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

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Ea

I think it's too limiting to think we can only apply one label to each book. I don't know the book you mentioned, but I can't see any reason why it's possibly literary as well as historical fiction. "Anathem" is IMHO both sci-fi and literary - as an example. For me it comes down to the quality of the book and its purpose (to entertain, to enlighten, to be an artistic expression), not what genre it is.

Exactly.

And what is the difference in Literary and Mainstream?

(apologies if this was already discussed. I'm jumping in without testing the water first)

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Exactly.

And what is the difference in Literary and Mainstream?

(apologies if this was already discussed. I'm jumping in without testing the water first)

As you've seen, the waters are mostly becalmed. I think it's worth discussing meaningful distinctions between mainstream and literary fiction, but it doesn't get far before people get defensive about their own reading preferences or try to declare all categories that lack fixed, empirical boundaries (which is to say, all categories) null and void.

My own position, put forward in my first post, is that literary fiction is distinguishable from mainstream fiction mainly in terms of ambition--or experimentation if you prefer--rather than quality. Anyone with a taste for literary fiction will have encountered works clearly written with literary aims, but just as clearly falling short. Mainstream fiction is discernible mainly by reliance upon formula; in Pop Culture studies, there's a lot of discussion of the ratio of invention to convention. We expect some invention in mainstream fiction, but when a work confounds our expectations beyond a certain threshold, we begin to recognize that we're dealing with something different, something that will very likely require greater intellectual engagement if we want to see what the author is getting at.

Originally Posted by kennyc

Exactly.

And what is the difference in Literary and Mainstream?

(apologies if this was already discussed. I'm jumping in without testing the water first)

[kennyc]

I think I've basically agree with what you are saying. Mainstream has certain 'middle of the road' requirements.

[Prestidigitweeze]

I agree it's more useful to make distinctions in classification than quality or inferred attitudes.

However, I wonder how mainstream Calvino intended to be when he wrote Cosmicomics and T Zero. And I also wonder whether perceptible modesty is the most important quality with which an ambitious writer should be concerned no matter what their classification. There's a certain enshrined ostentation in science fiction -- a look-at-me inventiveness -- which I don't mind at all. I think it's a positive attribute in books like Anathem. I also don't mind it when Pound interrupts the Cantos to say "I shall have to learn more Greek, but so shall you [the reader], drat you." Pound thought he was trying to save civilization when he wrote that. I'm glad he cared about civilization in the first place.

In other words, an eclectic vocabulary, latinate style or difficult system of reference is not necessarily a defect, nor need it be proven crucial to the work in which it is used to be tolerable. It's a feature and nothing more or less. If that writer happens to hear the work in that way and his work has that feature as a result, then sobeit. Eccentricity is not necessarily a defect, nor difficulty an affectation.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

I agree it's more useful to make distinctions in classification than quality or inferred attitudes.

However, I wonder how mainstream Calvino intended to be when he wrote Cosmicomics and T Zero. And I also wonder whether perceptible modesty is the most important quality with which an ambitious writer should be concerned no matter what their classification. There's a certain enshrined ostentation in science fiction -- a look-at-me inventiveness -- which I don't mind at all. I think it's a positive attribute in books like Anathem. I also don't mind it when Pound interrupts the Cantos to say "I shall have to learn more Greek, but so shall you [the reader], drat you." Pound thought he was trying to save civilization when he wrote that. I'm glad he cared about civilization in the first place.

I have to say this paragraph is confounding me. I don't disagree with anything you're saying, but neither do I see how any of it constitutes a "However" to the line above. Calvino almost certainly gave no consideration to producing mainstream work, and if anything I suspect his aims for his early works were even more experimental than the end result. Still, there's little argument that his works are experimental in a manner that defies convention, in keeping with my characterization of literary fiction. Yes, science fiction authors are expected to employ inventive premises, but if easily recognizable archetypes don't trace predictable orbits around those premises, we cease to see the work as sci-fi, the easy example being Vonnegut.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by taosaur

I have to say this paragraph is confounding me. I don't disagree with anything you're saying, but neither do I see how any of it constitutes a "However" to the line above. Calvino almost certainly gave no consideration to producing mainstream work and if anything I suspect his aims for his early works were even more experimental than the end result. . . . .

However is in this case a rhetorical consequent to the antecedent in a previous post. I could have quoted that bit, but I thought the quote was implied by my echo of the word mainstream:

My own position, put forward in my first post, is that literary fiction is distinguishable from mainstream fiction mainly in terms of ambition--or experimentation if you prefer--rather than quality.

Perhaps I should have said this to make the point more clear:

However, even unprejudiced categorization is usually a matter of practicality and not exactitude.

T Zero and Cosmicomics are known to appeal to science fiction readers and could therefore be considered crossover (or genre-audience-friendly) books. However, I doubt Calvino was thinking of them that way. Additionally, science fiction is often written with a kind of literary ostentation and, whatever the merits of the end result, is often quite ambitious. However, I doubt those writers are thinking of the books as literary in the sense of occupying some literary niche. Thom Disch was a science fiction writer so literary in temperament that he was at one time an editor of the Paris Review. However, his books seem only to be considered literary by fans who dislike that aspect of his writing. Ellison and others thought him precious, which he was not.

Additionally, SF has traditionally been the genre in which one could play with experimental (or quasi-experimental, if you prefer) style without alienating or disappointing one's audience. J.G. Ballard's middle period is a famous example of this, and the experimentation in Atrocity Exhibition seems the side-effect of his temperament rather than literary ambition.

I make these distinctions to qualify, not refute, your provisional definition. Compartmentalization is useful and I don't mean to dismiss its usefulness. But it also can be arbitrary, even in Roland Barthes. (Luckily, Barthes knew that, which is why he had so much fun.)

I mention post-50s science fiction because of specific parallels to literary fiction. But SF isn't the only genre subject to placement ambiguity.

Years ago, I wrote a book that won an award for best contemporary fiction but was also nominated for the two biggest horror awards. For years after that, sellers placed the book in the horror and mainstream sections of their bookstores.

I found I didn't care where they put the book. I was thankful they chose to carry it in the first place.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Re your mention of Kurt Vonnegut:

Originally Posted by taosaur

We cease to see the work as sci-fi, the easy example being Vonnegut.

Vonnegut's literary classification had far more to do with his accessibility and embrace of crossover status than his eventual subject matter. Crap Artist didn't change Philip K. Dick's status as a science fiction writer, nor has Chip Delaney's later work changed his: Both felt at home with the idea of being consigned to what Wm. Gibson calls "the golden ghetto." Whereas Vonnegut was delighted to find his way out of a genre he seems to have considered intrinsically flawed and gaudy.

[People] love to stay up all night, arguing the question, "What is science-fiction?" One might as usefully inquire, "What are the Elks?"

The lodge [called science fiction] will dissolve. All lodges do, sooner or later. And more and more writers in "the mainstream," as science-fiction people call the world outside the file-drawer, will include technology in their tales, will give it at least the respect due in a narrative to a wicked stepmother. Meanwhile, if you write stories that are weak on dialogue and motivation and characterization and common sense, you could do worse than throw in a little chemistry or physics, or, even witchcraft, and mail them off to the science-fiction magazines.

-- Kurt Vonnegut, "On Science Fiction"