Literary vs Genre Fiction

[Anonymous No.21483078]

What is the difference? I’ve tried looking online but most of the answers seem to be written by genre fiction readers/writers with a chip on their shoulder. They usually berate the literary genre as snobbish and elitist.

[Anonymous No.21483089]

>>21483078
>Literary Fiction
Written by people with a real education
>Genre Fiction
everyone else

[Anonymous No.21483126]

>>21483089
Is it that straightforward? Could you give me examples of literary and genre authors please?

[Anonymous No.21483190]

>>21483126
I'm not a search engine,bro.

[Anonymous No.21483204]

>>21483089
Not true. Michael Crichton graduated from Harvard and he wrote genre fiction.
>>21483126
>Is it that straightforward?
No.

[Anonymous No.21483240]

>>21483078
This is not a black-or-white categorization but more like shades-of-gray, and a handy, neat division, with rule-of-thumb-like tropes to divide them. When “genre fiction” becomes well-written enough, or simply a classic for whatever reason, it’s treated and studied as serious literature at its best (like some of Philip K. Dick). If Pynchon writes a historical fiction book (much of his work, actually) it’s rarely deemed such or majorly considered as such (as “genre fiction”) because he’s held to be sufficiently “literary,” similar for McCarthy (Western/historical fiction).

[Anonymous No.21483268]

>>21483240
So really any book can be considered literary as long as it’s well-written?

[Anonymous No.21483331]

>>21483268
That’s my opinion, yes, not necessarily everyone’s. But the respect the classic dystopian sci-fi novels (Huxley, Bradbury, Orwell) are given, gives some support for this, even if people looking to look smart on /lit/ deride it as “high school curriculum choices”. There’s also the lyricism of detective fiction like Raymond Chandler’s, often praised by critics.

[Anonymous No.21483352]

>>21483268
Depends what you mean by well-written. If you only mean prose, I don't think that's enough, but if you include thematic development, compelling characters, etc, then yes. In my opinion what differentiates genre from literary fiction is that genre is essentially poorly written clichés while literary fiction is well written avant-garde drama. Are clichés written in good prose automatically literary? In my opinion, no. You need more. Also, using detectives, knights or ghosts doesn't automatically make something genre fiction if they are part of a well-written avant-garde work.

[Anonymous No.21483362]

If books are boring, then they are literary fiction.
If books are entertaining, then they are genre fiction.

[Anonymous No.21483368]

>>21483362
More like:
If plebs think the books are boring, then they are probably literary fiction.
If plebs think the books are entertaining, then they are probably genre fiction.

[Anonymous No.21483419]

>>21483078
Literary is a genre, a shitty genre, as it is defined not by what it includes, but by what it excludes, specifically, anything included by the positive genres, which is to say, anything that makes it worth reading. Fuck literature, read what you like.

[Anonymous No.21483422]

>>21483419
>Literary is a genre, a shitty genre
Wrong on both accounts

[Anonymous No.21483439]

>>21483078
>genre fiction
Forget this term. If literary fiction is the higher tier of fiction then the category of works it describes achieve some sort of aesthetic and/or thematic value. The way it is written and/or expresses ideas lends itself to and rewards careful study. The difference between a higher and lower caliber work is the magnitude of the reward that careful analysis provides. That's what I think anyway.

[Anonymous No.21483450]

Literary is non-genre fiction, regardless of the quality of the writing. Comedy is also not a genre, but a tone. Every other definition is wrong.

[Anonymous No.21483458]

>>21483450
That just makes literary fiction a genre encompassing all that does not fit into a genre.

[Anonymous No.21483474]

>>21483458
No. A genre is a specific category composed of works with specific elements. If a work lacks these specific elements, they are genre-less. You cannot build a genre with non-specific elements.

[Anonymous No.21483475]

>>21483458
Being bald is not a hairstyle. Atheism is not a religion.

[Anonymous No.21483493]

>>21483089
Is it that straightforward? Could you give me examples of literary and genre authors please?

[Anonymous No.21483516]

>>21483078
https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/7/what-is-literary-fiction
The answer by 'Standback' is probably the most accurate description.

[Voluntary Fool No.21484099]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91gT68xeDMM

[Anonymous No.21484107]

>>21483516
>Literary fiction often eschews dramatic plot, viewing it as unrealistic, contrived (even if brilliantly so...), and/or as being a "cheap" way of generating excitement. It's less that nothing exciting happens, and more that events don't all occur along a clear dramatic structure; the events don't tie together neatly and with clear purpose, except to advance the more subtle theme and character examination.
"My ending sucks because it's meant to be le literary!"

[Anonymous No.21484236]

>>21483419
Picrel literally defines it as being character driven, eluding categorization, telling a complex story. Those are positive definitions. I think “avoiding categorization” is one of the most intensely deliberate and hard to manage efforts. I’ve worked in programs with a lot of young writers (8-13 range) and almost all of them start by working in a genre or convention that interests them, that’s easy to find a path in. Same was the case when I was I first started writing as a kid. This isn’t to say that one or the other is inherently better, but the title of “literary fiction” is usually giving to works which, regardless of setting and ostensible genre, transcend most comparisons to their peers by becoming a unique narrative artifact.

[Anonymous No.21484467]

Trying to pin things down with a list of essential features like 'plot-centric vs character-driven' is pointless. There's way more discussion of character and motivation in Games of Thrones than a Kafka novel.

I think you shouldn't look at abstract definitions but at the history of the split in writing and reading practices. There wasn't this distinction in medieval literature. The Canterbury Tales wasn't seen as exclusively ponderous high art or exclusively an entertaining, lewd poem. Literature was just the things people spent a lot of time carefully writing and a lot of time pleasantly, thoughtfully reading.

Then when books become mass-market commodities, people found that you could make a lot of money by selling stories that had an immediate exotic or illicit appeal and that corresponded to forms people were already familiar with. People liked reading about spooky gothic castles, and they liked knowing that if you buy a book called 'The Dagger in the Rose Garden' you're going get your gothic-castle pleasure centres stimulated.

And I think other writers then had to work to deliberately differentiate themselves from these genre forms that felt played out or overloaded with associations, like how modernist writing was a race to discover new unclaimed territory for consciousness, or like how in Austen's Northanger Abbey a character reads gothic novelist Anne Radcliffe and Austen's implicitly saying 'my novel is authentic, because it is a level removed from these familiar fictions'.

The genre-literature split is obviously a real thing but it's more useful as a way of understanding a tension in how society produces and consumes books than as innate essences that books either possess or don't.

t. Raymond Chandler #1 fan

[Anonymous No.21484571]

>>21483078
To use food analogies, it's like how some meals are prepared for a specific time of day: Breakfast, Lunch, Supper. While some meals are prepared just to have food.

Literary fiction is just cooking for cooking's sake.
While Genre Fiction is cooking to feed people regularly.

Maybe literary fiction is pancakes served for dinner instead of breakfast.

[Anonymous No.21484596]

>>21483078
>literary fiction (category)
>uncategorizable

[Anonymous No.21484604]

>>21483368
more like.
If retards who can't into philosophy like it it's literary fiction
If normal people like it it's genre fiction

[Anonymous No.21484609]

>>21483474
what specific elements are you talking about?

[Anonymous No.21484613]

>>21484596
That's called missing the forest for the trees

[Anonymous No.21484626]

>>21483078
Genre fiction: Formulaic, derivative, unimaginative.
You can usually find loads of books that should arguably fall under the scope of literary fiction in most well established genres.

[Anonymous No.21484632]

>>21484604
Best definition of literary fiction I've ever seen

[Anonymous No.21484641]

>>21484613
what am I not seeing, forester ser?

[Anonymous No.21484681]

>>21483078
If I like it it's literary fiction, otherwise not.

[Anonymous No.21484726]

>>21484641
The difference between descriptive adjectives and collective nouns.

[Anonymous No.21484794]

>>21483078
what do you find insufficient about your venn diagram? seems pretty clear to me. have you read any literary fiction?

[Anonymous No.21484796]

It's a completely nonsensical distinction, a recent anglophone invention for the sake of organising the flavours of goyslop on the book market more efficiently. Literally nobody else uses these terms unless they have contracted anglo brain rot. Of course you can't define them, nobody can.

[Anonymous No.21484800]

>>21484571
>To use food analogies
never do this if you want people to take you seriously

[Anonymous No.21484810]

>>21484604
>If retards who can't into philosophy like it it's literary fiction
But many philosophers read fiction. Not philosophy readers but philosophers themselves.
>If normal people like it it's genre fiction
Normal people are retards.

[Anonymous No.21484814]

>>21484632
It's genrefag cope.

[Anonymous No.21484829]

>>21484800
>Posting anonymously on 4chan
Your recognition means nothing to me.

[Anonymous No.21484844]

>>21483204
he graduated from harvard but he couldn't hack it as a english major. switched to anthropology in order to graduate.

[Anonymous No.21484850]

>>21484829
And your post means nothing to us.

[Anonymous No.21484940]

>>21484850
>us
It thinks it's people.

[Anonymous No.21485661]

The biggest difference is accessibility. Not anyone can make literary fiction, but anyone can make genre fiction.
Having said that, genre fiction does have the potential of being as good as literary fiction, but it does not happen very often. I'd actually say it happens rarely, but it does happen.

[Anonymous No.21485778]

>>21483078
Genre fiction authors like to create beauty.

Literature likes to destroy beauty.

[Anonymous No.21485820]

>>21484844
>he couldn't hack it as a english major
He didn't want to put up with the pretention of English majors while recognizing pretention is literally the only thing any post modern writers have.

[Anonymous No.21485833]

>>21483078
Literary fiction is when you read a book to feel smart.
Genre fiction is when you read a book to have fun.

Almost all dichotomies are false, btw

[Anonymous No.21485916]

literary fiction sucks, its always about boring normal people and their relationships

[Anonymous No.21485926]

>>21483089
R Scott Bakker and Gene Wolfe and Tolkien refute that.

[Anonymous No.21486284]

how is stuff by dosotevsky or balzac genre-less when they're really just dramas about annoying people

[Anonymous No.21486356]

>>21486284
Because you don't buy and read dostoevsky or balzac because 'theyre really just dramas about annoying people'. You do it because you care about the specific way that a dostoevsky novel is a million miles away from a balzac novel.

[Anonymous No.21486368]

>>21483078
Genre fiction makes me laugh and passes the time
Literary fiction makes me cry and want to kill myself
Simple as

[Anonymous No.21486369]

>>21485916
>*ahem*

[Anonymous No.21487229]

>>21483078
F Gardner and Robert Stanek would both be literary fiction I suppose.

[Anonymous No.21487273]

>>21484236
I can't think of a single book that transcends categorization. If it has any violence in it, and evades all other categorization, it is definitionally an action novel. if any characters go through ordeals during the violence, it is an action adventure novel

[Anonymous No.21487279]

>>21484236
the only way a book could avoid a genre categorization is if it is composed of grammatically correct but otherwise contextually meaningless sentences like that one consisting entirely of the world buffalo. however, one might then categorize it as genre esoterism.

[Anonymous No.21487288]

>>21486356
wtf is a ballsack novel lmao