It seems to never be "pulp" type writing. Not usually adventure. maybe a romance or mystery story. Always (?) deep psychological insights?
H. G. Wells The Time Machine is considered literary science fiction due to the imaginative premise. The time machine in the context of the story represents a forward looking historical perspective. In one interpretation, the literary trope that encompases the story is the old adage those who don't know their history are destined to repeat it.
Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 is considered literary speculative fiction. Though it has one imaginative gadget and an imaginative social circumstance, it nonetheless has a literary trope or two that range across the story. The two most common interpretations are censorship results from ignorance and television destroys culture.
C. J. Cherryh's Cuckoo's Egg has yet to experience a scholarly interpretation; however, its literary trope is the familiar stranger raised in and by an alien and hostile society, a metaphor for countercultural and subcultural lifestyles.
Beyond the creative rhetorical schemes and tropes of literary fiction, it's the overarching literary trope that most distinguishes literary fiction from genre. On the other hand, in each mode of genre there are conventions of the form, whereas literary fiction has no similar constraints.
In genre, the common convention is how the imaginative premise correlates to the plot and the change or outcome occurring to the protagonist. Literary fiction lacking in an imaginative premise, the plot and change or outcome relate to the circumstances that the protagonist encounters internally as much as externally.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited August 03, 2008).]
"concerning the writing, study, or content of literature, especially of the kind valued for quality of form. "
How about that? I was very nearly correct.
Of course, that's just my opinion...
The self-proclaimed literati have long tried to say that the best genre works couldn't really be genre because by definition genre has to be mindless trash.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited August 04, 2008).]
I don't think there's a useful definition of what literature is. The OED says "written works, especially those regarded as having artistic merit" and defines "artistic" as "revealing creative skill". By that definition, a computer program written in the C programming language is literature!
There was a time when Wikipedia said there wasn't a universally accepted definition of literature. Now it doesn't. (What's the point of an encyclopedia that changes its mind?!) Today's edition does have a couple of definitions I like, however:
'The Muslim scholar and philosopher Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (702-765 AD) defined Literature as follows: "Literature is the garment which one puts on what he says or writes so that it may appear more attractive." ... Russian Formalist Roman Jakobson defines literature as "organized violence committed on ordinary speech" ' (I've ellipsised out the bit that wasn't grammatical--in an article on literature.)
More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature .
Keeping in mind the OED definition, I think SF demands extraordinary creative skill because one has to portray a strange world as well as plot and characters. For example, Shakespeare assumes we understand his world and its medieval history and doesn't bother describing it. If you ask a fan of literature how you're supposed to understand it, you'll be told to read English history. Herbert could not have done that for Dune, nor Tolkein for LOTR--although he did with the Silmarilion and what a tedious tome that was.
Until literati quit excluding the entire SF genre from their definitions of "literature" I don't think it's a useful fiction classification.
Cheers,
Pat
[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited August 04, 2008).]
[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited August 04, 2008).]
It was interesting, but I definitely would have preferred it as a straight science fiction without the literary elements. It seemed that too much of the story was missing. Don't get me wrong -- I like stories that can be enjoyed on many levels -- but I don't like the story itself to beon some kind of sublevel that I haev to hunt to detect. That has always been my impression of literary. I don't know if it's right or not.
And of course, there's forevera war between literary people and genre people, as if we have to take sides and draw battle lines.
Just kidding. There are many books that are considered literary that I enjoy. What I don't enjoy is the snooty attitude of the mainly academics who go over all superior on the subject. And I am not fond of the type of literary works which deliberately make themselves incomprehensible to readers who aren't "in the know" and hence not good enough to understand one's work--I always thought the poem "The Red Wheel Barrow" was a fine example of that kind of attitude. We mustn't allow the nasty hoi polloi to understand our precious work.
And the same attitude that looks at a fine example of science fiction of fantasy and says "that can't be fantasy because it's good." However, if there is one thing that irritates me beyond belief it is genre writers who try so hard to be literary that they lose the ability to tell a story--the very thing you were pointing out, Christine.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited August 04, 2008).]
Though many readers and reviewers find his rhetorical punctuation schemes, absent contraction apostrophes, absent dialogue quotations, and Faulkneresque stream-of-consciousness and profuse polysendetons inconsistent and confusing, they have a persuasive effect beyond their superficial appearance. They vary the pace of reading, slow for scenic landscapes and fast for action scenes.
I also think the absence of apostrophes and quote marks has a message. An apostrophe is commonly known as a punctuation mark; however, an apostrophe is also a narrative address to a usually absent person or usually personified thing rhetorically [Webster's]. The absence of apostrophes and quote marks suggests to me that McCarthy's stories directly address the reader as involved with but remote from the story, which I think is a successful narrative experiment with reader resonance and identification with a story.
I believe McCarthy seeks to deny the Cartesian philosphy of cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I exist) through rejecting the external system of existential experience and through discovering reality anew; therefore, reaffirms Cartesian concepts of self-existence. My own interpretation of Cartesianism is; reality is all that which continues to exist when belief in it ceases.
The Road specifically, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer for fiction, it's not easy to interpret, though McCarthy is considered by at least one scholar as a postmodern author. The self-aware artistry of the story revolves around the unnamed and unknowable. The man, the boy, the catastrophe that caused the dystopian breakdown of civilization, all are unnamed except for a sailboat that provides supplies and survival. For me, the encompassing analogy is how truly unknowable all things external are. Only the interiorness of self-identity and self-purpose can be known, though the exteriorization of self is at best flawed.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited August 04, 2008).]
I suppose one can extend the definition and say that literary fiction is what literary fiction writers write...
*****
I've sampled so-called "literary fiction" in the past and mostly found it of less worth than science fiction. (Not recently, though.) Truth is, science fiction writers and "literary" writers have different worldviews and different slants on literature.
There's some hope of a meeting of minds lately with the likes of Michael Chabon, but I think some will always argue that one or the other is a lower form...
quote:
"literary" and "good story" aren't exclusive. I think IB has it right, though. Appreciation for literary stuff is an acquired taste. People who've developed the palate for it pity those who haven't, and people who haven't think those who have are unbelievable pretentious snobs. And both sides are correct, by and large.
I am a great fan of Joyce's early work although not so much of his later, for instance.
There is a huge difference in good literary and the snobs who go on about how superior it is to everything else, spouting pretty much nonsense about it in the most pretentious terms possible. Believe me, having had to study under these people to get my degree caused me to have no patience with the elitism of them and their ilk (generally recent graduates who are good at regurgitating all that they've been told)--who you will find just about everywhere. *rolls eyes*
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited August 04, 2008).]
[This message has been edited by J (edited August 04, 2008).]
I remember talking to some friends (who were science fiction and fantasy writers, by the way), about a book I particularly enjoyed and being told that it was okay, "but it has no subtext." (I think that was a literary response.)
quote:
How 'bout the definition that science fiction is what science fiction writers write. By that, Fahrenheit 451 is science fiction, as Ray Bradbury is a science fiction writer.
The thing is, Robert Nowall, I was in a group once that had the chance to sit at Ray Bradbury's feet and chat with him, and I asked him if he considered himself a science fiction writer. His answer was "no."
Even in my first literature course in college, my initial response to literature demonstrated the classic knee-jerk freshman reaction, objection to and resistance to "art" appreciation. I dug in, mostly a result of that first professor's encouragement, and found a trove of beauty and meaning underneath the surface, some came from poetry study, other enlightenment came from studying classics. My appreciation came from reading close and considering how I emotionally responded to the story. The literary stuff that I found tedious before was no longer. In the subtext there's a trove of meaning.
quote:
I remember talking to some friends (who were science fiction and fantasy writers, by the way), about a book I particularly enjoyed and being told that it was okay, "but it has no subtext." (I think that was a literary response.)
I agree, subtext is a common hallmark of literary and mainstream fiction. It's not all that rare in genre either. I believe that subtext, the between-the-lines meaning, is near the surface. Oh, what a joy it is to grasp deeper meanings and see the full panoply of a story, writing or reading.
I've regularly delighted in seeing the so-called literati surreptiously reading and enjoying genre. In my experience, each has their own entertainment reading niche that they don't want their colleagues to know about.
The debate, globally and locally, over literary versus genre appreciation reminds me of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Emperor's New Clothes."
Agree with or disagree with the emperor? I choose to see him clothed in his nudity. Personally, I think people reveal more of their confidences in clothes than without.
Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken
taken it at its literal meaning means one thing from either of two different perspectives, taken at its figurative meaning it means something entirely different, synergistic, ironic even.
Emily Dickinson's "Tell it Slant"
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tell_all_the_Truth_but_tell_it_slant_%E2%80%94
is another of my favorite poems that I think resonates with the dilemmas of writing fiction. Popular appeal or artistic appeal? Why not both and why not let the audience decide? Writers don't get to decide. The audience does, will, regardless.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited August 04, 2008).]
quote:
The thing is, Robert Nowall, I was in a group once that had the chance to sit at Ray Bradbury's feet and chat with him, and I asked him if he considered himself a science fiction writer. His answer was "no."
Did you get a chance to ask him why he thought that?
Personally, I think once written the story speaks for itself. If Tolkein had insisted that he was not a fantasy writer, would his works have been any less of fantasy?
Heinlein and Asimov did the same while remaining science fiction writers...
quote:
In 1953 I wrote an article for The Nation defending my work as a science-fiction writer, even though that label only applied to perhaps one third of my output each year.
Maybe he's more than an SF writer?
Cheers,
Pat
Kurt Vonnegut never considered himself a science fiction writer, and Margaret Atwood was surprised when her book, A HANDMAID'S TALE, was on the Nebula ballot because she didn't consider it a science fiction work.
I don't think Michael Crichton considers himself a science fiction writer either. (And, in a way, he's right, because he doesn't write for science fiction readers, he writes for mainstream readers.)
What someone writes may qualify as science fiction by content, but it may not qualify by accessibility (as in the case of Crichton's work). Which could get us into a whole discussion of protocols (something some people consider to be the real way to distinguish between literary and genre fiction).
So far, the defining aspects of the "literary" genre seem to be present in many of my favorite genre books -- a subtext, a theme, foreshadowing, symbolism, etc. I used to think that stuff was crap in English classes but as I learned more about the craft of writing and learned more about what makes a story good, I came to appreciate those devices and the meaning they could portray.
The other thing I learned, though, which would make me an outcast in literary circles (as if my decision to write science fiction and fantasy wasn't enough), is that it is ok for different readers to come away with different meanings. This is the key that the English teachers missed, IMO. It is ok for me to read something and never look past the surface, or to look past the surface and find something completely different from another reader and from the author.
extrinsic: I didn't get the whole unknown exterior from the book. As a matter of fact, I always felt that the main character knew more than he was sharing with us and that annoyed me a little. I did decide, grudgingly, by the end of the book that the larger context probably didn't matter, but I never felt it was unknowable. The only thing I really got out of the book was a sense of utter hopelessness and despair. It was pretty depressing, really. I closed the book, let it sink in for a few minutes, then said, "Life sucks and then you die."
quote:
The other thing I learned, though, which would make me an outcast in literary circles (as if my decision to write science fiction and fantasy wasn't enough), is that it is ok for different readers to come away with different meanings.
Wow! What if that's all there is to it?
This reminds me of a story Asimov told (I think it was in one of his autobiographies, but it may have been somewhere else) of hearing that someone was going to be discussing his short story, "Nightfall." He decided to attend because he was curious to see what the speaker would say, and he was surprised to hear about all kinds of things that were alleged to be in the story that he knew nothing about.
Afterwards, he went up to the speaker and introduced himself and said he really didn't think any of that was in the story. He was told, quite emphatically, that the author does not have a monopoly on the interpretation of his own story.
What a few of the "literati" may have misunderstood, as Christine points out, is that just as the author doesn't have an interpretation monopoly, neither does any given academic, regardless of whether or not said academic earned a PhD by his or her interpretation of someone else's work.
A fourth grade student fan of George Orwell's Animal Farm is not likely to perceive the story as an allegorical fable satirizing the indifferent tyranny of a socialist mega-society, the way a dedicated student of recent Russian history might. No individual art appreciator or literature reader is intrinsically superior to another. Different meanings speak to different individuals with differing life experiences and cause differing emotional responses.
The oft exalted, lauded, or denigrated liberal arts academics are human beings with emotions and emotional responses to art, as much emotional beings as the rest of the teeming mass of humanity at whatever station or societal significance. Interpreting what reaction any given academic or literature program or writing program's attitude toward genre is is moot.
I haven't met an academic that doesn't read in genre, openly or secretly. By the same token, I believe that genre is largely overlooked in literary analysis because academics aren't trained in interpreting it and have no compelling reason to make the effort and every reason not to. Deconstructing popular literature would ruin its entertainment value.
One literature professor I've met, one way out in the La-La Land of cloistered academia with all the esoterica and mind-muddling confusion of an English Phd supporting him, said of genre, science fiction and fantasy particularly, I read it because I don't have to work at it to enjoy it. One reader's candyfloss is another's meat and potatoes.
quote:
I don't think Michael Crichton considers himself a science fiction writer either. (And, in a way, he's right, because he doesn't write for science fiction readers, he writes for mainstream readers.)
Ooh that's really interesting. I've never thought about if from a bottom-up viewpoint before. I just thought of genres classes like color classes, these books are red, these are blue, and these are green. But books are mixes of colors, and people who tend to prefer green books are buying your book, even though it looks mostly blue, suddenly we realize that genres are an incredibly imperfect mechanism for classifying stories, which are all--basically--independent, alone in in their own respective categories.
I agree with with Christine's ideas. Storytelling is storytelling and "literary" generally is just whatever the elite decide is sufficiently elite for them, basically. All the supposed aspects of "literary" literature are present as much, or some times more in "genre" fiction.
As to Ray Bradbury as a sci fi writer...most of what I've read indicates he doesnt consider himself primarily a sci fi writer. In one thing or other I read him to say that Farenheit 451 was his only real sci fi book, and that the Martian Chronicles is more Greek Myth than sci fi. I agree...I'd consider him more a Fantasy/Horror writer, in many ways.
There's a certain tendency to group some people as one thing or another. Take, oh, country music, for instance. You'd say that Jimmie Rogers and the Carter Family were country...but the likes of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, operating at the same time, are not considered so. (The name wasn't coined at their time, the thirties and early forties; it came along shortly after WWII.)
Later on, musicians like Jim Croce or Jimmy Buffett somehow eluded the "country" label, though their work seemed similar in many ways to what was put out by "country" at the time.
So certain writers eluded the "science fiction" label, or struggled mightly (or weakly) to elude it, like Michael Crichton or Kurt Vonnegut or Robin Cook or William Golding...while others eagerly embraced the identity. About the only difference that matters is that you find their books in different sections of the bookstore...
[edited to rewrite a really bad sentence.]
[This message has been edited by Robert Nowall (edited August 05, 2008).]
Farenheit 451 is.
The Martian Chronicles (aside from really being a collection of stories, not a novel) can be considered science fiction, although definitely not hard SF.
He has other short stories that deal with space travel, or are set in the future, but for the most part its window dressing.
Something Wicked This Way Comes is fantasy/horror. So are most of the stories in The October Country and A Medicine for Melancholy. He also writes a lot of stuff with minimal "speculative" elements of any kind.
Of course, likewise, I dont consider a lot of what Stephen King writes to be horror, or at least not purely horror. And the same with Lovecraft.
And thats why, to me, concepts of genre are of very limited usefulness.
Many of these authors don't reveal the story solely in a chronological fashion. Detail is progressively given to the reader. Happenings from earlier in the novel that weren't clear become apparent in later pages.
I know this is true in a lot of fiction, but it seemed to be more prevalent in the contemporary works I recently finished.
p.s. I have a sneaking suspicion that many literary critics choose to praise the works that Harold Bloom deems as great. i'm no english major, so it's only a suspicion.
And it is interesting, to be sure. But I'm not sure that it really matters. Why do you (Christine or anyone else in the discussion) want to know whether something is literary? If it's to fit into a particular market, then I think it's more important to know that market than some "industry standard" definition of "literary" -- and any other reason is, it seems to me, academic.
My recent experience as a publisher (or at least playing one on TV) gives me a couple of data points that back me up, at least for short fiction. Sorry for pointing you at my own site so much, but it's relevant, I promise.
I interviewed Bruce Holland Rogers for our February issue. It's worth reading the whole thing, but one quote that stands out is this:
quote:
I had one story ["The Dead Boy At Your Window"] that was published in The North American Review, reprinted in Realms of Fantasy, nominated for awards as horror, fantasy, and literary fiction (it won two of these) and subsequently published in translation variably as genre fiction or literary fiction.
Then recently I accepted a story Jennifer Tatroe. When she blogged about the acceptance, she said, "I’ve enjoyed every single story they’ve published, and given that they lean towards speculative fiction (and I don’t), that’s really saying something." The story is called "Gone and it starts like this:
quote:Pretty funny, right? The woman who "doesn't lean towards speculative fiction" gets accepted at a magazine -- one that publishes literary fiction -- with a story in which all of the MC's goods mysteriously disappear.
Things started disappearing on a Thursday. At first, it was only food. Angela left three cookies on a plate in the kitchen, but when she turned around, there were only two. She set a glass of soda on the coffee table, but when she left the room and came back, it was gone. She had no roommates, no friends to speak of, no pets—there was no one to blame, so she chalked it up to her own absentmindedness.
I also had the privilege of publishing a story by Bruce McAllister in May. He told me that he sometimes writes one story but submits it to literary and genre markets, and makes "minor" changes to suit each market. The interesting thing is that he doesn't change any of the stuff discussed on this thread. In one case, the main character saw an object over the water, and when it went to a fantasy market it was an angel, and when it went to a literary market it was a heron. Everything else was essentially the same.
Is Kafka's Metamorphosis literary or speculative? More importantly, should you care?
If you're asking me (and I acknowledge that noone here has done any such thing ), I'd say that you should just write stories, and then find markets that might publish them. Don't worry about the classification unless you really have to. Even with longer forms (and I admit here that I'm out of my depth), finding an agent who will help you get your stuff published doesn't necessarily mean finding a "genre agent" or a "literary agent" -- it means finding an agent who has published books like yours before. Saying "this is like that blockbuster you made a mint on" is going to be a lot more compelling than "this is a science fiction novel".
I'd close with "That's my two cents," but it's clearly more than just two. Reminds me of when Daffy Duck (as Robin Hood) wielded his quarterstaff against Porky Pig (as Friar Tuck) with the aside, "Actually, it's a buck-and-a-quarter quarterstaff, but I'm not going to tell him that."
[This message has been edited by oliverhouse (edited August 05, 2008).]
I think classifications--literature and genres--are useful, despite what I said earlier, because they help bookshops to categorise stuff, making it easier for readers to find what they like.
Of course there will always be material that doesn't quite fit. "The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger is either science fiction (because in accord with Campbell's definition of SF, if you take the time travel out, the story collapses) or it's romance, or it's literature because of its texture and characterisation. I found it in the fiction shelves, not the SF section, and I suspect that's right because it probably appeals more to readers of general fiction than SF.
I think the reason "literature" matters to us as aspiring writers is that, while that it seems often to be an elite club, there's a feeling that amongst the pretentious nonsense there might be some nuggets of gold, useful to writers of F&SF.
For me, "literature" is about strong characterisation, engaging exposition, several layers and textures, delight and skill in written language itself, and allusions to other works, to history, even to science. The result is total immersion for the reader, a deep feeling of being there, understanding the characters to the point of empathy with them.
There's an element, too, of making the reader work for the reward of a satisfying ending. By assuming the reader is intelligent and not spelling out the details, the writer leaves room for the reader's own imagination, encouraging her to explore the world the story has constructed in the reader's mind, and so add further layers of meaning to the story.
I think all these things make literature the art that extrinsic claims and, if that's what literature is, then there's no reason SF can't be literature too.
Perhaps "literature" is not a classification, but the artistic end of a grading scale--a grading scale that is wildly subjective.
I'd offer China Mieville, James Blish, Brian Aldiss, Robert Heinlein and Ursula K Le Guin as just a few examples of writers of "literature" in F&SF.
Cheers,
Pat
I don't think most "new" literary writing is snobby and distant. I think that it learned its lessons from the 1910s to 1950s. Well, the readers have. Not sure that the Board has... For example, the Modern Library published two lists; the first was what the Board thought were the best novels of the 20th century, and the second was what the Readers though were the best.
Let's just say that there weren't many of the same books there... http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html
I can say, with some assertion, that Ulysses is NOT the best book of the last century. And most people look at it and agree that if "that" is literary, then YUCK.
But if you look at literature that isn't just for the artistic show of it, or the ego trip of self preening (Joyce for the former, Hunter S. Thompson for the latter), then you can find some really good stuff. For example, I think that John Irving is the most popular and famous literary writer of the last 30 years. Also, Tom Robbins, who is, in my opinion, the best cross-over (literary and sci-fi) writer of the last 30 years.
I would also recommend John Wain (English writer) and R.F. Delderfield (English Writer) as amazing literary writers of the 20th century. They were both with Tolkien and Lewis at Oxford college in the 40s, 50s and 60s, and were members of or associated with the Inklings. Excellent work. I would highly recommend Wain's "A Winter in the Hills," and Delderfield's "To Serve Them all My Days."
Mostly, I think that true modern "literary" equals good quality "characterization" for me. I think that literary forgoes other aspects that make it "genre." There are no new cultures to explore, there are no sword fights to follow, and there are no aliens to rebuff. There is just the exploration of a group of characters that are set in the current world.
For modern literary stuff, try "The Threepenny Review." I would say that the majority of the work there is not only literary, but also very approachable. And... they pay $400 per short story and $200 per poem.
Here's a great poem at Threepenny: http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/addonizio_su07.html
And an excellent short story from there: http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/berry_sp08.html
And, as far as I'm concerned, here's something less that a year old that's the perfect merger between Sci-Fi/Fantasy and literary, which appeared at Clarkesworld three issues ago. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/valente_05_08/
Heck, I might even plug my own literary work here. The following are things I've published on literary sites, and I think they are very approachable to any reader.
http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/search?q=Thane+Thompson
http://www.thewriterseye.com/thewriterseye003marapr2008/thewriterseye_poetry_003_5.html
I don't think that literary is "hard" or "unapproachable." Its just that modern readers need to throw off their left-over assumptions that everything "literary" is going to read like James Joyce.
Happy reading!!
quote:I don't think so, although I see that I didn't express myself clearly enough. He was tweaking for specific markets, and the literary ones tended to lean more towards herons and away from angels. But I can find you literary stories of angels, so that's not a defining point for "literary fiction," either. The market matters much more than the label.
Good question, oliverhouse--which you answered to some extent with your mention of Bruce McAllister's process of tweaking a story for different markets. Without defining them, he wouldn't be able to do it.
In other words, when considering whether to send a story to a particular market, I don't think it matters whether that market is a "literary" market or a "genre" market so much as whether they publish the kind of story you just wrote, and what kinds of alterations might make it fit better there. "There," note, not "in their genre."
Cheers,
Pat
This includes Isaac Asimov (science writer), Arthur C. Clarke (ditto), L. Sprague de Camp (historical novels and non-fiction), Leigh Brackett (screenplays), Robert Silverberg (a lotta other things, though often under pseudonyms), Theodore Sturgeon (some of whose writing is unclassifiable), and who knows how many others.
This would exclude a bunch sometimes classified with the science fiction writers, like J. R. R. Tolkien (fantasy), H. P. Lovecraft (horror and fantasy), Robert E. Howard (fantasy and a bunch of other stuff), John Jakes (started out in SF but moved into popular historical novels), Richard McKenna (the same), Kurt Vonnegut (full-fledged literary giant who's worked with SF "tropes"), and Michael Chabon (the same).
*****
I'll make mention that there's a substantial divide within the literary establishment, basically about what subject matter is worth writing about, sort-of between the James Joyce side of it and the J. R. R. Tolkien side. (If I had the appropriate reference book before me, one of Tom Shippey's books on Tolkien, I could refresh my memory and phrase this better.)
Those who like and appreciate science fiction tend to embrace the Tolkien side and reject the Joyce side. There's more to it than that, but my memory fails me...
Joyce is certainly an example of a literary writer and one who is read and studied on every university campus in most of the world. Some of his works are more accessible than others. Ulysses isn't the hardest read ever although it's getting up there.
For people interested in this debate, I suggest reading A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose by B. R. Myers.
My own personal viewpoint is that there is work considered literary that is worth reading. It's the pretentiousness I object to, not all of the work itself. Some examples:
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited August 06, 2008).]
quote:
I think classifications--literature and genres--are useful, despite what I said earlier, because they help bookshops to categorise stuff, making it easier for readers to find what they like.
I submit that we need to remember that we may be talking about two different ways to divide up fiction.
Genre is not exactly the same as "marketing category" even though it's often treated that way.
Literary fiction is one genre, and science fiction is another.
Literary fiction is not usually considered a marketing category (or a section of the bookstore) the way science fiction is.
Genres have what are often called "protocols," which might be defined a name for the way a reader approaches a particular genre. OSC talks about this a little in his HOW TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY when he explains that writers have to be very careful with metaphors.
In mainstream fiction, when you say, "the baggage train snaked its way across the tarmac," you are using the snake metaphor to create an image in readers' minds about how the baggage train zigged and zagged as it went along.
If you use that exact phrase in science fiction or fantasy, you may be actually describing a snake with baggage on it. Metaphors don't tend to work very well in science fiction and fantasy at times:
quote:
As the family sat at breakfast, the morning sun came in the window.
So while marketing categories are one way to divide up fiction, genre is another, and I submit that one way genre may be divided up is by the protocols, the way readers approach the different kinds of stories and what they expect from the experience of reading them.
Once you're into the piece and the reader knows the world, they will know whether there might be a snake carrying baggage and whether there are trains. If there are trains but no baggage carrying snakes, they won't be confused by the metaphor.
All the same literary devices that are used in the so-called literary fiction are used in good genre fiction. It's whether it has speculative features, not whether it has metaphors, that makes it speculative.
Edit: Robert, my memory (possibly defective) is that Bradbury considered "The Next In Line" to be horror and he probaby wrote more horror than he did science fiction.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited August 06, 2008).]
On the usage of tropes (Trope: An artful deviation from the ordinary or principal signification of a word. Silva Rhetoricae http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm ), literary fiction explores the abstractions of the existential human condition through abstract analagous representations. To paraphrase Shakespeare, My love is a red rose, is a metaphor, or more precisely, an abstract comparison based upon a conventional symbolism recognized by a global consensus. The white hat/black hat, good/evil symbolism of early era Western screenplays is another example of symbolism adopted by consensus, albeit a metaphor slightly more literal in meaning than a red rose.
Genre and mainstream fiction avoid subjective abstractions of rhetoric, in which tropes generally have unequivocal significance in literal meanings, not just metaphors, but similes and synecdoche and metonymy and personification, references to one thing as another. As well as wordplay and puns: antanaclasis, paronomasia, syleppsis, and onomatopeia; substitutions: antithermia, and periphrasis; overstatement and understatement: hyperbole, auxesis, litotes, and meiosis; and semantic inversions: rhetorical question, irony, oxymoron, and paradox.
Surprisingly, most of the more esoteric trope species are invisible in writing and reading and far more common than might be expected. Naming a character Big Red for his red hair is a form of metonymy. The figurative expression all hands on deck is a synecdoche, where a part of a whole is represented by naming one of its parts, the hands. Personification is a mainstay of fantasy, without which the fable and fairytale story modes would be hollow.
Onomatopoeia, words whose sounds correspond with their semantic value: the bone snapped. Paradox, an apparently contradictory statement that contains a measure of truth: "Whosoever loses his life shall find it." Silva Rhetoricae example.
Targeting an audience's abstract cognitive recognition threshold might be considered pretentious by an untargeted audience; however, if only one reader other than the writer's kith and kine and the writer consider a story a work of art, that's what it is. Any disapproving responses are detractive from the art and not contributing to the conversation created by the artistic invention. Is it a pretentious, condescending, and patronizing authorial attitude? Perhaps, but art is as the appreciator(s) experiences it.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited August 06, 2008).]
Yes, Shakespeare sometimes used both simile and metaphor which I won't insult anyone by defining. Both genre and literary writers use them as well. I've already said my two coppers on the sin of pretentiousness among the literati who are so scornful of the hoi polloi who write and read genre. I have nothing to add to that subject.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited August 06, 2008).]
Now as to literary specifically. My definition of Literary is stories written to provoke deep thought. Of course that doesn't exclude any other type of literature so my definition is incomplete. But done well these can be fantastic. Sadly what I consider well done is not shared by the Literati. (which is a name I apply to everyone who sneers at someone who doesn't accept their view of literature.) What I don't like is the glorification of obscurity. If you have to read something four times to figure out what it's saying it's too obscure. That doesn't discount reading something four times and each time taking more from it. I'm still taking things out of Fahrenheit 451 each time I read it (which is pretty often.) I think perhaps that those books that are so obscure appeal to close readers because you have to read so closely to get it. It forces them to.
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My favorite Ray Bradbury story by far is "The Next In Line"...which is clearly not science fiction no matter how it's published...I'd group Bradbury as a science fiction writer who wrote other things besides.
I'd classify him as a fantasy/unclassifiable writer, who wrote all sorts of things, including a little science fiction.
To me, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke are science fiction writers. And Frank Herbert is mostly a science fiction writer. But even most of Bradbury's stuff thats in the future or has space travel isnt really styled like science fiction, and the science elements are almost 100% window dressing.
Of course, unlike a lot of book stores, I treat science fiction and fantasy as seperate. Although, especially in movies and television, theres a lot of stuff that looks sci fi, but feels and basically is fantasy. Like Star Wars.
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Genre is not exactly the same as "marketing category" even though it's often treated that way.
I think the only remotely useful way the concept of "genre" exists is as a marketing catagory. As I mentioned previously, "genre" is, to me, a mostly useless concept because no one can agree on what works are in what genres, what the criteria are for different genres, or even what the criteria are for something to BE a genre. So in the end, the only real practical use of genre lies in knowing what bookstore shelf to find it on, or to some extent, for us writer types, to help determine which markets to send a story too.
But even those things get very, very blurry.
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In mainstream fiction, when you say, "the baggage train snaked its way across the tarmac," you are using the snake metaphor to create an image in readers' minds about how the baggage train zigged and zagged as it went along.If you use that exact phrase in science fiction or fantasy, you may be actually describing a snake with baggage on it. Metaphors don't tend to work very well in science fiction and fantasy at times:
If you say the baggage TRAIN everyone is going to know your talking about a train. I understand what you mean, but I dont think its that big a deal.
Genres are supposed to have "protocols" but rarely can anyone agree on what they are. Especially when you get into all the sub genres.
Writing has only made me even more dismissive of genres as much of what I write really doesnt fit into any of the existing genres or sub genres, except that broadly pretty much everything I write can be called "fantasy." But only really because it all contains magical/supernatural/mystical elements.
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But even most of Bradbury's stuff thats in the future or has space travel isnt really styled like science fiction, and the science elements are almost 100% window dressing.
There is only one way science fiction can be styled? Since when?
I suggest you don't tell Elizabeth Moon that who styles her fantasy any darn way she pleases from Remnant Population to Vatta's War to Speed of Dark and none of those has any resemblence to the others in style. (Edit: Speed has not a single space ship or alien anywhere in it. It centers around a character and characterization. According to you, I take it that means it's not science fiction which would surprise her and the people who nominated and voted for it for the Nebula.)
Science fiction doesn't have to be about space ships to be science fiction. And mostly Bradbury, if you read his writing about his own writing, classified most of his own as horror.
Shocking. 
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited August 07, 2008).]
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my hackles really get raised when people say this or that book isn't literature. It may not be good literature but it is literature. Art is another word that is misused so much, every creative work is art.
I quite agree. It occurs to me that the art establishment tends towards being inclusive, whereas the literature establishment has that annoying exclusiveness.
The (visual) art world accepts anything from Canaletto and Bruegel, through Magritte and Dahli, to Andy Warhol and beyond--the classicists through to today's painters. Photography--perhaps the visual art equivalent of mass-production paperbacks--also is accepted.
The literature world isn't nearly so eclectic but, since art is in the eye of the beholder, it would surely be richer if it were as inclusive as the visual arts.
Pat
If there is just one true and correct meaning for a work, or whether it's open to interpretation, depends on the work itself. Thus, a person can't be a deconstructionist or a modernist, they're philosophical attitudes one might take--or not.
Nor can one even evaluate some works in such a fashion, because they have several layers. Take Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love". At one level it's a story of one man's rather long life. At another level it's a story of how our human race might evolve if we get space flight and control over genetics. Those meanings are clear and I doubt Heinlein meant otherwise. But did he think the free sex and polyamorous families he described were a good idea? I don't know, and feel that that aspect--as well as the ethical concern that genetic control raises--was left for the reader to decide.
For "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" I'm a 'modernist' while for "Time Enough for Love" I'm 'modernist' for a couple of layers, and 'deconstructionist' for its moral and ethical aspects. Not that it matters.
More than that, I'm like Zero, except not quite. I'm a TaleSpinner, a category that contains just one individual.
Pat
[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited August 07, 2008).]
[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited August 07, 2008).]
[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited August 07, 2008).]
*****
I've just thought of another definition. "Literature" is what literary critics say it is. "Trash" is what literary critics say is not "literature."
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More than that, I'm like Zero, except not quite. I'm a TaleSpinner, a category that contains just one individual.
Aww but Zeroist sounds so cool, like an exotic fantasy cult that secretly controls the world... ooh sounds like a story.
Also, Talespinner, I've always been meaning to ask you about your name. I'm sure it means "A spinner of tales," but whenever I read it I think of a plane going into a tailspin, spiralling out of control. So I imagine you wearing the same pilot garb Snoopy. Also, it makes me think of the old Disney show [u]Talespin.[/u] Have you ever noticed any of these similarities before?
If I wrote a story that worked, I spun a tale. If I failed, I went into a tailspin and didn't recover.
Cheers,
Pat
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There is only one way science fiction can be styled? Since when?
Sigh. I didn't say that. Perhaps "styled" wasnt the best word. Of course there are many styles of sci fi, and some of what Bradbury writes is sci fi. But, just as you say that a piece doesnt have to be about spaceships to be sci fi, I also think that in some cases, a piece can be about spaceships, but not really be sci fi...at least not to any greater extent than having spaceships, or whatever.
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According to you, I take it that means it's not science fiction which would surprise her and the people who nominated and voted for it for the Nebula
According to me, genre labels only have limited, very broad meaning. calling something "sci fi" will give people a general idea of the content, and will usually suggest certain stylstic and/or conceptual traits, but theres certainly a wide range. I'm not familiar with the book you mention, but if it includes some sort of aspect of whats considered science fiction...mainly, having something to do with science or technology and/or being set in the future...then yeah, it can be considered sci fi.
But mainly what I'm talking about is the accuracy of classifying Ray Bradbury as a "science fiction writer" since...
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And mostly Bradbury, if you read his writing about his own writing, classified most of his own as horror.
Exactly. And as I said in an earlier post, I see Bradbury as primarily a Fantasy/Horror writer. I just object slightly (as he has) to his being classified as entirely, or even primarily, a sci fi writer. Because most of what he writes isnt sci fi at all, and even some of the stuff that could be called that, wouldnt fit into many peoples definitions of it.
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There is an unspoken philosophical disagreement in the background here that fascinates me. Most of you are deconstructionist (the only true meaning of a work is that imposed on it be the reader), some of you are modernists (the true and correct meaning of a work is that intended by the author, and the reader's interpretation can, accordingly, be right or wrong). There's no seeing eye-to-eye between those mutually exclusive positions, but it's fun to watch everyone try.
I disagree. Generally, both those viewpoints can be, and frequently are, applied to any given work. Some are one way, some the other, and some both.
My personal stance is that, in the end, each piece must be evaulated/understood individually. Not by some monolythic system.
Upton Sinclair is often quoted as saying "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident, I hit the stomach." He meant to expose the widespread corruption and poor treatment of workers in the meatpacking industry. The Jungle is a noteworthy example of a story that didn't go over with the audience the way the author intended.
The one area I think that Sinclair underestimated is how his detailed revelation of unsanitary food handling practices emotionally impacted the public. If, if, he'd focused more on the tragedy of the working people and left the meat handling aspects in the background, I think he'd have been more on target, though the novel might have been less successful. It barely made it into print as it was, receiving five rejections after serialization in The Appeal to Reason, a left-wing alternative newspaper that endorsed the Socialist Party of America.
I really think that is all that J really meant.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited August 09, 2008).]
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Isn't there a camp of people called Zeroists who believe that art is truest as intended by the originator, but is also true and valid when interpreted another way?
There are lots of camps, Zero, and everyone can create their own, if they like.
I consider myself a member of a camp that is based on Heraclitus' philosophy that no one can step into the same river twice because it's different (different water, different shape because of the water, etc) every time.
I think that every time a story is read, there is a collaboration between the author and the reader, and because every reader is different, and even the same reader is different the next time that reader reads the story, a different collaboration happens.
So every time a story is read, it's a different story, and there's a different interpretation, a different experience, regardless of what the author may have intended.
And I begin to wonder if there is any way to obtain any kind of consensus.
"Literati" have their own definitions, people who are more open to all kinds of literature have other definitions, and those who feel excluded by the "literati" have their own definitions as well.
<sigh!>
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Upton Sinclair is often quoted as saying "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident, I hit the stomach."
I had a teacher once who did an example of a good book report on the Jungle. He sat down read a few pages then threw up in the garbage can. Don't you just love method actors.
Anyways the "Camp" I'm in would be Cambellian. I never read a story without considering how Joseph Cambell's Hero's Journey applies to it. Of course if some Zeroist Missionaries came to my door I'd hear their message.
On occasion I have attended job interviews for new professors in Arts and Humanities. To me, the conversations used to weed out the weaker literature professors were incomprehensible. Thus I propose this definition:
If Doc Brown can understand it, it ain't literature.
The Second Person: A Point of View?
The Function of the Second-Person Pronoun in Narrative Prose Fiction.
Dennis Schofield
December 1998
DEAKIN UNIVERSITY
Geelong, Australia
http://members.westnet.com.au/emmas/2p/index2.htm
I'm inclined to reject "deconstructionist" thought on just about anything, not just literature, though literature in particular. Storytelling is art and craft, not a Rorshach inkblot test...
If this piece is speculative at all it will only be because the girls are all strange and mystical,....
There are six sisters in a modern setting in the story, all strange and mystical, but closer to the 'women of the Bible' sense than to the usual fantasy sense. There is barely a plot, if any. (That alone may answer my question...it's literary. )
Speculative? WWWS? (What would WotF say?)
I see literary writing as that big wide swath of writing that doesn't fall into a genre. It's pretty easy to group mysteries and thrillers, and westerns and romance--same with SF&F. Everything else just becomes "literary".
Literary novels with compelling storylines and hooks tend to drift to the realm of Commercial Literary (like my book) while the stuff with more linguistic jujitsu tend to get tagged as "LITERARY"--literary with a big "L".
OSC dubs this kind of stuff "Performance Writing" and I think he's right. I don't think the work is necessarily pretentious or snobby, it's just basically writing for other writers. The author's own style is on stage and can often blot out the characters or plot. Some people love it. Others find it impenetrable.
I don't favor one over the other. Like music, I like whatever moves me, regardless of classification--and I try not to prejudge anything.
The weird thing is, I didn't set out to be a literary writer. I thought I was writing historical fiction. Just goes to show you--tell the stories you feel like telling. They'll find their own way on their own merits...
[This message has been edited by JamieFord (edited August 13, 2008).]
I think the definitions of the various genres are of limited utility because they get bent and broken so often, which is why I really think that most writers should care more about the market they're targeting than any particular label.
But to the extent that they're useful, these terms signify various boxes into which we place stories. Each box has positive characteristics (science fiction uses speculative but naturalistic explanations in substantive ways) and negative characteristics (science fiction does not use magic in substantive ways). Particular stories will fit into the boxes to some fuzzy extent; by the preceding definitions, Star Wars was a blend of scifi and not-scifi until the definition of the midichlorians, after which it became a (much impoverished) purer scifi story.
"Literary fiction" as it appears in the Pushcart Prize books, Glimmer Train, and other sources appears to have a set of conventions, not all of which are used at the same time, but some of which must be sufficiently present to consider it literary. That makes it a genre. And I think that's the thrust of the question that Christine asked: what conventions define the literary genre?
Journalists who review a publication are more a part of the marketing racket than arbiters of taste. Their reviews are intended for promotional purposes and not to criticize a work of art. Scholarly literary analyses don't denigrate literature or dictate conventions of good taste: They analyze; they contribute to the conversation, usually long after the sell-through season of the publication, often enough after the title is out of print, even long after an author's passing into publishing oblivion or the afterlife.
The self-annointed literary "critic" on a soap box is a creature of a different species. Born out of broadcast media talkshows or tabloid format journalism, the Sunday circular lifestyle pages, screenplay reviews or restaurant reviews or stage play reviews or whatever art form they deem unworthily attempted, they go about presuming to define fashion, taste, and art without any sense of their audience's tastes. I've seen vitrolic commentaries from those wicked forked tongues. But, oh please, let me have that one bad review of my work by an infamous "critic." The promotional value would be priceless. I'd rather experience what's panned than what's praised by those beasts anyway. But for my work, please, let those vermin bash it.
Literary, commercial, mainstream, speculative, fantastical, amatory, subcultural niche, regardless, genre categorizing is mostly a marketing process not an artistic determination.
I was the kid who sat in the back of the class and borrowed vocabulary definitions five minutes before the test. I have a difficult time reading fiction; I have always been a very slow reader. At the same time, I learned to wow my teachers with my writing ability at a very early age. I only say this because I ended up as an English/creative writing major for most my time in college. Instead of reading Gone with the Wind for a paper on Mitchell’s use of color symbolism, I watched the movie and used Cliff Notes and got a B+. The only fiction I read from 6th grade on was Tolkien, but I stopped at about a quarter of the way through the Silmarillion.
A few years back, I decided to get certified to teach. The only subject in which I could get certified was English (and I had changed my major half way through my Junior year). I had to take a test covering the last 1,300 years of the English language - quotes, characters, etc. I started reading and listening to audio books. For the first time, I learned to truly love how words were used to create sounds and meanings, and meanings on top of meanings.
I left teaching after two years, but I carried with me this love for word-play. It is like finding a secret passage in a medieval castle or like sharing a private joke among friends; it somehow reveals a mystery and at the same time gives you a special connection with the author. I do not consider my love for literary fiction to be elitist, I just enjoy the “challenge of the hunt,” so to speak. Due to my preference for certain types of style, I try to emulate this much like those of us who like science fiction or fantasy also write within those genres. I now feel like I am cheating the reader and myself if I write anything that doesn’t provide the reader with some deeper meaning below the surface of the story. Sure, I would like for my writing to be commercial, but that's not my sole purpose in writing.
[This message has been edited by philocinemas (edited August 14, 2008).]
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"Literary fiction" as it appears in the Pushcart Prize books, Glimmer Train, and other sources appears to have a set of conventions, not all of which are used at the same time, but some of which must be sufficiently present to consider it literary. That makes it a genre. And I think that's the thrust of the question that Christine asked: what conventions define the literary genre?
I agree, wholeheartedly, oliverhouse.
I also submit that "Commercial" and/or "Mainstream" fiction are also genres with conventions.
In answer to extrinsic's question, "Who gets to decide what is literary or not?" I submit that it is basically up to the editors who select and publish fiction in literary fiction publications.
Just as John Campbell is considered by many to be the nurturer and developer of science fiction, even though Hugo Gernsback is considered by many as the inventor/discoverer of the genre, and science fiction exists with its own conventions because these two and the authors they published helped to define and establish the conventions of science fiction, so, too, do the editors who publish the literary fiction publications decide what is literary or not.
So they are the ones we should be asking, if we want to know what the conventions are for literary fiction.
By the way, I remember someone saying (on GEnie, I believe) that stories won't sell to THE NEW YORKER unless you leave off the ending. Not exactly a convention, but something to consider?
1--emphasis on good writing over good story telling (as if you have to choose--some do, some don't)
2--lots of description that works, word-choices that actually create images and evoke emotions in the reader
3--character stories only (as in OSC's MICE categorizations)
4--open endings--let the reader decide
Anyone want to discuss these and/or add more?
If people want to see what literary fiction is all about in the eyes of those who read and publish it, it might be worth checking out TJ Forrester's Five Star Literary Stories story review site. (Naturally, the link takes you to a review of a story from Flash Fiction Online. ) It's a "celebration of story", TJ told me, with no shredding -- just people telling what they enjoy about particular literary stories. So you've got (a) authors who self-identify as literary writers, (b) stories from self-identified literary markets, and (c) reviewers with literary credentials telling you what they like about literary stories. You probably can't get closer to the source than that. I confess to being out of my element when I read the stories, and sometimes I look at the reviews and think, "Really?" But different strokes and all that...
With respect to Kathleen's list, I might add:
5--literal treatment of symbolic objects. The symbols are often the point of the story, and the author will make the story very strange but not speculative by taking a symbol and treating it literally. In one story on Forrester's site, there's a kid who buries the toys he likes most, which is a symbol of represssion -- but what kid actually buries his toys? By the end of the story, he has dug five and a half feet into the earth, where the molten core is. Yeah, it's weird, but it's not speculative, because you're not even supposed to think that that's literally possible.
6--rejection of some writing conventions. (I originally had a seventh, "deliberately disorienting writing", but I decided that's just a special case of this one.) Examples that come to mind include the repetition of a single event from multiple points of view, avoidance of punctuation and paragraph structure, shifting POV. Sometimes I think the disorientation is a result of a desire to reject writing conventions, and sometimes I think it's the other way around. Sometimes, of course, the rejection of a convention (3PL or 1st person POV) turns into a literary convention of its own (2nd person POV).
There are probably more.
One comment on Kathleen's number 1 ("emphasis on good writing over good story telling (as if you have to choose--some do, some don't)") -- lots of "genre" stories have great writing, evoke emotion or vivid imagery, are character stories, and so on. So I'm still going to be a PITA and insist that I don't really care whether your genre is literary or fantasy or sci fi or a cross between them. The point is only that you make it a great story. If you're too self-conscious about genre, then you're likely to screw it up.
My final comments are, of course, related to the great fiction we publish at the boringly-but-helpfully-named Flash Fiction Online. (You are telling your friends, including your non-writer friends about it, aren't you?) Take a look at some of these stories and tell me whether they are literary or speculative fiction:
Hatracker Beth Wodzinski's The Human Clockwork
Well-known scifi author Jim Van Pelt's Just Before Recess
Well-known literary and scifi author Bruce McAllister's Game
Gone by Jennifer Tatroe, an unknown but talented writer who self-identifies as "not into genre fiction"
I classified them as literary, fantasy, sci fi, and fantasy. Do those labels really fit?
More importantly, does it really matter? How did you like the stories?
I think most publishers consider Commercial and Mainstream to be flavors of "Literary". It's a matter of taste, but I think a lot of it has to do with the perceived quality of the writing. It was interesting when I went on submission--some publishers thought I was too commercial, others thought I was too literary.
("Literary fiction" as it appears in the Pushcart Prize books, Glimmer Train, and other sources appears to have a set of conventions, not all of which are used at the same time, but some of which must be sufficiently present to consider it literary.)
I disagree. I was a Glimmer Train finalist in 2006 and I don't think my story fit any of the conventions mentioned by KDW. Tastes vary greatly by editor.
The one area of lit fiction that seems to have a convention is lit fic produced by younger MFA types (my apologies to anyone here with an MFA for this crass generalization). I've been to numerous writing workshops and the newly minted MFAs running around seemed to all have stories that fit some of KDW descriptions--ambiguous endings, character over plot, dynamic writing styles, etc. I think this is more of an artifact of the age of the writer, rather than the whole lit fic thing. It seemed like the younger writers in the workshops had less to write about--less life experience, so they got wrapped up in technique. The older writers at the workshops tended to have more compelling stories and less showy writing.
I have now remembered the name: The Pre-Joycean Fellowship, and some of the "members" (if I remember correctly--this was from GEnie days--pre Y2K) were Steven Brust, Jane Yolen, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Pamela Dean, and Kara Dalkey.
I offer the information here as a "factoid" that may be of little or no interest or relevance to the topic except that they felt fiction could be literary without having been influenced by James Joyce.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited August 15, 2008).]
Deb said, "It's a funny thing, though, how fiction takes on a life of its own. I've put stories out for crit, and had people be very emphatic about what a character should or should not do, because the character became very real to them (and you know who you are, guys!). The idea that writers don't have ownership of the meaning of their stories once they have been put before the public - that just cracks me up, in an awesomely cool, sort of twisted kind of way. Anybody else get a charge out of that? "
Yes, I do. Readers tell me they like this or that character. In my mind I've only sketched them, skimmed the surface, yet to others they seem real. That's just wild.
philocinemas said, "I now feel like I am cheating the reader and myself if I write anything that doesn’t provide the reader with some deeper meaning below the surface of the story." Confidence in encouraging a similar desire in my own writing (which has been lurking for a while) is probably the main thing I've gotten from this thread.
With reference to KDW's literary fiction conventions, it seems to me that the emphasis on character is a big thing in literature. We understand the motivations and feelings of characters deeply. Characters are more than just vehicles for telling the story and its plot--which, sadly, is often all they are in my stories. ("We're real figments of your imagination," I can hear them screaming at me.)
I think I'd suggest adding to KDW's list the idea of several layers of meaning, literal and metaphorical.
Also, literature often seeks to illustrate real world problems through fiction--Dickens, Swift, Solzhenitsyn, for example. Literature can get deeper than film or documentaries into what it's like to be an orphan, to suffer from political pettyness, or to be locked away and forgetten. Not only can we get into the character's heads, people will spend more time reading a book than watching a movie. (Whenever they turn a book into a movie, much is lost, edited out, to make it fit the form.)
Taking all this together, in my future stories I plan to add an element of "literature" with deeper characterisations, richer texstures and layers, and more open endings. I suspect that's where mags like Asimov's are going--and, as I learn more about writing, I demand more from the stories I read, and some sense of "literature" seems to be amongst my new, emerging demands.
Cheers,
Pat
I mean, what the hell does it matter what category a story falls into? Let's say a reader came up to me and said 'oh, I think this story you wrote is very science-fictiony, did you intend it that way?' or 'I think this character should do blah blah blah' My reaction would be 'yeah, sure, whatever - did you like it?'
That's the only question I'm interested in, really. Does someone like my story or not. Would they like to read another one. If they don't like it, fair enough, but I'm not taking notice of criticism unless they're a writer as well. If they like it, yay - I've written something that someone likes, and therefore I don't suck at writing.
So I think you're over-thinking this way too much. Maybe it matters from a marketing point of view - like, who you'd send a story to and what section of a bookstore it's displayed in - but in the actual writing side of stuff, what matters is that people like it and want to read more. You could read deeper meanings into any piece of written prose, but you can't force people to like it.
I read that red wheelbarrow poem someone mentioned earlier. I think it's crap. Why? Because if no one told you there was any deeper meaning in it, you'd just think it was a poem about a wheelbarrow!
Opinions - I have them. Also, enough of this tangent, I'm off before I really start ranting.
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If they don't like it, fair enough, but I'm not taking notice of criticism unless they're a writer as well.
You would truly have no interest in the criticism of anyone who isnt a writer?
That seems odd, given that most of the worlds readership...essentially, the people you are trying to sell your stories too, or at least the people who the people you are trying to sell your stories to are trying to sell them too, are not writers.
I myself have recieved valuable thoughts, insights, and confirmations from non-writers who have read my work.
It matters what category a book falls into because people see the world that way -- in categories. This is one reason that cross-genre pieces can be a tough sell. I am interested in getting in tune with the expectations of readers so that at least if I go against those expectations, I can do so mindfully.
re: criticism -- I don't find criticism from non-readers valuable. Most of the people I know are non-writers who read a lot and I find their opinions extremely valuable.
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It matters what category a book falls into because people see the world that way -- in categories
True to a point, but mostly in the short term. Catagories and labels make a good short hand for when you dont have the time or circumstances for a real discussion or explanation. But I think most people...at least, most people that really think...come to realize that short hand is really all they are in the end. At least when it comes to people and creative works.
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This is one reason that cross-genre pieces can be a tough sell.
Hmmm....not so sure about that. From what I've seen since i started doing submissions, it seems that cross-genre, "slipstream" and basically "genreless" or unclassifaible stuff is somewhat the rage, and actively encouraged by some markets. Presumably to promote "originality."
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Most of the people I know are non-writers who read a lot and I find their opinions extremely valuable
This is often the case for me as well.
Actually, that gives me some interesting thoughts on the differences between reading from a writers perspective, and reading from a readers perspective...which leads me to the differences between what editors want (or supposedly want) and what readers want...but that, I guess, is a whole other subject..
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited August 17, 2008).]
Along came a man
who had one mind
but with it
his thoughts failed
[This message has been edited by philocinemas (edited August 18, 2008).]
I haven't met many readers that can give constructive criticism.
OSC says you may have to train readers to be helpful, but he recommends that writers find at least one, which he calls a "wise reader" who can tell them things like when the eyes start glazing over, or the mind starts wandering, and things like when the story has "faith, hope, and clarity" problems (the reader can't get answers to these questions: "oh, yeah?" and "so what?" and "huh?").
A well-trained reader can be very helpful, but you're right, Aetheric, most of them aren't very well-trained.
...and the greatest of these is clarity.
It's mine - I made it up last night. I'm sorry if I broke a rule about posting poetry - I didn't think there was a great demand out there for "There once was a man who..." poems. I was just trying to make a quick, whimsical point.
I have a few "There was an old lady from..." poems if anyone is interested.
[This message has been edited by philocinemas (edited August 19, 2008).]
[This message has been edited by philocinemas (edited August 19, 2008).]
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Taking all this together, in my future stories I plan to add an element of "literature" with deeper characterisations, richer textures and layers, and more open endings. I suspect that's where mags like Asimov's are going--and, as I learn more about writing, I demand more from the stories I read, and some sense of "literature" seems to be amongst my new, emerging demands.
This reminds me of something I read that I can't find... It was a review of one of the "Best American Sci Fi" or something like that. The reviewer pointed out the irony that the majority of the "best of" authors were new to the field of science fiction, and had previously on written literary or other genres. I'll try to find it when I have more time (I'm at work now, working... ahem.)
To KDW's list I'm going to add that situational sketches seem fair game for stories. Though there is a loose association of facts moving toward something close to a story, some books I encounter are simply just about someone doing something. They aren't necessarily even character studies.
I just wanted to make sure you had the right to publish the poem, so thank you for letting me know.
My point was that - On the surface the poem is about a hand-i-capped (literally) person succeeding, and an apparent "normal" person failing.
One of the deeper meanings is that one should not be closed-minded (one mind) about certain styles (one hand) of writing.
I don't believe that character, literary style, or story has to ever be compromised. The most amazing literary work I've ever read also has great characters and a great story. It uses almost every literary device to the nth degree. It's Romeo and Juliet. Reading it boggles my mind as to how complex it is in so many ways.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited August 20, 2008).]
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It's Romeo and Juliet. Reading it boggles my mind as to how complex it is in so many ways.
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Yes, the perfect example of beyond-believable writing quality mixed with a story that is astoundingly stupid.
Oh, Zero.
Zero - How can you say that about R&J? Sure, the ending is a little lame by today's standards, but only because we've seen it done so many times. This is a classic story archetype. Earlier, it might have been in this thread(?), Kathleen stated that there aren't really any new stories, just different ways of telling them. This has established itself as the quintessential story of love (forbidden, tragic, unending). Yes, it borrows from Greek tragedy, but it has risen above its predecessors.
philocinemas, do you want to start one, or shall I?
Seriously, though, how about this: fiction becomes literary when its meaning transcends the events described in it?
When we start saying that you have to have a certain level of sophistication to crit it, for example, does that put it into a different category than fiction that anyone can have a valuable opinion on?
And, while we're on the subject, does anybody remember the quote from Tolkien about allegory? It was something about avoiding it all costs ever since he had become old and wary enough to detect its presence, I think.
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I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.
Perhaps my dislike for the R&J story is affected by my having to read it and see it misperformed in junior highschool a very long time ago, and also partly because I dislike what is "literary" in general.
But I see your point. And it's a good one. I just think the story is cheesy, despite its thematic values.
Maybe the same story dressed a little differently would appeal to me, for instance I like the musical West Side Story--though the story in it is almost as bad (considering it's basically the exact same story.) But I still like it better. Sort of like how I'll more quickly put on a tape of Lion King than go to the theatre to see Hamlet.
Maybe I'm just impatient.
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When we start saying that you have to have a certain level of sophistication to crit it, for example, does that put it into a different category than fiction that anyone can have a valuable opinion on?
I know many here will disagree, but anyone can have a valuable opinion on any piece of literature.
and in the end, since anything written is literature, all stories are literary.
West Side Story (1957), a stage play, has regularly been contrasted and compared with Romeo and Juliet (circa 1590), yet it too is outdated in contemporary expectations. Maybe it's time for a new updating? The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (1967) is arguably a new perspective (for its time) on some of the same issues, different in as many ways as it's similar to both stories, yet still reasonably contemporary with present-day issues.
On another tangent, much of this thread has revolved around defining what's literary. What about from the other way round, the writer's? I don't think Hinton set out to write a story that either appealed to popular interests or artistic interests or both, yet she, in a very small subset of writers, accomplished both, effectively and succinctly, and when she was a teenager to boot. Hinton told a fabulous story that she wanted to tell without attempting necessarily either a literary or popular appeal.
Literary? Yes. Popular? Yes. Mainstream? Yes. Commercial? Yes. A love story? Yes, though closer to West Side Story than Romeo and Juliet. A coming of age story? Yes. Panned, banned, and censored? Yes. Accessible? Remarkably so. Speculative? No. Even though The Outsiders doesn't typically appear on Young Adult reading lists, it's a Young Adult novel.