To quote from the 1959 Encyclopedia Britannica on its article on the “Novel”:
Since then it seems, sadly, the difference has continued to grow. Most novels that for instance have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in recent years are difficult to read and digest.
I don’t see any difference between now and the 1950’s in the types of novels that have won the Pulitzer Prize, nor do I find them difficult to read or digest.
I do think that more people are wedded to literary niches and find it difficult to follow a modern novel if it doesn’t feature elves and princesses, for one example.
Popularity and quality are independent variables. Some popular books are great books; some great books are unpopular; some lousy books are very popular; and some lousy books don’t sell worth beans.
raises hand That pretty much describes me, yup.
I’m still wondering…seriously wondering…why A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was ever considered good reading, much less required reading.
I have yet to make it past the first few pages, and have always been scared to death to tackle Ulysses in fear of furiously fragmented flippancy. :dubious:
People read…well, I read…for several reasons. Entertainment is one of them, but the chance to be simply astounded by a sentence, or truly delighted by a turn of phrase, is also important. Not many authors can both interest me and intrigue me, and that’s ok. I get plenty of enjoyment out of what many folks would call trash, and can be bored silly by some pretty damn good writers. It really just depends on the mood.
I really adored Portrait when I first read in high school. I was 18 and something about it just clicked – I think I related to it very much, especially Stephen’s teenage religious issues. I reread it last year at 25 and it felt much less immediate and rather less fun than my first read. I wonder if that might not be the issue for you…though upon rereading your post, I guess the style might be more of a concern. 
It’s less fragmented later on, certainly not like Ulysses. Hell, I have a degree in Irish literature and a keen interest in 20th century lit and I haven’t finished Ulysses yet. It sits on my bookshelf, taunting me with its bookmark firmly wedged somewhere around the 3rd chapter.
Joyce’s work is important, I think, because it’s been influential. Even if you don’t much care for it personally (and goodness knows I don’t really like Joyce much myself, for all that I did love Portrait once), there certainly are plenty of writers who liked it enough to try their hand at a similar style. It makes for a curious sort of popularity, I guess.
As for good vs popular…I would agree with others that it’s a false comparison. Books can be both or neither or just one. And I rather doubt that there has ever been a time when commercial considerations were not a factor in publishing novels, regardless of the doom and gloom from the Encyclopedia Britannica writer about the future state of the industry, so it seems a bit odd to criticise novels for appealing to the masses only in 1959.
Tom Wolfe’s books are very popular and also very good (critically acclaimed, not just in my opinion.)
I personally feel the influence of the novel as an artform peaked in the 19th century. The dominant influential artform of the 20th century was the film.
Absolutely true. And, I think we are seeing that the dominant artform of the 21st century so far has been television. The writing for television series today is orders of magnitude better than the average cinema film.
I gave up on ‘literary’ novels about a decade ago, when I realised that most of them just weren’t that enjoyable. I think The Life of Pi was the straw that broke the camel’s back. A Booker prize winner I came away thinking it was about as enjoyable as a fair to middling genre novel. And on further reflection I realised that the last dozen or so ‘serious’ novels I’d read hadn’t even reached that level.
So it’s been elves and princesses (and spacehips) for me from then on.
I look at literary fiction as just another genre of fiction. It’s fine if that’s what you like. But fans of literary fiction should stop acting like their genre is inherently and universally superior to everyone else’s. There’s good literary fiction and bad literary fiction just like there’s good mysteries and bad mysteries or good science fiction and bad science fiction.
Awww…
I really enjoyed The Life of Pi. That said, my junk food reading these last couple years has been Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and Brett’s The Warded Man and Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicles. So yeah, I’m no stranger to popular fantasy fiction.
I’m still a literature (and art) snob. I enjoy the above books to death, but they’re still literary junk food. Pleasurable, but fleeting.
Thank heavens no published modern rubbish like Finnegans Wake way back when. It would have given Tristram Shandy a case of the vapours.
Gamehat I did actually like Life of Pi, it’s just that I like books in my favoured genres somewhat more.
Little Nemo’s summed it up well I think - literary novels are just another genre, and one whose golden age is long past.
Thank goodness nobody published purulent, disgusting nonsense like Gulliver’s Travels in the pure lily-white 1950s. It would have sent the whole of Boston into the terminal fits.
I have room for both. Some of the more literary novels I’ve enjoyed are Wolf Hall, Life of Pi, and The Name of the Rose. I also read Discworld, Harry Potter, LOTR and recentely Robin Hobb. My popular reading outweighs my literary reading considerably. I’m very glad both that there are good writers who focus on story-telling, and that there are books available with much more depth to them than The Da-Vinci Code.
I wouldn’t call those literary junk food. Rothfuss in particular I think is one of the best writers to come along in years. If the Booker Prize and such included genre fiction, I think he’d be a shoo-in.
EDIT: I liked The Life of Pi, too, although my suspension of disbelief snapped when he found the island of carnivorous plants.
Indeed, deliberately difficult fiction is clearly an artefact of the 20th century.
A novel can be classified as “good literature” for purposes of this discussion if it might, conceivably, someday be assigned or optional reading in high-school English classes.
Stating it that way should make it clear enough that “good literature” is not necessarily worth your time to read. Think back to high school, when you were expected to read Wuthering Heights* while you couldn’t wait to get back to Lord of the Rings.
With appropriate substitutions for “novels” and “literature,” can’t this be said of any form which has attained great popularity in some of its works?
I’m completely baffled by this. What is a “genre” characteristic of “literary fiction” that would distinguish it from other genres?
I would have said, rather, that the best mysteries, the best science fiction, are literature. The Lord of the Rings (the book) is assuredly literature in every sense that I understand. It certainly wasn’t produced to meet the expectations of a commercial industry.