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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.

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Aww but Zeroist sounds so cool, like an exotic fantasy cult that secretly controls the world... ooh sounds like a story.

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?

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

I really think that is all that J really meant.

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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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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.

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.

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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."

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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.

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

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. )

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...

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.

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.

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.

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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?

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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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

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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.

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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.

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.

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It matters what category a book falls into because people see the world that way -- in categories

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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.

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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

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This is often the case for me as well.

Along came a man
who had one mind
but with it
his thoughts failed

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?").

...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).]

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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.

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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.)

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.

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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.

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Oh, Zero.

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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.