Literary fiction: false?

I have trouble taking anything that J M McDermott guy says seriously.

BUT, if you're thinking that speculative fiction is ONLY about zombies, you're really giving the genre an unfair shake and condemning some really great authors.

Some literary fiction are false, some are true.

Same with genre fiction.

The thing is, in all these stories, by numerous authors of literary fiction, characters have this hyperreal awareness of their own misery, and comment upon it.

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Well, character insight is a common feature in literary fiction. So. Uh. Is that the problem? For what it's worth, stories about inner turmoil and man vs. self conflict are my favorite. Hence my attraction to literary fiction.

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So this is the game he wants to play. Write indeterminable things as fact.

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... I don't believe anyone has declared subtext as such? But why anyone would have beef with subtext, a technique that adds emotional and intellectual depth to any story in any genre when done flawlessly, is beyond me. (Was this originally a rant about Ms. Hempel?)

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I thought he just said people were miserable.

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Oh, go away. I've never approached literary fiction with the expectation for it to match up with my own experiences or expressions. Who does that? I read literary fiction because, like Andy Warhol, I like boring things.

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Speculative fiction covers genres like fantasy, science fiction, post-/apocalyptic, horror, and so on. Is he trying to tell me that none of those genres have cliché crises? Does he honestly read fiction as "training" guides? And while I agree no one has LITERAL experiences with supernatural crises, we all have experiences with the UNIVERSAL THEMES. (Loud noises!) Death, courage, fear, sadness, what have you. Literary fiction just cuts out the fantastical elements. ElsaM and willietheshakes have stated this better than I could.

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Or, perhaps, he hasn't read much literary fiction.

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I think we all can agree that an empty room alone isn't universal, but neither is a ghost.

P.S. It's hilarious that the author is asserting no one experiences grief the same, but in the dead child example, apparently no one could grieve with ~subtext.

Does this make sense?

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NO.

BYE.

In short, I don't like anything in the blog entry. I know many people don't care for literary fiction, but I've never read anything like that before. Subtext. Really now.

So when characters react to the zombie apocalypse - as realistically as the author can depict them - the author is allowed to include subtexts, but characters reacting to events such as death and divorce aren't, despite the fact that they're just as fictional as the characters in science fiction novels.

I'm a huge fan of genre novels, but I think I've misinterpreted the article. Or I've missed something important.

Wow. Just... wow.

What an incrediby articulate, utterly bone-headed collection of self-aggrandizement and -rationalization.

Fiction -- genre or literary -- succeeds or fails, among other measures, by how it recognizes and incorporates the universality of human experience while simultaneously individuating it for a particular character or set of characters. That's the logical flaw at the core of this blog's argument -- he's relying on the commonality of experience which he sees as a flaw in litfic for the success of his genre writing. A reader reading a character's response to a Zombie Apocalypse is relating to the fear, the human response to the unknown, the hope, the possible triumph, the possible tragedy; in short, those very things a reader of litfic is relating to in an account of a troubled suburban marriage.

I have never read such a load of old bollocks in all of my life. This quote, as an answer to his one solitary reply, nearly made me burst out laughing. It's as though he thinks people are zombies and don't actually think deeply about why they do what they do and think what they think. Whilst I know there are some people in this world who seem as if they can't think for themselves, most people can, I hope. I definitely can and I'm not the hyper-literate type.
I guess he's just not a deep thinker like some of us are and judges us by his own small and shallow mind. Or maybe he thinks his mind is that much better than most people's? Which makes this even worse!

Samantha's_Song said:

bollocks

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That was my first thought too. Load of old cobblers.

You're obviously much more ladylike than me; you used cobblers whereas I used bollocks.

IdiotsRUs said:

That was my first thought too. Load of old cobblers.

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I thought bollocks

I just typed cobblers

Ach, I have the same problem sometimes - the fingers don't type what the brain thinks. More often than not it's the mouth that doesn't co-ordinate with the brain though.

IdiotsRUs said:

I thought bollocks

I just typed cobblers

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Now I know we were all adding ninjas to our work, but I didn't think we were supposed to literally add ninjas:

"It is easier for me to understand a character from the streets of Bombay if that character is thrust out of their known world, into space, for instance. I learn that character, and street survival in Bombay, by how they interact with this Other. "

"Just an empty room is not universal. It's not universal because not everyone eperiences grief that way.

Making an actual ghost, though, in the room, provides a reason for experiencing grief that way, and speaks to a universal experience with a dream-like thing presented as if real."

He's not into the subtle metaphor, is he ? I'd think he'd say to each their own instead of re-writing lit fic to be what he likes or either wrong. I definitely don't think like him, so his thoughts on universality strike me as odd [read: bollocks ]

Yeah, me being one of those not hyper-literate types can understand that sentiment.

backslashbaby said:

[read: bollocks ]

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All fiction, literary or genre ultimately fails to truely represent 'reality?' Why? Because ultimately the language that constructs that reality is a construct itself and fails to achieve what the writer intends.

Like the mirror, language lies.

When I read it, I thought he was bragging about how shallow he is. Responses to the zombie apocalypse are fairly universal and universally understood because the only meaningful responses are shallow: kill yourself, fight, run, kill yourself fighting so others may run. That's about the extent of it. Not that zombies don't have their place, but as far as character development, there's not much there.

Why not address me by name seeing as I'm the one who quoted it. And for your information, I didn't actually know it was another member of AW to begin with.

Isaac Espriu said:

Um, shouldn't we be discussing badducky's blog post on badducky's blog, rather than here? It seems a little bit slap-in-the-face-ish to take his blog post and bring it here to AW. I'm sure if he'd wanted to discuss it here he would've posted here instead.

ETA: When i said discuss i really meant quoting huge portions of the post here and then commenting on it. I wasn't particularly referring to general discussion.

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I, myself, don't mind being called out if I've done something wrong, as I did here, and I certainly wouldn't fight over it. I only fight if I think I'm in the right. I haven't touched what I originally said, but I have removes the quote,

Isaac Espriu said:

You weren't the only person who quoted it. I saw no point to calling people out by name, because that was more likely to start a fight than a general statement/question.

Also, the fact he's an AW member doesn't mean we don't need to discuss a blog post that's of interest. After all, we do that with a lot of non-AW members. But quoting large portions of a blog post might be constituted a breach of copyright (i'm no expert; i'm just going from what i've seen said other times large portions of blog posts or newspaper articles have been directly quoted).

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Well, I had no idea I was commenting on a member's blog. I was just responding to a post on the board...

<shrugs>

i like the font.

Isaac Espriu said:

My point--which was badly expressed in my initial post--wasn't so much about the commenting as it was about the large amount of quoting from the blog in question, and the possibility that doing so might be a breach of copyright. That's all

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Isaac Espiru, I don't know why you didn't write directly to me, seeing how no one else quoted large portions from the text. Anyway, it's a bad habit! I edited accordingly.

Ooops, didn't know it was an AW member! Ah, agree to disagree and all that