My personal opinion is that a great deal of wonderful literary fiction has been written in the last fifty years, and if some find it boring, that's their problem, and their lack of judgement. And some wonderful genre fiction has been written in the last fifty years, and if some literati find all of it meaningless and inferior, that's their problem and their lack of judgement.

Litrary

egem said:

I would like to hear from people that read literary works. Have you read Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Thom Jones, or any of these writers. Did you like them. Do you write literary in the literary genre? I would rather talk about the craft.

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I've read these writers often. I love them. Raymond Carver is, I think, an absolute Master of the short story, and I've seldom read a story better than "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." Or "Cathedral."

Joyce Carol Oates has been a favorite for many years, and if it's possible to fall in love with someone just from reading their writing, Oates would be the one. I don't understand how anyone can write as much as she does while still never failing to write extremely well.

But I could name fifty literary writers that I think are simply wonderful. I think one of the best short stories ever written was Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River." It astounds me when people read it and say there's no plot. The story is one big, major plot from front to back. But all the Nick Adams stories are good, and it may be true that you have to read them all to fully understand any. I don't think so, I knew what "Big Two-Hearted River" was about without having read any of the other stories, but maybe there is someting to this. The Nick Adams stories are, taken as a whole and read in order, more like a novel than a collection of stories.

But where do you draw the line with literary writers? My own opinion is that Twain, Dickens, and London all qualify as literary writers, but in their day all except London were considered more genre than literary.

What about Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekov? All wonderful writers, but were they writing literary fiction or romance or war stories? Or all of the above?

What about Proust, Flaubert, Hugo, and Camus?

What about Honoré de Balzac? As fine a writer as I've ever read, but is he really literary?

Better question, what about Dumas? Where do novels such as "The Count of Monte Cristo," "The Man in the Iron Mask," and "The Three Musketeers" fit into the literary canon? They've certainly stood the test of time, but are these merely genre novels that were written well enough to last, or are they something more?

And what about P. G. Wodehouse. I can read him over and over and over, but is he too funny to be literary?

What about O. Henry? He has an anthology named after him, for heaven's sake. But are his stories literary?

And what about Edgar Allan Poe? I think most of his stories are safely genre, but I also think he's one of the best literary writers of all time. No matter how fantastic the plots of his stories, they were about real people, real emotions, real probelms. "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" are wonderful stories. And his poetry, particularly "The Raven" and "Annabel Lee" should never die. How can anyone read this are not be hooked forever?

How about Sir Arthur Conal Doyle? His stories are definitely genre, but if there's a more realistic, more compelling, more lasting character anywhere in fiction than Sherlock Holmes, I haven't found him.

The craft of literary writers seems even more varied to me than the craft of genre writers. It's much less formula driven, but the best of it has plots as strong as any genre fiction. And it contains character who somehow manage the impossible task of remaining life size on the page. They don't shrink with time, or grow larger than lofe in order to make up for lack of skill.

I really don't understand the animosity bewteen literary and gere writers. It's silliness. The best of both is something special, and most of each will, and should, disapprear down the sewers of time, and none of us controls where our own fiction will fit into the scheme.

PDR said:

It is extremely frustrating to see some story or first novel lauded as a great literary triumph, and the author presented with grants and great reviews when the ordinary reader will never read the story or novel. The Literary Genre has become a form of intellectual snobbism to the detriment of the genre and its writers.

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PDR, this is not directed at you, but I felt your quote was a good entry point. This is just my opinion for the general record. It seems to me there's snobbism on both sides of the fence, and writers in both camps complaing about a lack of readership, and a lack of recognition.

I've been branded 'illiterate' for confessing not to have read any fiction in the past 8 years, either literary or otherwise, and that's fine, I've been called worse, but I do think the label sheds light on the deeper problem - the disconnect between the "ordinary reader" and the fiction writer.

I live in... perhaps the most ordinary place on Earth, and am surrounded by ordinary readers. My job takes me into people's homes on a regular basis, and I confess, I often look at the bookshelves to see what they've read. I also worked at a library for four years, and of course, I have friends and family whose reading habits I know.

Again, I should say, I'm not trying to start anything here. I'm just reporting what I know from the front lines.

But far and away, the preferred reading is non-fiction. The most popular subjects are humor-writing/ humorous biography. After that comes true crime, and then celebrity biography. Spiritual books are big. Anything that claims to be a guide to life or an affirmation of faith is huge among ordinary readers. UFO, JFK, and other conspiracy work claiming to be non-fiction is also very popular. Lastly we have self-help books, and do-it-yourself manuals.

Why?

Because these non-fiction works are now superior to fiction in delivering what readers crave: Laughs, lives, thrills and chills, affirmation of good over evil, philosophical guidance, fascinating possiblilities, and last but not least, education.

And I submit that things are this way for two reasons:

1) Non-fiction purports to be "real" and therefore has an edge when it comes to believability.

2) Printed Fiction (both literary and genre), having been upstaged by movies and television, has fallen under the jealous protection of collectors and afficianado's who look upon the readers of non-fiction as "illiterate".


I'd venture to say that 90% of the fiction writers out there have risen from the ranks of this cloistered readership, and so the cultish nature of the beast has only increased. Ordinary readers simply aren't represented on the fiction shelves, and in fact, are strongly discouraged from writing at all.


That's my assessment of the situation at this time. Obviously people will disagree, and I just know I'll be skewered alive for stating my opinion, but I don't post to cause trouble. I'm just trying to give an honest opinion, for what it's worth.

egem said:

I think the main focus of literary writing is society and the human condition, and genre writing tends to have a different focus. Do you agree?

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Whatever you're writing, the mandate is always to have realistic characters and a believable plot. Nobody can do that without understanding the human condition and society.

It is worth noting that certain writers pigeonholed into "genre" categories, some to their lasting personal detriment, during their lifetimes are now being resurrected and reprinted in fancy formats with scholarly forewords and analyses as "literary" writers. James M. Cain and Philip K. Dick are good examples.

These distinctions strike me as marketing-driven, more than anything else.

bird

Stephen King not read 100 years from now- are you shitting me?! He'll be read then for the same reasons that Charles Dickens, George Eliot and all the other greats of the nineteenth century are still adored today: he tells a good story and he tells it well.

And most of all: he's real. You read IT and you get a feeling for what it's like to grow up as a black kid in a small town in Maine in the late 1950s- just as you read Middlemarch and have an insight into the life of an ambitious young doctor in provincial England in the late 1830s. King's books, like Eliot's, are a gift to people who live in other wheres and whens.

So, quite apart from the fact that Stephen King peppers his works with literary references, biblical allusions and a host of other literary devices (the "quality" of the writing itself is, usually, truly exceptional, if you measure it in those terms, as you seem to), he is what I'd unhesitatingly call "literature." He'll be read, all right. My great-great-grandkids will be devouring his books along with the Odyssey and the Canterbury Tales, along with all the other stuff that will last forever- well, until we all get obliterated by a huge meteorite, of course.

So there.

pdr said:

I teach my students that the Literary Genre is about ideas, universal themes of importance to all people. In the Literary Genre the characters will be memorable, the theme one that leaves the reader thinking. I believe that a good literary novel is not self indulgent navel gazing by a writer but makes a universal statement that is true. Honesty, the writer's honesty is one of the keys to the Literary genre. It might not be your version of the truth but it is the author's and it makes you think.

Literary writing can been seen in many types of fiction. PD James' crime novels, in some of Patricia McKilip's fantasy novels, in John Irwin's mainstream fiction, to name only a few.

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I couldn't agree with you more! To your list of writers I'd like to add John LeCarre, who raised the term "spy novel" toa whole new level.

I'd like to compare books to food. There's gourmet food, wholesome organic meals, vegetarian, junk food, healthy snacks, desserts, salads, full course menus. We have the choice. I love a snack now and then: but I don't like junk food, not even in real life, so I'll snack on apples and other fruit. In fact, I couldn't live without fruit. (A well-written and engrossing genre book.) But I couldn't live on it. I also need a full course meal, vegetarian, and preferably organic, and very tasty.

What I don't like is nouveau cuisine. I think that's what corresponds most exactly to what I call "academic" fiction.

Dickens was hugely popular in his time. The literary establishment often dismissed his work as too sentimental and coincidental (and popular) to take seriously. Yet he's regarded as a master of the bildungsroman now by those in the establishment positions that earlier dismissed him.

Language is a slippery thing. Who knows what the literati will view as worthy a hundred, two hundred years from now. And more to the point, why should it be important? I love Vonnegut. I read all the Vonnegut I can get my hands on, regardless if he's considered cult, pop, or lit.

I'd also like to point out that many genre writers are also considered literary: Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien to name a few. It's not an exclusive category.

I read what I love, and write the stories I'm passionate about. I'll let someone else worry about placing the writing in some sort of category. Those PhD's need something to do.

A well-known author once stated (paraphrase) that there are two kinds of writers. The first asks, "What will writing this story mean to me?" The second asks, "What will writing this story mean to others?" And you can find the dubious "literary" tag on both types.

Stephen King will be read 200 years from now for the same reason Dickens is still read: He tells a damn good story, and at the end of the day, that's what it's about any way. Eloquence in language bows to story every time.

It was Stephen King who stated the "two writers" comment above, also.

All I know is, around this place, if you want something not to get read, post it in the "Literary" sub-forum of Share Your Work.

bird

egem said:

I'm not trying to start a war here, but I think literary writing includes so much of other genres because it is concerned with the craft of writing and not genre conventions. All of the works you pointed to tend to be the best of the best where the craft is concerned (in character, plot, setting...) Is that what literary writing is? Concern for the craft of writing that forgoes convention?

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In my experience, the better genre writers are concerned for the craft of writing AND genre conventions. Is it the exclusion of genre conventions that marks it as literary? If so, why don't you simply call it 'mainstream?' There must be more to it than this.

Mistook said:

P

But far and away, the preferred reading is non-fiction. The most popular subjects are humor-writing/ humorous biography. After that comes true crime, and then celebrity biography. Spiritual books are big. Anything that claims to be a guide to life or an affirmation of faith is huge among ordinary readers. UFO, JFK, and other conspiracy work claiming to be non-fiction is also very popular. Lastly we have self-help books, and do-it-yourself manuals.

Why?

Because these non-fiction works are now superior to fiction in delivering what readers crave: Laughs, lives, thrills and chills, affirmation of good over evil, philosophical guidance, fascinating possibilities, and last but not least, education.

And I submit that things are this way for two reasons:

1) Non-fiction purports to be "real" and therefore has an edge when it comes to believability.

2) Printed Fiction (both literary and genre), having been upstaged by movies and television, has fallen under the jealous protection of collectors and afficianado's who look upon the readers of non-fiction as "illiterate".


I'd venture to say that 90% of the fiction writers out there have risen from the ranks of this cloistered readership, and so the cultish nature of the beast has only increased. Ordinary readers simply aren't represented on the fiction shelves, and in fact, are strongly discouraged from writing at all.


That's my assessment of the situation at this time. Obviously people will disagree, and I just know I'll be skewered alive for stating my opinion, but I don't post to cause trouble. I'm just trying to give an honest opinion, for what it's worth.

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I dont believe your reasoning for a second. Nonfiction has always been more popular than fiction, but this isn't because of any virtue of nonfiction, it's because of fault in far too many people. Ordinary readers? Then just who are the hundreds of millions who still read fiction each and every year? Ordinary readers? Just who are they? As far as I can see, such a group either never existed, or has never gone away, depending on how you look it it.

It's just wrong to even think that there used to be some group of ordinary readers who no longer read fiction.

Fiction hasn't been upstaged by anything, movies or TV. More fiction is read today than ever before. Even on a percentage basis, fiction readers have only decreased a few percentage points in the last fifty years, and is actually higher than in past centuries. I don't know where people get the idea that everyone read fiction in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most people couldn't read at all. And most of those who could read were nonfiction fans then, as well. Nonfiction is ever so much easier than fiction. It takes almost no effort. Those who watch movies and TV instead of reading are, by and large, the same people who wouldn't have been reading even before movies and TV came about, or who, at most, would have been reading some nonfiction. The human race has never been a group where the majority worried much about knowledge or education. . .or reading.

But there is no cloistered group of fiction readers. There is no cultish nature. Thinking this totally ignores the numbers, which are, and always have been, massive.

As for: Because these non-fiction works are now superior to fiction in delivering what readers crave: Laughs, lives, thrills and chills, affirmation of good over evil, philosophical guidance, fascinating possibilities, and last but not least, education.

No, not hardly. That's silliness. Nonfiction is vastly inferior in every one of these things. Including education. The person who doesn't read fiction is in no way educated. Or at best, is only partially educated. You cannot be educated and read only one or the other. Again, the cause is not in the superiority of nonfiction, but in the lack of understanding, and in the lack of imagination, by those who do not read fiction. What nonfiction delivers is merely what some people want. What some people are willing to settle for. And it's a terribly sad thing.

This also makes it seem that there are two groups of readers; those who read nonfiction, and those who read fiction, and this is even more wrong. Take away the fiction readers who also read nonfiction, and most of the nonfiction market would dry up and blow away.

Nonfiction is in no way superior in any of these categories, and, in fact, can't even begin to compete in most of them. And an awful lot of the nonfiction being read today may purport to be real, which makes it ever so easy to read and believe, but it is, in fact, as far from real, as far from factual, as it's possible to get. The fact that people eat it says very little about nonfiction, and very much about its readers. Easier to believe? Yep, it is easier, isn't it. Even when it's an out and out lie. Easier. Some take the easy path, some the hard.

Cloistered? Cultish? If so, it's the largest group of cloistered, cultish people the world has ever seen. And the largest group of truly educated people the world has ever seen. And a clositered, cultish group that has a distinct advanatge over everyone else.

I certainly don't look upon nonfiction readers as illiterate. I am a nonfiction reader. I read reams of nonfiction. But I do look upon those who don't read fiction as lacking a good education, and of lacking imagination. And the saying, "Those who do not read are as ignorant as those who cannot read" holds as true for fiction as for nonfiction. Probably more so. The best nonfiction may contain many facts, though much more of it contains only opinion, or outright lack of facts, but darned little of it contains anything resembling truth.

Fiction is a very different world from nonfiction, and any superiority you see in nonfiction is only an illusion. But, yep, it sure is easier.

Non-fiction can be literary. Think of Joan Didion, John McPhee, Truman Capote, VS Naipaul, Paul Theroux, Annie Dillard, David Quammen...

Jackie

I'm very interested in this topic, but I'll admit I wouldn't know where the draw the line between fiction that is literary and fiction that is not. Based on high school literature, I'll probably always assume that literary writing is "what you read in English class," unless someone else has a better definition.

I liked what James Ritchie built on from James MacDonald's definition, along the lines of ordinary people with ordinary problems, but which are important to the characters. Still, the problem must be important to the reader.

But then I have to wonder, if these characters aren't extraordinary in some way -- why do we care, and why do we read on? Is literary fiction the journey from ordinary to extraordinary? But I can think of so many "genre" novels which fall under this category... Perhaps these are the genre books James MacDonald was referring to; the good ones, when stripped of genre motifs, can become literary fiction, whereas lower-quality genre will have nothing left.

In the sense of "ordinary people," I can see why non-fiction biographies and autobiographies apply -- stories from the Trade Center, Tehran, celebrities stories.... but there is still something extraordinary about these people, otherwise I could write a best-seller on my own life. (Which I guarantee, nobody wants to read.)

Jamesaritchie said:

But I do look upon those who don't read fiction as lacking a good education, and of lacking imagination.

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Some people don't like to read--it doesn't mean they're less educated or lack imagination. Reading fiction isn't superior to other hobbies. I'm sure there are some who would say you're missing out because you don't participate in activity <x>. It's snobbery.