What are the conventions of "literary" fiction?

Cafe Society
21

Lonesome Polcat writes:

This seems a bit simplistic to me. There’s plenty of character-driven genre and pop literature. As I’ve mentioned in another thread recently, Stephen King frequently seems to have no idea where his story is going, but he loves describing his characters and their state of mind (frequently microsecond by microsecond), and eventually has to forcibly yank the story back onto some sort of track. And he’s by no means alone. And many literary works have a well thought-out structure and plan. That’s not a hard-and-fast rule by any means.
As for your statement about pop fiction being genre fiction, it ain’t necessarily so. Again, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is now seen as The Great American Novel, and has been praised to the skies over and over (even if Hemingway would excise the damned Happy Ending), but it was written and released as Popular Fiction, and was condemned when it first came out as “trash”, scorned by Louisa May Alcott as unworthy, and banned by the Concord MA public library. Is Charles Dickens “literary”? I maintain that he was as popular and contriving as Stephen King in his day. James Fenimore Cooper, too. John Steinbeck’s stuff is surely “literary”, but it’s been very popular ever since it was published.

22

I see what you’re saying and even pretty much agree. However, I think the OP is talking about contemporary “serious” literature which is self-consciously literary, the sort of thing people read when they want to impress themselves and others with their sophisticated taste in literature.

Ain’t sayin’ there’s no such thing as good literary fiction, but let’s face it. A lot of that stuff is pretentious tripe.

23

Could we have some examples of “literary” fiction, please? I’d like to know what books you’re talking about.

24

This is one distinction that I’ve seen before, even if not everyone agrees with it. For example, from Wikipedia:

By some people’s definition, Nick Hornby’s novels are literary fiction (maybe even literary fiction at its best). They focus on characters and themes, not on action. They’re well and carefully written from a use-of-language point of view. They’re “serious”: they deal with real psychological and interpersonal issues and are meant to be read thoughtfully, not consumed and forgotten. They’re not genre fiction. And, what really clinches it for me, they’re not available as mass-market paperbacks.

25

scuirophobic, for the snarky answer I’d suggest that you check out books reviewed in the NY Review of Books.

26

I’d add “ambiguous ending” to your list of conventions. If it’s obvious what happened at the end, or what it meant, it’s not completely literary.

And Thudlow (may I call you Thudlow?), for the record, some “literary fiction” does go to mass market paperback, if it’s popular enough. Example - Life of Pi by Yann Martel. (which I liked and recommend. I usually like linear, easy to follow - meaning non-literary I guess - books, but I really liked this.)

27

Everyone here should read A Reader’s Manifesto, in which B. R. Myers dissects the prose of some of the more prolific practitioners of literary fiction (DeLillo, Proulx, McCarthy, Auster, and Guterson) and champions what he views as the far better, clearer writing of older authors such as Bellow, Conrad, Hemingway, and Twain.

It’s a very fun read even if you like the authors he’s savaging.

28

China Mieville talks about what we’re talking about as mimetic fiction–that is, stories that take place in a world very like the world we live in, absent anything magical or mythological. He points out that in the tradition of human storytelling, mimetic fiction is a distinct minority genre.

Obviously not all literary fiction is mimetic, but enough of it is that I think we can put it forward as a conceit of the genre.

Another trait that goes alongside no happy families and no happy sex: no stable marriages, at least not for the protagonists. These books tend to be obsessed with the failures of relationships.

And another one: villains are rare.

Daniel

29

I disagree that this is a trait of literary fiction, unless you’re defining the term idiosyncratically or in a circular argument. There’s plenty of fiction considered literary whose prose is pretentious, ponderous, and pompous; there’s plenty of genre fiction whose prose is pure poetry. All writing should aspire to great prose, in my opinion, not just the writing in the literary genre.

I should add that I think Cormac McCarthy is brilliant, and have been utterly captivated by his novels. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the literary genre, and people can do incredible work within it.

Daniel

30

One thing that I often notice (but of course I can’t think of any good examples now) in literary fiction is that symbols can be genetic. In stories about families, you’ll see images and themes recur from one generation to the next, and many times it is only the reader who sees the repetition, not the characters themselves. I always get a kick out of this.

31

There’s a quote from Kurt Vonnegut—actually he’s quoting his friend, graphic artist Saul Steinberg—that may or may not be relevant here: “There are two sorts of artists, one not being in the least superior to the other. But one responds to the history of his or her art so far, and the other responds to life itself.”

I suspect that many writers of literary (as opposed to popular) fiction are of the first sort, and that to properly appreciate their work, you also have to have some familiarity with the history of their art so far. I.e., they’re writing for other writers and literary critics, not for the common reader who doesn’t care how their work fits into the grand History of Literature.

32

That’s it. Look at a list of Pulitzer prize winners, and you’ll get a list of the very best of these books and their authors. Read enough of them, and patterns should emerge. I think I have a couple new ones that we’ve missed so far.

  1. Long philosophical digressions

  2. The setting is the here and now

More clear conventions of the genre, it seems to me. I have a very strong feeling that any doubters of these “literary” conventions just haven’t looked carefully enough. If the goal of lit-fic is to be outside every other genre, then I would guess most of them obviously fail. How could they be outside genre, when so many of them ape all of the others in so many ways? Take #10, that almost all the newly published books shelved under the “literature” heading in bookstores are about the present-time and real places. Sometimes you get one set in the not-too-distant future, like David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, but I don’t think you’d ever get a book set 10,000 years from now. Cormac McCarthy might be an important exception (e.g. Blood Meridian, which is a historical novel, and The Road, set in the not-too-distant-but-nevertheless-post-apocalyptic future; this second book is incidentally one of the first science-fiction Pulitzer Prize winners, though it isn’t shelved with sci-fi and fantasy). He seems to be a rarity, though.

And, as Baldwin notes, it might be accurate to claim that the goal of lit-fic is “Beautiful, lyrical, descriptive, soaring, penetrating, illuminating prose begging to be savored over and over”, but I doubt Exapno, with his experience in the industry, would dare assert that most of the books shelved under “literature” actually achieve this goal. I’d say lit-fic books have a higher batting-average here than “genre fiction” books do, but it seems a bit much to characterize it as a convention. On preview, I notice that Mr. Mapcase’s post was a response to Gestalt’s, and might’ve been a bit tongue in cheek.

So to try to head off squabbling: I think it’s better to have dispassionate descriptions of the genre instead of criticisms. This

isn’t helpful. I’m sure plenty of lit-fic books could be accurately described as painful and pompous, but there’s also a lot of beautiful stuff, too, even if you don’t like the style. As I asked in the OP, let’s keep the complaints out of this.

I kinda like the idea behind Dorkness’s “mimetic” idea, but I don’t think that it’s entirely accurate. The convention of the unhappy ending in lit-fic weighs pretty heavily against it being an accurate reflection of reality. Sometimes things work out for the best in the real world, but you probably wouldn’t know it from reading most of these books. Even the observation that everyone must eventually die isn’t such a downer unless you’re naturally pessimistic enough to treat it that way. And frankly, there are lots of rules for narratives that simply don’t correspond too well to reality. Still, calling these books “mimetic” instead of “literary” appeals to me. The ostensible goal is to reflect reality, but they never quite get there.

My goal in all this, by the way, is to start comparing the list of conventions we make with any actual “literary” (or “mimetic”) books I read to see how well these characterizations of ours actually hold up. I think that any fair study would thoroughly obliterate any suggestions that these works somehow dodge genre conventions, but it’s worth testing first hand now that I have more reading time available than I did before.

I think it’ll be a pleasant exercise.

33

I was thinking about this today, and the question of setting entered my mind. We’ve already covered the time aspect of it (generally not historical), but what about place? Are the settings overwhelmingly urban or do they also take place in more rural areas? North America or elsewhere?

I have the feeling that setting (place) isn’t too terribly important – the setting in Life of Pi is amorphous, to say the least. Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells (same woman who wrote Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, but Little Altars is magnitudes better, and both are much better than that movie) ranges from 1950s Louisiana to 1990s New York City. Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich jumps all over the 20th century, but is mostly focused on an Indian reservation in South Dakota. OK, so those are all non-urban settings. I’m having trouble of thinking of some books with urban settings – The Secret History isn’t really rural, but it’s not exactly urban, either.

Which raises another question. Most of what I’ve read in this, er, genre has been compilations of short stories – Little Altars and Love Medicine, for example. They both show characteristics of what we’ve seen here (dysfunctional relationships/family, substance abuse, etc.), but do anthologies belong with a discussion of novels?

And does something like Love Medicine count or is that another genre altogether? I’ve seen it shelved in literary fiction, Native American studies (despite being fiction), and strangely women’s fiction. Are Rebecca Wells’ works lit or women’s fiction?

And can something like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius be included? I guess it’s technically a memoir, but portions of it are fiction/exaggerated. How does that come into play when playing these genre games?

And are the examples here I’ve listed along the lines of what everybody else was thinking?

34

That’s an interesting point and definitely true, but that’s not what I meant by “real-world.” Implausibility is fine; what’s not fine in most of these books is impossibility. You can have the strange delightful or horrific coincidence. You can’t have the ghost, the god, the goblin.

Again, this isn’t true across the board. Magical realism is generally considered to be fine literature, and this standard has nothing to do with magical realism. It only applies to the mimetic tradition within literary literature.

Daniel

35

Damn I was going to make that point.

36

An obscure title that seems to have nothing at all to do with the story gives the book a good head start towards getting an award andthey quite often have very little in the way of background or description.

Off topic but thought Id mention it ,if your writing a Sword and Sorcery you MUST put in plenty of titles made up from two other words.
I.E. Craglord,Seaspear,Caverealm,Homeguard,Dickhead. etc.