Interesting rant on lit fic

The point of the rant seems to be "I don't like literary fiction."

Fair enough. Not everybody does. I don't like vampire novels, and if I had a platform at The Atlantic I'd shriek about it just as loudly as this dude shrieks over literary fiction.

I find "stuttering tulips" much more interesting than safe, predictable prose.

He likes lit-fic, just not contemporary lit-fic. (Now I'm going to finish it.)

I printed out this article but I'm going to have to read it later. 24 freakin' pages.

It seems clear to me this character hasn't read all that much contemporary literary fiction other than what he quoted.

Sigh.

Oh, fuck - not this B.R. Myers shit again.

BenPanced said:

I printed out this article but I'm going to have to read it later. 24 freakin' pages.

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Be thankful -- he later turned this screed into a book

Holy crapsticks. I just saw the date on the printout's masthead.

I love literary fiction.

But from the sound of the voice of the 'rant' is as every bit as pretentious as the writing he is mouthing of about.

I adore lit fic, but not authors who are that in love with their Thesaurus.

I'll take "safe, predictable" prose that actually gets to the point and tells a story over beautiful labyrinthine gardens of words that want to drag you into their sesquipedalian embrace and smother you with similes because the author is just So! Damn! Precious!

In other words, I agree with Myers's rant. But Stephen King made the same point more succinctly. Gods forbid any self-respecting "literary" author be caught trying to engage the reader's interest with a well-told story, no, we must be all literary an' shit and who cares if there's actually a plot in there?

All in all, I actually thought he made some rather good points... and some that didn't make any sense. I certainly wouldn't call his article "shit."
I do tend to write more on the "literary" side, but I also strive to keep the plot fast-moving. I do believe that as a writer in this day and age, you need to perform a balancing act in order to keep up the readers' interest.

I looked forward to finding out which writers Myers WOULD consider praise-worthy. The problem I had was where 99.99% of all the "old" writers Myers approves of are all men, and mostly of that 1930s-1950s generation...I don't know, the article came across as quite biased toward the Hemingway-type of author (sparse prose, not a lot of metaphors), and for that reason, I take his observations (which I enjoyed reading, I must admit) with a grain of salt.

incognitopress said:

I certainly wouldn't call his article "shit."

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I wasn't referring to the article as shit.

Based on precedent and experience, I was referring to the lock-bound trajectory which most threads about this article -- and there have been a few -- tend to take.

Meh.... Just another opinion.

yikes. I'll be sure to keep watch and see how fast this goes that way
I still have to browse for the fun threads in the "locked" section.

Just finished it. Loved it. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'd like to know whether the critics and authors he savaged had any response. I'd also like to see some live mano-a-mano on a topic like this, maybe a panel discussion at a college or convention. Literary feud!

For people who don't really understand what's going on with contemporary literary fiction, I strongly suggest Annesley's book Blank Fictions. It's an in-depth examination of how contemporary culture has influenced contemporary literary fiction, and how contemporary lit fic reflects modern culture in some really surprising and gratifying ways.

Sadly, the book is out of print, but you might luck out and find a copy at your local library. It's excellent, and helps explain what is going through the minds and subconscious of writers and readers of contemporary lit.

Somebody likes the sound of their own keyboard.

*shrugs* Personally, I don't see much point in debating the merits of any particular genre, lit fiction included. A lot comes down to personal taste, and what works and is considered good can be somewhat dependent on genre, as well.

Debating the merits of particular techniques, styles, or writers is good enough, but I do think context (in this case, the genre and what the readers expect from it) is important.

Seems to me he likes the sound of his own voice.

There were plenty of critical responses to his paper. My opinion on the matter is given in older threads. Just caaaaan't wait to see this one coast to a lock.

Honestly, I was hoping to see something new.

SPMiller said:

Honestly, I was hoping to see something new.

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phhhtttt!


As if.

I really agreed with this article, which is so long because the author supports his argument with numerous examples and lots of evidence. And this guy is mostly right.

But the point about the inanity and the incomprehensibility of Annie Proulx and Cormac McCarthy is one that needs to be made. Every time I read one of McCarthy's rare interviews, I'm just astonished by how full of shit he is. I like Nicholas Sparks much better since he took a swing at that bastard.

I tried to read the new surprise Pulitzer winner "Tinkers," by Paul Harding, and I gave up on getting through it because the book has no story and I just hate it. I read an interview where Harding was bitching about the literary agents who rejected him because they prefer stories with car chases to his "slow, contemplative, meditative, quiet book." And I have to wonder why he thinks it's necessary to string together four adjectives that all mean the same thing.

I view Don DeLillo with less hostility, because his observations were probably fresher in the eighties, when "White Noise" was originally published, and because some of these tired ideas seemed pretty on-point when I was nineteen. But maybe impressing nineteen year-olds isn't the gold standard for literature. I'm still impressed by Nabokov and Roth and Bellow.

This is a very interesting article. The critic begins with the premise that literary fiction holds the reader at a farther distance than genre writing. Then he offers many examples of just how the literary writers create that distance between their characters and their readers.

As a genre writer, I'm going to refer to this article as a list of examples of what not to do...or to do only when trying to accomplish a special effect.

I don't know whether his criticisms are valid -- it seems likely that he's generalizing from a few bad phrases to the entire literary genre. But as individual object lessons it's a wonderful article.

My silly little take is that when Lit-fic is good, it's amazing. When it's bad, it's amazingly bad.... Really not a so so lit-fic category,,, In My Most Humble And Limited Opinion.