[taosaur]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The idea of "classic" or "literary fiction" just makes little to no sense. A classic does not have to be from dead authors only. A book can be a classic that is not that old. I would class Harry Potter as a classic. Given a lot of definitions of classic, it fits. The only things it doesn't fit is old or dead author.

I'll repeat myself from an earlier thread:

Originally Posted by taosaur

"Great Literature" and literary fiction are not necessarily the same thing. Shakespeare's work, while certainly great literature, was genre material produced for general consumption. Both general and literary fiction can find its way into canon; what distinguishes literary fiction is not so much quality or endurance, but idiosyncrasy.

General fiction relies on convention: structured plot, near-journalistic (or alternately, florid) prose, easily recognized character relationships, and typically a third-person omniscient or roving third-person limited perspective. Literary fiction may discard an advancing plot (The Sound and the Fury), specific characters (If on a Winter's Night a Traveler) or even spelling and syntax (Finnegan's Wake), operating by its own rules. It requires more effort of interpretation from the reader, but it can convey thought-structures beyond the means of conventional storytelling.

I did read the article, and it says very little. The whinging about the emptiness of categories could be applied quite generally, and has little to say about the specific category of literary fiction. All the author expresses is his own insecurity as a reader (and producer?) of genre works:

What makes this idea <of literary fiction> so enervating is that it is a term in the discourse on literature that purports to describe the best, most resonant type of fiction, but that generally ends up being used to denigrate "genre fiction" and any work that the user does not like.

Really? That's how it generally ends up being used? I'm reminded of my vegan days when the least mention of my dietary choices would throw certain non-vegans into a combative defense of their own, when I hadn't said more than, "No, I won't be having the bacon burger." No matter how much you nod and smile politely at such people, they still walk away with their narrative about how those "arrogant, judgmental" vegans (or literary fiction readers) look down their noses at everyone else quite intact.