Why Mainstream?

Valona said:

True literary fiction has no plot. It's just descriptions of some condition or happening. It goes nowhere, does nothing, other than inform. In short, as far as I'm concerned, it's a lovely essay.

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I was referring to the above when I said you were coming around.

And no offense taken! It's been an interesting discussion with views from across the spectrum.

That's the post I was referring to as well.

I hate to hear people dismiss writing that doesn't immediately fulfill their basic desire to have a story with all the strings wrapped up, or refer to novels that try to do more than basic plot as "boring." There's so much that can be appreciated when novels are trying to do more, and discovering those things makes for a much richer experience. I've read novels, like 100 Years of Solitude, that I didn't immediately love, but once I got a handle on the things that were really going on I was impressed and became a fan.

I'd still like to hear of some examples of novels from the mainstream side.

AprilBoo said:

I'd still like to hear of some examples of novels from the mainstream side.

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Oh, there are hundreds!
The Thorn Bords
The Far Pavillions
The Lovely Bones
Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood
are just a few that come imediately to mind, and those are just ones written by women.

"litereray" means basically "books that should be taken seriously" and unfortunately these days they are often unreadable by even intelligent people, such as Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. That was the beginning of it; after that, the critics desided that literary should somehow be "difficult", devoid of plot, "deep". They also decided that literary novelists should become experts at probing the depths of human insanity and evil, and anything that was in the least heart-warming or uplifting was by default frothy and un-serious. So it would be OK for a literary novel to go into the mind of a paedophile and describe all his actions in spine-chilling detail - this would be called "breaking sexual taboos", and deemed "courageous", and applauded, whereas anything concerning love, especially if it had a happy ending, was by default shallow and conventional.

It wasn't always like this; pre-Joyce books could be entertaining as well as well written with interesting characters and a story that kept you turning the pages, and that's how I feel a literary book OUGHT to be. An example is one I've just read: V S Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas. Naipaul has won the Nobel Prize for literature and therefore ther's no question as to his standing as a great writer of our time. Yet the above book is not high-brow; the writing swingls along easily, and it makes you laugh; the characters are well portrayed, and it has a story. You don't have to re-read every sentence to understand what is being said; he uses ordinary words and doesn't overburden every sentence with metaphors.

The latter is something contemporary authors often do, to show how clever they are, perhaps. To me, it always seems pretentious. And sometimes I read a book and gasp at the author's agility with words, but then I see there is very little behind them - what is he actually SAYING? Where's the story? If you find someone saying, "Oh it's beautifuly written but rather boring" you know something is wrong. I felt like that with Lahiri Jhumpa's The Namesake. It IS well written. But halfway through I realised it was just one very long character portrait, and I was bored stiff. I returned it to the library, unfinished. She is an excellent short story writer, and perhaps should stick with that.

I think a literary novel should make you feel. It should make you think about life, reflect on the meaning of love, betrayal, courage etc. It should keep you thinking about it long after you've turned the last page. It should engage you from start to finish. The writing should be so good it's invisible; you shouldn't have to keep saying, "oh, what a clever metaphor!" The characters should grab you and draw you into their souls; it should make you laugh and cry with them. A literary novel should have the power to break your heart, or make you believe in God if you don't. It should change your life in some way.

Unfortunately, these days literary fiction has come to mean fiction that is impossible to understand at first reading and too boring to finish unless you are a masochist.

Valona said:

I agree with AprilBoo that The Old Man and the Sea has a plot. Not much of one, as compared with most genre and mainstream plots, but it has one. I haven't read Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, so I can't comment on that one, but I did read The Sun Also Rises and had a difficult time finding anything that could be described as a plot. A series of happenings, yes. I never did figure out the point of the story.

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I love your comment on The Sun Also Rises! That's EXACTLY how I felt.

For Whom the Bell Tolls, on the other hand, very definitely has a plot, and a very strong one at that, AND it has one of the most moving love stories I have ever read. That was one of the books that tore my heart out; after I finished it I was crying non-stop for three days!

"litereray" means basically "books that should be taken seriously" and unfortunately these days they are often unreadable by even intelligent people, such as Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. That was the beginning of it; after that, the critics desided that literary should somehow be "difficult", devoid of plot, "deep". They also decided that literary novelists should become experts at probing the depths of human insanity and evil, and anything that was in the least heart-warming or uplifting was by default frothy and un-serious. So it would be OK for a literary novel to go into the mind of a paedophile and describe all his actions in spine-chilling detail - this would be called "breaking sexual taboos", and deemed "courageous", and applauded, whereas anything concerning love, especially if it had a happy ending, was by default shallow and conventional.

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This is exactly what I have been trying to say ISN'T true! Literary novels aren't so conventional. They also aren't "unreadable even by intelligent people." Unfortunately, too often people jump from challenging to "unreadable," rather than taking the time to understand what is happening in a novel. Ulysses is a challenge, it is not a beach-read novel, but it is certainly readable. And it has been studied since the day it was published.

We actually discussed Ulysses in a grad class I had recently, and we talked about Joyce's use of a broadsheet to explain some of the references and narrative techniques he was using in the book. One of the things Joyce did was use the color red to signify something evil. Everybody thought this was so cool and so clever when M. Night Shamalyan did it in the movie The Sixth Sense - you didn't notice it when you watched the movie in the theater, you had to rent the DVD and watch the "Making Of" documentary, but it was still such a great thing that he used this little trick. How come nobody thinks it's cool that Joyce did it? Why do tricks like that make novels "unreadable" and movies smart?

The Thorn Bords
The Far Pavillions
The Lovely Bones
Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood

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I haven't read the first two of these novels (I did see the movie Hitchcock made of the Thorn Birds though ).

I enjoyed The Lovely Bones quite a bit. However, I would not say it is a plot-heavy or even plot-driven book. It is more character driven, it is more about discovering and understanding human nature, than it is about a causal series of events.

The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood - this is a fairly plot-driven book and doesn't have a whole lot of groundbreaking character development. But wouldn't you say that this falls into the category of books that talk about harsh subjects? Alchoholic mothers abandoning their children? Domestic violence? These are the same types of subjects that literary fiction covers as well - does the fact that Ya Ya ends with a teary make-up session make it different?

I think a literary novel should make you feel. It should make you think about life, reflect on the meaning of love, betrayal, courage etc. It should keep you thinking about it long after you've turned the last page. It should engage you from start to finish. The writing should be so good it's invisible; you shouldn't have to keep saying, "oh, what a clever metaphor!" The characters should grab you and draw you into their souls; it should make you laugh and cry with them. A literary novel should have the power to break your heart, or make you believe in God if you don't. It should change your life in some way.

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I agree - I think most books should do this, not just literary novels. If you have a choice between a ham sandwich and steak, which one are you going to pick? Both will get you full, but why not have the best experience you can? Same with books. Any book you pick up will accomplish the reading task, you can get a plot or a character in nearly anything, but why not have the best reading experience you can? It's okay to be in the mood for a ham sandwich, and not want something so heavy all the time, but don't completely cut the steak from your diet.

(I skipped breakfast this morning - do the food metaphors give me away? )

AprilBoo said:

This is exactly what I have been trying to say ISN'T true! Literary novels aren't so conventional. They also aren't "unreadable even by intelligent people." Unfortunately, too often people jump from challenging to "unreadable," rather than taking the time to understand what is happening in a novel. Ulysses is a challenge, it is not a beach-read novel, but it is certainly readable. And it has been studied since the day it was published.

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i think you misundersood me - I was trying to say that the literary trend today is to make of literary fiction somethig totally difficult and above the heads of even well educated people - and if you don't "get" it you are somehow too thick - stupied. I see that as an Emperor's New Clothes syndrome, and don't think it is right - I was simply trying to pinpoint the reality of the book trade as it is developing - at least, that's how I see it. My own definition of literary is the last paragraph.

I think there are many readers who really only want a ham sandwich - and not even ham, but fake ham, and of white bread to boot. Lots of readers only want flaky frothy stuff, and there's a huge market for "light" fiction that doesn't requre much thought or much empathy.

For me, literary fiction is anything that goes beyond pure entertainment or distraction. I might read a chick lit book on the beach but I don't expect it to nourish me in any way.

The examples I gave of mainstream are just off th etop of my head - I am sure they could be put into other genres as well. And some genre books can be defined as literary. I find John LeCarre is definitely a literary writer, though he writes spy thrillers. They are just too wel written, the characterisation so well done, to be pure entertainment. They make you think.

I agree that Lovely Bones doesn't have much of a plot. I didn't like it, actually; a great beginning but then it just kind of petered out.

AprilBoo said:

We actually discussed Ulysses in a grad class I had recently, and we talked about Joyce's use of a broadsheet to explain some of the references and narrative techniques he was using in the book. One of the things Joyce did was use the color red to signify something evil. Everybody thought this was so cool and so clever when M. Night Shamalyan did it in the movie The Sixth Sense - you didn't notice it when you watched the movie in the theater, you had to rent the DVD and watch the "Making Of" documentary, but it was still such a great thing that he used this little trick. How come nobody thinks it's cool that Joyce did it? Why do tricks like that make novels "unreadable" and movies smart?

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I haven't read Ulysses and never will; I glanced at the first page and have read lots about it and I know without reading it that's it's something I'd loathe. SO I can't discuss it, I'm afraid! I don't like any book which has to be explained...

For Whom the Bell Tolls, on the other hand, very definitely has a plot, and a very strong one at that, AND it has one of the most moving love stories I have ever read. That was one of the books that tore my heart out; after I finished it I was crying non-stop for three days!

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Thanks aruna. After reading Hemingway's other books, I guess I was so disillusioned I couldn’t bring myself to read any more. Now that you’ve told me this, I just might give For Whom the Bell Tolls a chance.



I appreciate the comments you’ve made above. I think you’ve said what I was trying to say, only you said it much better.



As for a literary work that I loved, as a man I’m not ashamed to admit that I think Louisa May Alcott’s books and short stories are wonderful. I read Little Women several years ago and fell in love with each of Louisa’s characters. It has no or little plot to speak of, but I loved reading it anyway. I can honestly say it’s a literary piece (at least in my opinion) that was NOT boring, but most literary works seem to be boring, at least to me.

I hesitate to plunge back into this thread, but...aruna, you're committing an inductive fallacy here by saying that because ulysses and finnegan's wake are hard to read (finnegan's wake, definitely; ulysses -- just take some time with it) literary fiction is hard to read. That would be like me saying Lovely bones and Divine Secrets are maudlin, poorly written, melodramatic and cliched (all of which I felt they were) and saying mainstream novels by women are maudlin, poorly written, etc. Or even worse, all mainstream novels are maudlin, etc.

aruna said:

Oh, there are hundreds!

"litereray" means basically "books that should be taken seriously" and unfortunately these days they are often unreadable by even intelligent people, such as Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.

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First of all, Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are obviously not examples of lit. fiction from "these days." In fact, and I put this challenge out before, but I'd like you or anybody to give me ONE example of a literary novel published in the last ten years that "well-educated people" can't understand or is "impossible to read." For every one I can name a hundred where the opposite is true. For the trend is not, as you suggest, toward inscrutability. The high modernists are long gone, and the experimental fiction of Barthelme, Coover, etc. is history. Your Naipaul example is an obvious example of this. He would have a coronary if somebody suggested he wasn't "literary." Obviously not. And again, I can't think of a book in the last ten, fifteen years that fits your condemning analysis of the state of literary fiction.

I've often wondered why everybody had this notion the public doesn't want to be engaged with text -- I don't mean with the story, but actively THINKING when they read. Pynchon has sold tens of millions of books, indicating otherwise. And the greatest selling book of all time is not only a piece of literary fiction, but a post-modern one to boot -- The Bible.

That was the beginning of it; after that, the critics desided that literary should somehow be "difficult", devoid of plot, "deep". They also decided that literary novelists should become experts at probing the depths of human insanity and evil, and anything that was in the least heart-warming or uplifting was by default frothy and un-serious. So it would be OK for a literary novel to go into the mind of a paedophile and describe all his actions in spine-chilling detail - this would be called "breaking sexual taboos", and deemed "courageous", and applauded, whereas anything concerning love, especially if it had a happy ending, was by default shallow and conventional.

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Not exactly. The "critics" had less to do with it than a general movement tied up with history, social movements, physics, and a whole lot more. It's far too easy to blame "critics" or "academia" -- though they certainly feed the movement -- rather than seeing them as a manifestation of a larger movement. This is confusing cause and effect.

It wasn't always like this; pre-Joyce books could be entertaining as well as well written with interesting characters and a story that kept you turning the pages, and that's how I feel a literary book OUGHT to be. An example is one I've just read: V S Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas. Naipaul has won the Nobel Prize for literature and therefore ther's no question as to his standing as a great writer of our time. Yet the above book is not high-brow; the writing swingls along easily, and it makes you laugh; the characters are well portrayed, and it has a story.

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Again, like most literary novels published today, I'd argue. Although Naipaul would have a second coronary if you said his writing wasn't "high-brow." It certainly is.

You don't have to re-read every sentence to understand what is being said; he uses ordinary words and doesn't overburden every sentence with metaphors.

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This is purely a matter of personal taste. Many readers can read most books without having to re-read every sentence to understand what is being said. And some readers can't read any books without having to do so. It's not always the writer's fault. And a metaphor doesn't necessarily overburden a sentence, unless it is done badly. Personal aesthetics shouldn't really be a factor in this discussion.

The latter is something contemporary authors often do, to show how clever they are, perhaps. To me, it always seems pretentious. And sometimes I read a book and gasp at the author's agility with words, but then I see there is very little behind them - what is he actually SAYING?

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I'm sure there are many books that fit this description. These are bad books. And I'm sure many of them are actually saying something if people would take the time to engage with the text and think outside of the scope of the printed page. But to say this is the trend in literary fiction is not fair.

Where's the story? If you find someone saying, "Oh it's beautifuly written but rather boring" you know something is wrong.

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Agreed.

I felt like that with Lahiri Jhumpa's The Namesake. It IS well written.

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Disagreed. I thought the writing was mediocre, which added to its boringness.

I think a literary novel should make you feel. It should make you think about life, reflect on the meaning of love, betrayal, courage etc. It should keep you thinking about it long after you've turned the last page. It should engage you from start to finish.

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Any novel should do this.

The writing should be so good it's invisible; you shouldn't have to keep saying, "oh, what a clever metaphor!"

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Again a matter of personal taste. Many people would agree with you. I find excellent, draw-attention-to-itself writing, frequently leaving me breathless and my scalp prickling.

The characters should grab you and draw you into their souls; it should make you laugh and cry with them. A literary novel should have the power to break your heart, or make you believe in God if you don't. It should change your life in some way.

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Of course. I think this is what all literary writers aspire to. They're not trying to bore you, or show off their intelligence (well, maybe a couple are).

Unfortunately, these days literary fiction has come to mean fiction that is impossible to understand at first reading and too boring to finish unless you are a masochist.

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Again, are we living in the same "these days?" I'll give you the boring part. Yet there are boring novels in all genres. But it actually might be interesting if somebody tried to write a book that was impossible to understand at first reading, to be honest.

Anyway, I don't mean to sound harsh, but I do think literary fiction gets a bad rap -- there seems to be this general consensus that is not really based on anything other than a notion...

Greer said:

I hesitate to plunge back into this thread, but...aruna, you're committing an inductive fallacy here by saying that because ulysses and finnegan's wake are hard to read (finnegan's wake, definitely; ulysses -- just take some time with it) literary fiction is hard to read. That would be like me saying Lovely bones and Divine Secrets are maudlin, poorly written, melodramatic and cliched (all of which I felt they were) and saying mainstream novels by women are maudlin, poorly written, etc. Or even worse, all mainstream novels are maudlin, etc.

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Oh dear, I seem to be being misunderstood all over the place! All I wanted to say that acamdemia has tried (I can't tell if it has succeeded - that's a matter of opinion) the term "literary" and tried to redefine it. With my example of Naipaul I was saying that literary is far wider than that, and so it should be.
My ex-agent uses the word readable literary to distinguish it from unreadable. Unreadable fiction does exist and unfortunately is often praised to the skies becasue of its obscurity. I don't think we are really very far from each other.

As for The Namesake: after a while I too began to see the writing as fairly mediocre. So I agree with you. I meant "well written" inthe sense of "Not badly written". I would say the same of Brick Lane, another book of mediocre writing which, if you scrutinise it, actually has little to offer and no story - and yet counts as literary. The whole hype with Brick Lane was because it highlighted the domestic life of Muslims. If the same book had been written of an English farming family moving to London nobody would have read it. But with that book suddenly the intelligentsia "discovered" immigrants as real people; suddenly they thought they could "understand" Muslims. It was very politically correct. But if you ask people from Bangladesh or India what they thought of the book they'll say they were bored to tears.

I definitely agree with you about the multi-culturalism angle to this discussion. While the multicultural movement is certainly rooted in the right place - and underrepresented (non-white) and/or long-suppressed voices (colonialism) certainly deserve and need to be heard, not EVERY book by/about an underrepresented community needs to be published or praised. The start of the madness began either with Roy's "God of Small Things" (a book I enjoyed, btw) or, in america, when Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" won the Pulitzer Prize. A solid collection of mediocre to above average short stories. One or two good ones. But the Pulitzer? But suddenly Americans were rediscovering immigrant fiction. Now not a month goes by the New Yorker isn't publishing a story about immigrants. Some of it interesting and well-written, some of it I wouldn't expect to see in an undergrad lit. journal. I've heard the editor of a major American magazine claim the only unknown writers he was looking for were writers from the Caribbean or Africa. I also know of at least one writer who wrote a book and then changed all the names so they would sound non-american. And it got published. Of course, there are some great books about these groups we wouldn't have had twenty years ago -- Small Island by Andrea Levy, for example (I thought it was pretty great, anyway). So please don't read this as a screed attacking multiculturalism. I think it is and has been valuable.

I suppose this is the trend in all fiction, literary or otherwise. I can't tell you how many books I've reviewed in the last two years with some quasi-historical puzzle involved. And twenty-five years ago in lit-fiction, it was all minimalist, much of which wasn't very good either. And before that metafiction was all the rage, and before that...

Anyway, you're right, I took umbrage to your point about lit-fiction being "obscure" and "difficult to read." Certainly a lot of boring, not-well-written, cliched and reductionist stuff gets published in lit-fiction (as in all fiction) -- this I would define as "unreadable." But difficult? I still don't think so. Again, I think this is a notion that needs to be dispelled. Unless, of course, there are some concrete examples from the past ten years I am missing. If you offered some titles I'd be happy to check those books out.

Greer said:

Anyway, you're right, I took umbrage to your point about lit-fiction being "obscure" and "difficult to read." Certainly a lot of boring, not-well-written, cliched and reductionist stuff gets published in lit-fiction (as in all fiction) -- this I would define as "unreadable." But difficult? I still don't think so. Again, I think this is a notion that needs to be dispelled. Unless, of course, there are some concrete examples from the past ten years I am missing. If you offered some titles I'd be happy to check those books out.

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I was looking for my copy of "Palace of the Peacock" by Wilson Harris but I think I passed it on as unreadable... it was recommended to me as "a Work of Genius" by a writer friend. Wilson Harris is another Caribbean writer from my own country and so I thought I should read him. Already the prologue put me off. I had to read it the first sentence three times to understand what he was saying and I never got past the first page - I was hoping to quote it here!
But I think "difficult" may be the wrong word. Tedious is more like it. I sometimes feel that I have to read this book because it's supposed to be good - but the whole time I try to suppress my yawns - cant think of any titles right now; I usually forget them!

Ah, dig the trenches, get ready for a long campaign...

For every plotless literary work, someone else will come up with a well plotted alternative. For those who say genre fiction (and how wide do we cast the genre net? SF, fantasy, weterns, detective, thriller, chick-lit, lad-lit, shaving down each pigeonhole to the size of matchbox) is plot driven with little or no character development, same applies. Personally, I'd point you to the earlier works of JG Ballard, who wrote what can best be described as literary sf. Or Aldiss, who managed to combine strong progessive character development with experimental literary styles with plot.

It seems to be that any literary fiction that strives to transcend is shot down automatically as pretentious and unreadable. Some undoubtedly is, but the authors should be applauded for stepping outside of the box. if they didn't make the attempt, we'd all still be writing victorian melodramas.

I sometimes feel that I have to read this book because it's supposed to be good - but the whole time I try to suppress my yawns - cant think of any titles right now; I usually forget them!

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I second that emotion. I feel that way about many mainstream novels as well - the buzz gets so big, it's like, why am I the only one not reading this book? What am I missing? I almost bought a copy of The Traveler yesterday for that reason, even though that book doesn't sound interesting to me at all. I fought the urge though .