Is there a 21st century Literary Movement?

How would you classify Grissom, Clancy, Rowling, King, Wolfe, Ludlum, Vonnegut, Jakes, and others whose works span the latter part of the 20th century and into the 21st?

When I was at uni, my tutors referred to the current trend as post postmodern.

*FYI, postmodern can be attributed to anything post-WWII.

I think all literary movements are created in the minds of critics. God writers just write. The public likes what they write, or not, and lamppost critics come in afterward and pretty much make up everything they say.

Jamesaritchie said:

I think all literary movements are created in the minds of critics. God writers just write.

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What's a "God writer"? Is it like an omniscient narrator?

...

More seriously, good writers are also influenced by other good writers, both in the writers of the previous generation they may have emulated while developing their own style, and in their contemporaries with whom they converse. It's the clusters in this network of influences that give rise to literary movements. They're not created by critics; they're simply observed by them.

If there is, I've not figured it out yet. But as some have already said, the labeling of such movements often happens after the fact. I have, however, noted the specific trend toward economical use of language. Fun article around that, called A Short Defense of Literary Excess by Ben Masters showed up in the NYT Opinionator last week. I'll put the link below if anyone's interested in checking it out.

A Short Defense of Literary Excess

Don't know if that trend constitutes a Movement, but it is certainly worth noting.

I'd point to the New Weird as one potential "movement." It's certainly a school.

nshadow said:

I would classify them as genre writers, with the exception of Vonnegut. True, literary movements are usually limited to literature, not to fantasy or thriller or mystery writers. So my question is therefore limited to literature, or literary fiction as some call it. Such movements throughout history usually span other art forms as well, sometimes it was the literature that influenced the other areas, and sometimes the reverse. Such movements include Romanticism, Surrealism, Realism, Transcendentalism, Symbolism, Harlem Renaissance, etc etc etc.

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And this attitude right here is why we still believe that genre writing is NOT valued in "higher education circuits", where people tend to reinforce each other's prejudices against "non-literary" (whatever the hell that means).

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=257041

nshadow said:

I would classify them as genre writers, with the exception of Vonnegut. True, literary movements are usually limited to literature, not to fantasy or thriller or mystery writers. So my question is therefore limited to literature, or literary fiction as some call it.

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Such a viewpoint presumes there's a difference between literature and genre.

As an exercise, describe how, exactly, you would define such a difference?

Hint: most (if not all) literary fiction belongs to a genre.

kuwisdelu said:

What's a "God writer"? Is it like an omniscient narrator?

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Good one, Kuwi.

nshadow said:

I would classify them as genre writers, with the exception of Vonnegut. True, literary movements are usually limited to literature, not to fantasy or thriller or mystery writers. So my question is therefore limited to literature, or literary fiction as some call it.

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I'm rolling my eyes dude.

"True literary movements are usually limited to literature, not to fantasy or thriller or mystery writers."

Really?

I think someone got stuck in their sophomore literature survey class and never moved past it.

This is an undergraduate non-professional view of literature and literary scholarship, and I grow tired of it. It's also less than appropriate on a forum where we have all kinds of writers.

Give me a canon novel and I'll give you a genre. Literary fiction is not a genre; it's a marketing category. Vonnegut writes SF, or spec fic if you must, and satire. Those are genres.

Richard White said:

And this attitude right here is why we still believe that genre writing is NOT valued in "higher education circuits", where people tend to reinforce each other's prejudices against "non-literary" (whatever the hell that means).]

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It's by gosh and golly valued by me. There's a reason Ph.D. qualifying exams on the American Novel include Atwood and Stephen King, and Miller's Canticle for Leibowitz.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to see Robert Parker's Looking for Rachel Wallace joining a required reading list for a novel qualifying exam; I notice many schools already have The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed and Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest.

Medievalist said:

It's by gosh and golly valued by me. There's a reason Ph.D. qualifying exams on the American Novel include Atwood and Stephen King, and Miller's Canticle for Leibowitz.

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Work by a Canadian (Atwood) counts as an American Novel? From a Canadian perspective, that seems strange...

nshadow, you're new here, so perhaps a bit of slack is in order (or perhaps not, as it behooves an adult to look before they leap in general, and AW's rules, including RYFW, are hardly hidden). That said, many of the Exalted Ones you cite were considered flashes in the pan, tripe-peddlers, etc. at various times and by various people. And King racked up a couple big ol' literary awards in the last decade. And all of that is still not as important as the simple fact a lot of this classification and cannonization is done by folks who are more worried about building a rampart to piss off of onto the unwashed masses below than about, oh, say, reality. Or, came about as these works withstood the test of time and failed to fade to obscurity under things newer. Hemingway and Kerouac may have wanted to write well, but neither said "The world is simply craves, nay, DEMANDS, a road book or swordfish story, which shall henceforth become the subject of thesis papers and cliffs notes study-guides."

"Classics" were almost all genre, before they had enough time and adoration to build a pedestal they could sit on. And for the "special" well, those authors all probably felt THEY were special, but as a group, at the time? Shit, a lot of them fucking LOATHED one another. Hemingway and Faulkner had less respect for one another than they probably did for genital warts.


Welcome to AW. We're a tough crowd, and you came in perhaps on the wrong foot, but if you eat your bit of crow and check the presumptions, you stand to learn a lot here, including the horrifying realization how little you perhaps knew when you came here.

nshadow said:

...... All I was stating was that such historical literary and artistic movements (romanticism, realism, modernism, etc.) grow out of literary fiction, that is, the books found in the "Literature" section of Barnes and Noble, and not in the Fantasy or Young Adult sections, and that therefore such authors and the works do not fall into the realm of my question. Again, my apologies for whatever offense my question has obviously caused.

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but you have it backwards....these books didn't pop up like toadstools, birthed in the "Literature" section at Barnes and Noble, they were just books. Books with staying power, and that got them placed in Literature, not the other way around. Had Hemingway's books been written now, they would be mainstream or contemporary; they wouldn't drop right into the "literary" shelf. Rebecca would have been mainstream with horror elements or horror. Grapes of Wrath, again, mainstream. Lord of the Flies would have probably gone into YA.

Just read an article on the New Yorker supposedly defending Genre Fiction (while defining it as inferior to Literary).

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo...t-theres-anything-wrong-with-it.html?mobify=0

I always thought the very separation of 'literature' in book stores to be rather silly and arbitrary. It's really no more a genre than YA is; it's a marketing term. As such, it's time and sales that will determine what the literary movement turned out to be.

nshadow said:

You are confusing these classic's popularity with the issue of their genre. I am not saying that genre books like Grisham's will not have lasting effect--they certainly will. Same with J.K. Rowling's and the others. But that does not mean they are the sort of books which beget international artistic movements. The writers of such movements--Hemingway for the Lost Generation, Kerouac for the Beats, etc.--do not write genre fiction. Same with all the other writers in the historical literary movements I named.

When Hemigway's fiction came out, no one was hustling about deciding what genre it fit in. No one was immediately sure his works would have lasting effects, granted, but everyone immediately recognized his efforts belonged in the world of literary fiction, not of fantasy or what have you.

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You're mistaking "contemporary" with "literary."

Literary fiction generally belongs to a genre.

On the Road is a roman a clef and travel fiction.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a war novel.

Etc.

Whether a novel is literary fiction or not has nothing to do with what genre it is.

nshadow said:

When Hemigway's fiction came out, no one was hustling about deciding what genre it fit in. No one was immediately sure his works would have lasting effects, granted, but everyone immediately recognized his efforts belonged in the world of literary fiction, not of fantasy or what have you.
umm, it had no fantastic elements that I'm aware of--nobody was debating if Bridges of Madison County or Bridgette Jones' Diary were fantasy either. But as mentioned, For Whom The Bell Tolls was a war novel. And would probably end up in "contemporary" or "mainstream" right now, as a new release. Old Man and The Sea would have been the same. They weren't shelved in "Literary" in the 50s, I suspect.

So please do not read into my comments that I am talking about what books will have lasting value. I am speaking specifically of literary and artistic movements. That is, a group of writers all writing with a new method, or who share a similar vision. My question was whether or not the works of the 21st century literary authors will be placed in one, or whether our centuries status as post-post modern will necessarily prevent such labeling.

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nshadow said:

Well, I think the reason "literature" is not classified and specifically labeled the way genre is, is because the "literary" novels are hard to classify, in that they span a wide range of plots and conflicts and types of characters. In the mystery genre, for instance, there's a common thread--there's a mystery that needs solved. And usually the protagonist or narrator is the one (detective, police officer, private eye) who sets out to solve the mystery.

To be honest, I did not know until just now seeing the reaction to my post that some people feel insecure about being genre writers. I see no reason why this should be the case, especially since these are the most widely known and best-selling authors working today.

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they don't. They find some of the comments about "literary" false and tiring. That's not a "who has a bigger dick" issue, it is a "asking if you walk to school or carry a lunch is a false dichotomy, and I have a problem with that" issue