The Emptiness of 'Literary Fiction' and the Stereotyping of Genre Literature

[wyndslash]

Originally Posted by Ransom

Me too! Actually, I thought it was very inventive and fun for kids of all ages, but what bothered me about it was that Harry always wins. I mean, always. All the games and tests--everything. It was very predictable in that regard.

i like happily ever afters

[jrlewis]

Yeah, but Harry never earns his victories. His friends all have actual skills and specialties that they care about, that make them unique people. Harry's only abilities seem to be "being special" and "winning"

[Ransom]

I'm not against the happy endings. It's just what Mr. Lewis here said. I think Harry could lose a few games now and then, and the books could still have a happy ending.

[Prestidigitweeze]

One problem with some of the opinions expressed here is that the tolerance they're supposed to exemplify is one-sided. In order to benefit from the apparent open-mindedness of those who dislike the idea of literary fiction, you're expected to dislike it, too. You have to accept their redefinitions of your own priorities, and their dismissal of the honesty and brilliance of writing you might actually like. In order to arrive at the democracy they seem to advocate, you have to disown the very qualities in fiction that made you want to read it in the first place.

One example:

The idea that people who spend their lives studying and understanding literature in the professional academic sense have no more, and usually less, to offer than ordinary readers expressing their opinions. The point is not whether one person's opinion is more valid than another, but whether one might have more information to offer than another. The idea seems to be that academics and literary critics have nothing special to offer.

A few here seem to be saying that, if you place any importance on the project of literature (as writers like Flaubert understood it) and academic criticism, if you allow that a seasoned, industrious and talented academic might have expertise that could prove useful, then you're either an insufferable kiss-ass or a character from The Fountainhead who advocates total acceptance of cliche ideas of high culture, no doubt involving a crinkly anti-Übermensch.

I would argue that critics, linguists and scholars have had tons to teach us: critics as diverse as Cleanth Brooks, William Empson, F.R. Leavis, Ezra Pound and Charles Bernstein; linguists and interdisciplinary critics like Roman Jakobson, Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes; scholars as different as George Saintsbury and Helene Cixous (whose distrust of the word intellectual some of you might appreciate).

What exactly is wrong with acknowledging their importance?

Another:

The idea that a writer's interest in style and diction makes them inherently boring, untruthful and affected.

Many of the writers I absolutely love were willing to sacrifice story for style and are far from boring or dishonest: Virginia Woolf and John Hawkes, to name but two. Does their willingness make their methods dishonest or my love of The Waves and The Lime Twig an affectation?

If everyone's taste is to be allowed, then so are the preferences of those who prefer "literary" fiction. If I'm not interested in slapping someone around for adoring novels by Chuck Palahniuk, or even important but over-emphasized books by Christian apologists like C.S. Lewis (whose Allegory of Love is, among other things, literary criticism), then it shouldn't be necessary for the OP to poke me on the shoulder to say, "Hey, I'm not telling anyone what to do -- your taste is your taste, and I like a lot of that so-called literature myself -- but 'literary fiction' is nothing but affected twaddle that sexless elitists enjoy rubbing all over themselves. Literary = lack of story, and experts = a bunch of professors pretending their taste is better than mine. I respect your opinion, but everything you enjoy and admire is an utter waste of time."

[crich70]

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.

Touche. I do agree that we are all entitled to our own opinion on a given writer literary or genre or whatever. The point I was making (as you aknowledged) was just that we should form our own opinion on said book or said writer's body of work rather than just taking the "expert's" at their word. A given critic might think a particular movie was a complete waste of film for example but at least part of his criticism will be based in if he likes the genre of film or not. And the box office receipts might tell a different story than his opinion on that given film. The 1st Never Ending Story movie (based on Michael Ende's book) was like that. The critics didn't care for it, but 2 sequels a mini cartoon series and at least one DVD of further adventures seems to tell a different tale. I'd guess much the same has happened with books before too. The "experts" didn't like it but the reading public did.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by jrlewis

Yeah, but Harry never earns his victories. His friends all have actual skills and specialties that they care about, that make them unique people. Harry's only abilities seem to be "being special" and "winning"

Usually his 'victories' come with a price though. Someone either dies or is badly hurt. He never quite escapes unscathed from his adventures. I think J.K.Rowling used a good deal (if not the total) of the Hero's Journey as the structure of her series on Harry Potter. Dumbledore is the Mentor for example and then there are the trials he goes through to keep Voldemort from winning time and time again.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Another:

The idea that a writer's interest in style and diction makes them inherently boring, untruthful and affected.

Absolutely. I left this one largely untouched, and of course the main thrust of such an argument comes from the least informed, but writers generally come by their vocabulary honestly, by having read a great deal more than the average person, and specifically having read a great deal more of existing canon. Often enough, that knowledge is augmented by life experiences wherein the author has been exposed to specialized vocabularies.

Anti-intellectualism is anti-intellectualism, and serves no practical purpose. It's a strategy for protecting the ego which devalues the ego considerably over time. When applied on a cultural scale, it's a guaranteed ticket to the third world.

[DiapDealer]

Ooh! ooh! Do me next! What was I really saying in my posts? I strongly suspect that I may have been advocating the demise of critical thinking entirely, but I'm not quite positive. I admit that subtext was never my strong suit. A bit of help please?

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by taosaur

[W]riters generally come by their vocabulary honestly, by having read a great deal more than the average person, and specifically having read a great deal more of existing canon. Often enough, that knowledge is augmented by life experiences wherein the author has been exposed to specialized vocabularies.

I agree; I'd go even further than that.

Many writers acquire specialized vocabularies despite the fact that some readers might be put off. They certainly aren't trying to discourage their potential audience.

Rarefied diction can happen when a writer zeroes in on the kinds of observations they tend to make and wish to be more exact. It can happen as the result of extensive research that left a mark. It can happen because a writer's childhood placed them in close proximity to a library filled with old, odd and oddly compelling books. It can also happen when the music of language becomes so important that they wish to learn about every sound, every nuance, as a composer does classes of intervals, chords and timbres.

It happens for other equally valid reasons as well.

Whether or not they should privilege some projected normative reader over the joy of writing in their own voice is a question that doesn't come down to populism versus elitism. It can be a question of sales, if the writer is dependent on sales, but it can also be a question of innate talent. Some writers simply can't write in a popular style, and the choice would be between writing pandering swill that would continue to remain unpopular or writing novels that allowed them to develop and perfect the full range of their gifts.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Ooh! ooh! Do me next! What was I really saying in my posts? I strongly suspect that I may have been advocating the demise of critical thinking entirely, but I'm not quite positive. I admit that subtext was never my strong suit. A bit of help please?

I have no clue who or what that was aimed at. Me, agreeing with another poster? Prestidigitweeze, responding to a position stated explicitly and repeatedly throughout the thread? Was crich70 putting words in J.K. Rowling's mouth? Are you just throwing out rhetorical strategies scattershot to see if anything sticks?

[Ransom]

but writers generally come by their vocabulary honestly, by having read a great deal more than the average person

All well and good, but I'd venture to say that my own vocabulary is much larger than your average English Literature Prof specifically because the vast majority of what I read is very old. But having a large and old vocabulary, and purposely using it to show how many words you know that others do not, are very different things, and I believe that describes most of the modern LF writers. If that's what great writing is about then I could just write everything in 14th century English, or even West Saxon etc. If I'm writing a period piece, that may be fine, but it's hard to see the point even in that. Shakespeare was often criticized for writing in an archaic language during his own day (late 1500s) just as the King James Bible was criticized for the same thing when it first came out in 1611. People had stopped using words like "thee" and "thou" by the 13th and 14th centuries. (I find it mildly amusing the way people refer to 14th century English as "Jacobean English" when people had stopped talking that way long before James VI.) In the case of the King James Bible, negative critics of it said that it was purposely dressed up in an archaic language to make it seem more regal and flowery. They also said that if it was truly sent by God that it shouldn't need any dressing up. Makes sense to me.

If 14th century English is so grand, why not just write everything in it? I've seen several people claim that the works of Homer are best read in the Lang/Leaf/Butcher/Myers translation for that very reason. I find that totally silly. I'm supposed to think that works from 800 BC Greek are somehow best followed in 14th century English by 21st century readers? I've got those translations of both The Iliad and The Odyssey, but I find my Penguin Classic editions much more enjoyable.

I think that some of you are missing the point, which is, that modern writers who purposely use one out-dated word after another are not only being pretentious (if not outright childish), but they usually don't write good stories. I would say that Umberto Eco would be a great example, but I lay a lot of the blame on William Weaver's translations for the pretentious English. The stories (at least many of them) being boring however, we can put on Eco. I recall starting to read Foucault's Pendulum, and the first thirty or forty pages were devoted to some character trying to find a place to hide in a museum. We couldn't just be told where he hid; we had to first be put through every place he couldn't hide. I was on the brink of tearing my hair out thinking, "Just get on with it already!" It was just bad writing in any language.

I'll muddle through even the most pretentious writing if I think the stories are worth it, but I certainly won't refer to it as great writing if I think the author is being purposely, and pointlessly, difficult. The perfect example there is Charles Williams. I loved all seven of his novels, but what 20th century writer is more difficult to get through than Williams? This is especially true of his poetry, which even his friend T. S. Eliot said he could never make heads or tails of. Almost everyone agrees that he's made the only significant addition to the Grail saga since Tennyson, but almost none of us would understand half of his poetry (both symbolically and the difficult writing style) without his friend, CS Lewis', commentary on it. I can't quote it exactly, but I remember a letter from Lewis to Eliot where Lewis had mentioned talking with Williams right after one of Williams' novels came out saying "Don't think I didn't let into him for all I was worth for being so damned difficult!" In short, as much as I loved the novels and poetry of Charles Williams, I loathed his writing style, which in my opinion, as well as the opinions of Eliot and Lewis, was often difficult just for the sake of being difficult.

And that phrase right there "difficult for the sake of being difficult" is exactly what most of us dislike about much of the modern LF writers.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by Ransom

But having a large and old vocabulary, and purposely using it to show how many words you know that others do not, are very different things, and I believe that describes most of the modern LF writers.

It still just boggles my mind that you think the above is an accurate description of how anyone writes, and that you somehow associate literary fiction with archaic language. This view is simply not founded in reality. Authors use the vocabulary that they have, and while an author of literary fiction may have a broader or less typical vocabulary, few if any now living are hung up on Chaucer.

[Prestidigitweeze]

I'd venture to say that my own vocabulary is much larger than your average English Literature Prof specifically because the vast majority of what I read is very old. But having a large and old vocabulary, and purposely using it to show how many words you know that others do not, are very different things, and I believe that describes most of the modern LF writers.

The thing that amazes me is the attribution of base ethical motives purely because of the style and diction of the writer, which is exactly how fascists in the 30s framed the intentions of writers like Walter Benjamin, Robert Musil, Stefan Zweig, Bertolt Brecht and Robert Desnos, and Stalin did Khlebnikov and Osip Mandelstam.

I would also ask that people stop generalizing about what English lit professors have and haven't read until they actually interact with a few in present time. It's easy to make generalizations until you're face to face with a member of the group you've just been mischaracterizing. Dean of Lit Robert Coover at Brown, for example, who was incredibly well-read in every century. He was also saintly in his support of younger writers (as well as gleeful in his duties: when I visited Brown one summer, the man actually came to my room personally, woke me up with a bugle and read out my itinerary for the day, finishing with the command that I call my mom).

I can't really blame Ransom for those ideas (nor do I wish to show disrespect for his dedication to reading older books), since the person who did more to popularize them than anyone else is John Gardner in his masterpiece of hypocrisy, On Moral Fiction. Never mind that Gardner was a lifelong alcoholic and notorious for feeling up his eighteen-year-old students and getting physical with his wife. The real problem, according to him, was famous writers who wrote in styles he disliked.

Like many people with substance abuse problems, he needed to find a grid of faraway discipline to aspire to and to hold his less-alcoholic peers up to contemptuously. Because of him, reviewers and critics have been derailed into ad hominem about the morality of conspicuous stylists for the past forty years.

Another person I blame for this is not American but British. In Modern English Usage, Fowler tells us a number of useful things (and is funny, too), but he also makes sweeping judgments about the motives of people who do things like pronounce French words with a French accent. It all comes down to Fowler's thesis that odd choices in words, style and pronunciation are the affectations of middle- and lower-class people who do not realize that the upper classes carefully avoid such things. In Fowler's view, the admirable upper classman professes not to be familiar with obscure areas of knowledge because that would be admitting to unseemly and antisocial toil.

Fowler could not conceive of the idea that unself-conscious people, too, might learn other languages and study subjects that lent them idiosyncratic habits of usage. Fowler was himself such an obsequious admirer of royalty that his reflexive imitation of their style prevented his understanding that those who discover their own modes of expression are often not imitating anyone else at all -- least of all British royalty, those gods of leisure and social inequity, some of whom lounged instead of worked, and spent their most ambitious moments riding ponies through marshes and playing patio games in mansions.

Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins were not 14th Century writers, but they did spend lifetimes developing eccentric idioms and ever-more recondite elisions in syntax and metaphor. Yet they were neither showing off, aspiring to be royalty nor demonstrating some sort of corruption of the aesthetic soul. They were writers who grew isolated at the same time their poetry flourished. They wrote in their own voices and did so for themselves alone, with the conviction of persons whispering devastating truths to themselves. To suggest anything else is either an act of projection or a demonstration of unfamiliarity.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by Ransom

But having a large and old vocabulary, and purposely using it to show how many words you know that others do not, are very different things, and I believe that describes most of the modern LF writers.

Why do you believe that? That you do believe it says less about literary fiction than it does about you. One of the things that it says about you, along with later sections of your post, which, for the sake of brevity I will not quote, is that you appear not to have the first idea about what literary fiction is about.

[Ransom]

If there's one thing clear from these last three posts, it's that the commentator(s?) have not read much LF whatsoever and are just making things up as they go along. Chaucer? Good grief. Yeah that's what I said—LF is about writing nothing but 14th century English....

Gee, I don't remember Eco or Williams using many terms exclusive to 14th century. I don't remember any 14th century writers using the term--threadbare although that's about the time it was invented. As I said before, had you been paying attention, it's about obscure terms and outdated words whether they be 75 years out of date or hundreds. Boggles the mind is right.