I’m not beneath ending a book if I don’t like it. In fact I often stop reading books I do like, because I’m distracted by something else. In fact, I’ve recommended books I never finished.
But I’ve been trying to get some finishes under my belt.
The hard no for me is Wuthering Heights, which has irritated me since high school.
I loved her sister’s book though, Jane Eyre.
I write genre but I sometimes get the question “Have you ever thought about writing literary fiction?” If there’s anything literary about my style it’s because I read so broadly, and will give anything a chance. Some good writing advice I received is to know your genre but read broadly because otherwise you’re just rehashing the same old genre tropes. I love those tropes, I do, but I aspire to more complexity than your standard dime-store romance novel (not that there’s anything wrong with writing or reading those, I’ve read some good ones.)
Sometimes I feel constrained by genre too. Sometimes I wish my genre allowed more ambiguity. And more subtext.
I think that’s a dangerous phrasing. It’s all genre. “Literary fiction” is a genre, too. And it’s not inherently superior to science fiction, or mystery, or romance (though any of those genres might just not be to any particular reader’s taste).
I might have a more narrow view of genre than the average person because I’ve deconstructed the hell out of it as a writer. A genre to me is a collection of tropes and types of scenes that is specific to the kind of story being told (I got this idea from Story Grid.) In this view, literary is a style of writing, not a type of story. Literary fiction could be any one of those genres. Pride and Prejudice is textbook romance and a literary novel at the same time. It pretty much defined the genre. And that’s the dream (for me.) To write something that honors all these reader expectations for its genre but also delivers something nuanced and complex at the same time.
(I understand not everyone has this view and there are other, just as valid, views.)
Only, it’s even more complicated for me because I write action romance, so I’m trying to nail both action and romance genres at the same time and also write speculative fiction in a literary style, all in one book, which is maybe impossible.
It sounds like you’re using “literary fiction” to mean the same thing I mean when I say “classic”. But consider all of those novels that say “A Novel” on the cover. That’s a genre, too. And it usually gets called “literary fiction”, but most of it doesn’t come anywhere near the quality of Pride and Prejudice.
I agree there is bad literary fiction. I have read it. But I guess what I mean to say is that you can have a bunch of different types of stories wrapped in a literary style. Literary doesn’t tell you what type of story it is. There are literary stories about maturing/coming of age, undergoing a worldview shift, redemption, romance, etc. Whereas, if something is marketed as a romance or a thriller, there are a certain set of expectations the reader has about what type of story they are going to read. If you start a thriller with a meet-cute and there’s no villain, people are going to be mad.
I’m just thinking about how pissed off people were about the screen adaptation of Watchmen because they thought they were going to watch a superhero movie not a deconstruction of superheroes movie. Not that it was a good movie. But that book is a literary masterpiece, not a failure of the action genre.
I would consider science fiction similar to literary fiction in that way. Same with fantasy. Though with either of those there are also reader expectations. It’s complicated.
I worked as a librarian for thirty something years, and I wouldn’t have the patience to plow for any of those at this point. I did read five of them, but only because they were assigned. I’m not the kind of librarian who likes to read fiction books anyway. More power to anyone who can do it.
It’s interesting you found Dune a slog when it has some of the most intriguing characters in SF, from Paul to Jessica to the Baron Harkonnen. Dr.Yueh is a complex person who plays a small but vital role in the story and his motivations are a key part of how he impacts Paul’s life. Gurney Halleck is a singing soldier, recites poetry and plays a stringed instrument.
Then there is Pardot Kynes, the planetary ecologist who transformed the Fremen into global shepherds acting to transform Arrakis. He helped some fremen teens and then was taken to a secret seitch, and while he’s busy preaching about ecology the fremen are deciding that he’s an outsider and must be killed. But the man assigned to do the task falls on his own knife, setting in motion the complex interaction that leads to Paul being able to join the fremen.
I mean, sure, there is a lot of complex politics with unfamiliar terms, and a feudal society in spacefaring universe. There’s complex cultural aspects from Bene Gesserit teachings and trainings to fremen religion and culture to the fancy dinner party held on Dune to learn about the viscious belittling practices that the Harkonnens had created to keep the native Arrakkeens in check.
Ask of which gives Dune a rich, complex depth rarely seen in science fiction, at least prior to Dune.
Again, I’m still confused what constitutes “literary style”. Reading that list doesn’t help.
I’ve read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Scarlet Letter, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Red Badge of Courage. Admittedly a couple of those were for school eons ago.
Other than being period pieces, I don’t know what makes them “literary” and Dune or The Lord of the Rings not.
I’ve read Hornblower and Honor Harrington, the Pocketbook Star Trek novels and the Holmes stories. I get the difference between a fast adventure and an epic saga, a politics of 19th century Britain and an examination of the meaning of life and happiness. But “literary” seems vague and undefined.
In school, I prided myself on reading the assigned books. I read “Silas Marner” in 10th grade. But then I got “The Return of the Native” (Hardy) in 12th and I absolutely couldn’t get through it. It drones on and on for 20 chapters on the “red heath”. I just couldn’t take it.
I think of “literary” as having more emphasis on the language style and the complexity of or attention to the storytelling. That’s different from whether a book is a “classic” or keeps you reafing.
So you could write, say,
Bilbo Baggins lived in a comfortable underground house. He was a “hobbit.” Hobbits like this kind of house.
As compared to
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
They convey the same basic information, but Tolkien gives us more evocative, specific, rhythmic, and even poetic language. Not in every sentence, but enough that the writing style itself is part of what makes reading memorable. It doesn’t have to be highly descriptive, and it might or might not be easy to read, but the language and storytelling matters as much as the story.
So, Bujold. She’s a good writer and I’ve read everything she’s written. Most of her books are engaging and clever, but I don’t think of them as literary, except her Curse of Chalion trilogy. It takes place in the same world as her later Penric and Desdemona series, but when I think about why these two sets of books strike me differently when both are good and by the same writer, it comes down to this distinction between literary and non-literary fiction.
One of my beta readers likes books that tell a good story that he can read pretty quickly. He reads because he wants to know what happens next. He’s not interested in the writer’s word choice, and wants straightforward language and plot with some twists so it stays interesting. He wants as much suspension of disbelief and immersion in the story as possible, and noticing the language gets in his way. He hated my novel and couldn’t get through it. He also hates The Road, The Hobbit, Virginia Woolf, Kafka, Umberto Eco, and nature writing like Annie Dillard where “nothing happens.” That’s fine, and he’s not likely to enjoy anything I write.
We classify things as a way of discussing or evaluating them, and Literature is a category that has been debated and derided for (probably) centuries, in part because it has accrued some prestige and classism along the way. That said, the OP gave their definition, that is: fiction reading that is complex enough to require a higher degree of attention, and I’m fine with that table-setting, because it’s an effort to share a very particular experience.
I’d also be fine without the taxonomy, and with just discussing the joy of working at a complex text. Because, to the OP’s point, it is incredibly satisfying. But, I’d add: I always keep one difficult book and one easy book going at the same time.
I think he’s one of the best characters in literary history.
Yeah, I wouldn’t discount those things. It’s a combination of my difficulty holding a bunch of details in my head at once and my general sensitivity, I had a hard time with it emotionally, especially the mother-son relationship. I don’t know why. I might try to finish it eventually.
Yes, I think I agree. That’s one of the issues I had with Story Grid (besides it being a cult.) There was incredible emphasis on story and scene construction as the key to good writing and no discussion of individual story beats, prose, etc. But those things are just as important. To me they are distractingly important. I can dither for weeks over getting the language just right.
I was up late again reading The Lathe of Heaven. What a story.
There are unedited 20,000 pages-per-week web serials but there are also novels composed over years with the aid of notebooks crammed with tables, charts, indices, formulae, and references such that every aspect is deliberately crafted and reward the diligent reader, and then some, in the way @Spice_Weasel described.
I love Henry James, but I admit he often takes a lot of work. Oddly, I don’t find many of his big better-known works as memorable or striking as some of the others.
I recommend the short novella The Spoils of Poynton for anyone who enjoys houses and their furnishings and how they affect lives. And What Maisie Knew is another of those “quiet family horror” classics, with one of the most poisonous divorced couples in all literature.
In defense of James’s “transitional” realism-modernism style, I’d add that a large part of the life-defining stuff for upper-class Anglo-Americans in the late 19th and early 20th century did happen in chat in the parlor or walks in the garden. If somebody wrote a realistic novel today about “terminally online” people whose interactions and expression mostly take place on social media and messageboard discussions etc., it would have a similarly claustrophobic feel with all that constant verbal processing.
But yeah, none of that is to say that James is a universally beloved unflawed writer or that everyone needs to like his work.
I agree with the sentiment in this thread that literary fiction can take work, but well done works are fascinating and worth the effort. So I definitely don’t require car crashes or explosions to hold my attention.
But for Pete’s sake, do something once in a while in addition to sighing in the garden.
Another annoyance (I guess I’m betraying how lowbrow I am): I get it! Stop explaining! I’m currently halfway through Steppenwolf, and I don’t need endless pages explaining the Steppenwolf and the torture he endures. Get out of your apartment and, I don’t know, do something other than whine.
Hmm, I diagnose exposition overexposure due to excess consumption of pre-midcentury transitional modernism, and prescribe intermittent doses of Hemingway and Raymond Carver for symptom relief.
