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Author Topic: What is Literary?
Christine
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What makes something literary?
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arriki
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Snob appeal?

It seems to never be "pulp" type writing. Not usually adventure. maybe a romance or mystery story. Always (?) deep psychological insights?


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J
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Good question. I find myself using it to describe works whose plot advances with integrity a classic theme, and that skillfully employs devices like foreshadowing, symbolism, and paralellism. But there's got to be an *actual* definition out there somewhere.
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extrinsic
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Literary fiction has several features that genre doesn't. Of particular difference is how figurative meaning is handled in literary fiction. Genre runs to literal meaning with what little figurative meaning enhancing the literal meaning and not requiring close reading to decipher. Figurative meaning in genre is often ignored or misunderstood by readers, so literal meaning meets the conventional expectations. Literary fiction often has a great deal of the story in the figurative meaning and typically demands a critical interpretation to grasp the full significance of the story.

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).]


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J
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From the Oxford English Dictionary:

"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.


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InarticulateBabbler
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I think Literary Fiction isn't always what is seems on the surface. It doesn't always go in a foreseeable/perceivable direction. I find that good literary fiction (which I'm just starting to see merit in) has another meaning under the surface. Sometimes its use of subtleties, allegory or symbolism it what the key to the real story is. I've come to think of it like wine: some people sip wine and think it's disgusting; some people swish wine about their mouths to let the flavor come out (before deciding whether or not they like it); others experience wine with all their senses. When reading, I'm more often an escapist reader (the type that enjoys the flavor immediately or not at all), fans of literary fiction are more often the type to experience it all.

Of course, that's just my opinion...


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JeanneT
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Fahrenheit 451 is science fiction because it meets every known definition of science fiction.

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).]


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TaleSpinner
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I'm with IB's definition and, like him, I'm beginning to think there might actually be some good stuff littered amongst the literature that, until recently, I have regarded as, variously, cynically pretentious, anciently irrelevant or long-windedly boring.

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).]


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Christine
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Yeah, there are certainly some "literary" books out there that are worth reading. I'm just not sure which or which. I'm not sure it matters. A good book is a good book. I was kind of wondering if a book I read recently for my book club qualified as literary, even though it is also science fiction. "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. It's a post-apoaclypse novel but it seemed that most of what went on in the book was symbolic rather than literal, including the two main characters, who were never given a name.

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.


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JeanneT
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*draws her sword and takes a whack at the literary*

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).]


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Zero
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The Red Wheel Barrow is absolutely ridiculous.
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J
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"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.
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extrinsic
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Cormac McCarthy is a crossover writer, he's a literary genre genius, author of some mystery, some Western, some speculative fiction, and so on. In my view, several features place his fiction firmly in the literary camp.

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).]


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Robert Nowall
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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.

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...


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JeanneT
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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.

You seem to be saying that one can't enjoy both. I disagree with that. I do so I know that's not true. (Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point though)

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).]


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J
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It is certainly possible to enjoy both, just as it is possible to enjoy filet mignon tournez a tournez and McDonald's cheeseburgers.

[This message has been edited by J (edited August 04, 2008).]


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JeanneT
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Oh, a nice comparison, J. I hope you didn't mean that the way it sounded.
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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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Thanks for the explanation, extrinsic.

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."


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extrinsic
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I spent much of my life ignoring and resisting any prompt to explore literature more deeply than the most superficial of readings. Yet, I sensed I was missing out on a lot. I don't like to miss out. I liked it even less when in my youth, the adults talked over my head, which drove my desire to understand figurative meaning.

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."

http://deoxy.org/emperors.htm

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).]


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Zero
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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?


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Robert Nowall
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I'm inclined to think that, since Bradbury came out of the science fiction fandom scene and published a lot in the science fiction magazines before moving on, that he is and remains a science fiction writer, whatever other kinds of work he's published. ("Local Boy Makes Good.")

Heinlein and Asimov did the same while remaining science fiction writers...


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TaleSpinner
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From Ray Bradbury's "Zen in the Art of Writing", the first para of an essay entitled "Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle":

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


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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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As Tale Spinner points out, Ray Bradbury considered himself more than a science fiction writer.

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).


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Christine
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I'm sensing something else, though -- that it is difficult to separate literary work from literary snobs. It almost seems that "literary" is whatever the English academics think it is.

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."


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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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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.


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extrinsic
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Literary fiction is a matter of art, nothing more; nothing less. Qualifying the artistic value of a work of art derives from the communication between the creator's work and an approving audience's responses to it. The communication is a product of interpreting the work of art through abstract cognitive function and cognitive recognition, some high function; some less so. At what level of function doesn't matter.

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.


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Zero
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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.


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Merlion-Emrys
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I consider genre labels (and in this discussion, and in many other circumstances, "literary" is basically treated as a genre) to be largely pointless and annoying. Not only can people not agree on what belongs in a given genre, they can't agree on how to go about trying to determine it. What are the criteria? Content? Authorial intent? Target audience?

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.


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Robert Nowall
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It really depends on how you define science fiction---which has defeated the best minds of several generations.

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).]


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Merlion-Emrys
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True. But what most of Ray Bradbury writes doesnt really fall into anyones classification of science fiction.


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.


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psnede
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I've discovered one thing from the recent "literary" fiction I've read (Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, The Road), Toni Morrison (Beloved), Philip Roth (American Pastoral), Geraldine Brooks (People of the Book):

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.



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oliverhouse
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Sorry I haven't been around much. I came here looking for something else and saw this question at the top of the Open Discussion forum and was interested to see what people would say.

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:
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.
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.

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).]


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TaleSpinner
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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.

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


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Igwiz
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Interesting discussion.

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!!


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oliverhouse
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Talespinner said
quote:
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.
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.

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."


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TaleSpinner
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I didn't read your post clearly enough.

Cheers,
Pat


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Robert Nowall
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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.

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...


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JeanneT
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Igwiz, I think you'd get a lot of argument about John Irving being the great example of literary fiction. A lot, to put it mildly. Irving is a popular modern writer but I'd class his work as Commercial rather than Literary. Not all "non-genre" writing is literary.

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).]


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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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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.


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JeanneT
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That doesn't mean that metaphors can't be and aren't used in science fiction and fantasy. It simply means that one has to be a little careful about it.

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).]


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extrinsic
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I distinguish literary from mainstream or genre fiction by the manner that rhetoric is applied. Literary fiction uses rhetoric more figuratively than literally. Mainstream and genre fiction use rhetoric more literally than figuratively.

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).]


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JeanneT
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That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

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).]


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Pyre Dynasty
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It bugs me when people say literary vs genre. Because genre just means category. So it's like saying something vs everything. But I am glad that literary was coined, 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. Whether or not it's good art is the question. Nobody has the ability to declare something not art. /rant.

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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Merlion-Emrys
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quote:
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.

quote:
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.


quote:
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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JeanneT
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quote:
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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TaleSpinner
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quote:

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


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J
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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.
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Zero
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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?
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TaleSpinner
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Solzhenitsyn is in the news right now. I can't imagine anyone would class "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" as anything but literature. The intent of his novel was to show what it was like to live in one of Stalin's labour camps. Any other interpretation would surely be wrong--or at least, missing the point.

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).]


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Robert Nowall
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On classifying specific pieces of literature...TaleSpinner's comments about Solzhenitsyn (is that how his name is spelled?) reminded me of certain classifications of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It's a work embraced by the literary establishment, and literary criticism has said an awful lot about it...but, the thing is, except for certain elements of plot and character and exposition...it's all true. Heart of Darkness is composed of events that actually happened in what was then the Congo Free State.

*****

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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