[taosaur]

Originally Posted by Taosaur

but it can convey thought-structures beyond the means of conventional storytelling.

Originally Posted by Ransom

Name one that I can't find the equivalent of in a genre category.

Can you not see how ridiculous that demand is? Do you think "thought structures beyond the means of conventional storytelling" are within the means of pithy forum posting?

You don't know what you don't know about literature. Reading fiction is like any other skill or discipline: by practicing, challenging oneself, and being a "student of the game," one gains deeper insight, what was once difficult becomes reflex, and one can attempt greater challenges that one may not even have been capable of recognizing to exist at the outset.

It's like meditation, higher mathematics, or even football: if one has not pursued knowledge of the subject habitually over a significant period of time, one cannot even talk sensibly about it. For that matter, if you have no intent of becoming genuinely familiar with the subject, why do you want to talk about it?

Originally Posted by Ransom

This is generally only true because these authors do their very best to use the most obscure words (not "big" words as you misinterpret me) they can find.

I took your first post to this effect as a joke and responded jokingly, but it appears you actually consider this position supportable and descriptive of reality. Listen, I'm not making the case that all literary fiction is superior to all general or genre fiction. Plenty of terrible literary fiction gets published and even more written. Not all of the terrible literary fiction conforms to your absurd stereotype--there are whole minimalist movements that strive toward the exact opposite, and get badly imitated just as often as the florid New Yorker stuff--but some does, sort of. Honestly, I doubt a single author's process looks much like what you describe, except perhaps a satirist (A Confederacy of Dunces comes to mind).

You're welcome to live and die without knowledge of the more esoteric depths of literature, but you don't have to tell yourself these just-so stories about thesauruses in order to do so.

Just be honest with yourself. You don't know anything about literary fiction and don't care to:

THE END