The Truth About Literary Fiction
Is literary fiction just the fiction of the mundane?
After all, when you strip out the romance, the humour, the murder, the mystery, the suspense, the thrilling, the action and adventure, the gore, the war, the crime, the western and history, the abnormal, the paranormal, the supernatural, the horror, the fantasy, the surreal, and the science, what are you left with?
The genre of the mundane—literary fiction!
Discuss.
3 Responses to “The Truth About Literary Fiction”
I heard the amusing idea the other day that literary fiction is ‘character’ driven rather than ‘plot’ or ‘magic’ driven. I suspect that this is actually an injunction against big plot, but taken literally, wouldn’t we have a group of characters standing around doing nothing? Because anything they did would look awfully like a plot.
No, it’s not about the mundane. It’s about the depths beneath the mundane, after which all the plot and action seem mundane, because it hits us where we live, and are at our most raw and vulnerable. There is, of course, plenty of mundane literary fiction, just as most genre fiction is also mundane, mostly for being so repetitive.
I was looking through some first chapters of Lee Child’s books, and in every one Jack Reacher gets busted in the first paragraph. In Child’s most recent book he’s anticipating getting busted as he enters the Pentagon, and the reader is made to feel that he will get busted, and he doesn’t get busted. In the following Chapter we learn why not and the whole set-up becomes an annoyingly irrelevant. No reason for any of it, other than that’s the formula. How mundane can you get?
Bravo, Gents! Delighted to see two views expressed here, to add fuel to thought about what literary fiction is, and isn’t, when you strip it down to its essentials. I love to read other people’s point of view and thoughts on these kinds of debates.
And yes, Tim, I was playing the Devil’s Advocate in making my observation. Which, in part, was inspired by the continuing goads from Ursula K. Le Guin aimed at the venerable Margaret Atwood. Two amazing writers who give us great characters, intriguing plots in two very similar ways when you boil it down…making me wonder, is everything else really just setting?
Without great characters and a plot to move, motivate and carry the whole thing along, there is no story. So whether literary, or genre, maybe it’s a case of it’s all the same, just the window dressing changes, like the scenery in a stage play.
Thank you again for stopping by and commenting so thoughtfully on the topic.