Quote:
Originally Posted by TGS
Indeed, but if I encounter something by, for example Ernest Hemingway, that I don't like - and mostly I don't like things by Ernest Hemingway - then if I am to express an opinion, given the amount of criticism and analysis that has been accumulated over the years, it is incumbent upon me to say something beyond, "I don't like it because it's literary fiction and literary fiction is rubbish", don't you think.
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Not one person in this thread has said anything at all like that. People have of course spoken in generalities, but all adults understand generalities for the time-saving rules of thumb that they are. Obviously when someone says they don't care for literary fiction we realize there will be exceptions that they do like.
I also think that some of you don't understand the difference between literary fiction and a classic. Bookstores often lump them together in the "literature" section. A classic book does not often have the snooty vocabulary that's generally found in what is termed LF. Sometimes it may seem that way simply because an older book comes from a generation of folk who talked and wrote differently in bygone days. The term "threadbare" which I mentioned earlier would certainly seem snooty if used today; it would have been part of everyday speech in 1750 though.
I think what most of us object to is modern authors writing as though they are anything but modern. It's the books from our own day being placed in the LF category where most of the problem lies. It's in these that we find writers using a thesaurus for all the wrong reasons along with tiresome lengthy descriptions of every bush and flower they see.