|
I think the term "literary fiction" muddies the waters. Ideally for me it's a qualitative judgment, but in reality it seems to be applied to everything that doesn't have a genre label. Eliminate sci-fi, fantasy, romance, thriller, mystery, western, chicklit, etc., and what's left gets put into the "literary" category, irrespective of merit. And to make it more problematic, merit is at least partially subjective, i.e., you can make gross assessments but ultimately it's in the eye of the critic/reader.
The term genre in itself is always faintly pejorative, it seems to me, the more so in regard to romance and chicklit, a term in itself pejorative but I admit to using it. (I admit I don't like what's considered chicklit; I wouldn't be surprised if those who do, resent the term.)
This is a roundabout way of saying that while the term literary fiction has implications of quality, the reality is that as a category it's useless. I've tried searching on literary fiction at OverDrive on occasion and nothing useful to me results, especially since they seem to eschew the term "chicklit" so those books perforce end up as "literary." I was sorry when OverDrive eliminated the ability to search by publisher, as that was far more useful in finding "literary" books.
I've used the term "mainstream" here to describe our typical selection and I think it's a better term to describe non-genre books overall. That said, I don't think our fiction selections would disgrace any club of "literary" bent.
|