/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6070991]

>genre lit

[Anonymous No.6070999]

>>6070991
Oxymoron.

[Anonymous No.6071015]

>>6070999
>genre fic

[Anonymous No.6071026]

>literary fiction isn't a genre

[Anonymous No.6071043]

jojo is genre fic OP

[Anonymous No.6071050]

>>6071026
pseudoliterary fiction is a genre, literary fiction proper is not

[Anonymous No.6071051]

>>6071026
bait
>>6071043
yeah but it's not a book and nobody is pretentious about reading it hopefully

"lol I'm so well read I love asoiaf"

[Anonymous No.6071052]

>>6071026
It is literally not. It is an incredibly vague umbrella under which are works that have pretty much nothing in common in terms of plot, theme or style, unlike terms like fantasy, science fiction and horror.

[Anonymous No.6071070]

>>6071051
>yeah but it's not a book and nobody is pretentious about reading it hopefully
Actually there are ever since the Louvre exhibited work by Araki and other comic artists as a desperate bid to appear hip and relevant in the 21st century. Jojo fans love to bring this up when you call their manga stupid

[Anonymous No.6071095]

>>6071026
>>6071052
Regardless of your feelings on Michael Chabon as a novelist, he wrote a pretty good essay a while ago about the "realistic, quotidian moment-of-truth revelation story" and that seems to me to be a pretty tight and effective description of what "literary fiction" is, even if he was just talking about short stories.

There are enough conventions in "literary fiction" (infidelity, depression, white-collar jobs) that I think it probably qualifies as a genre. It isn't going to encompass everything but neither is any definition "science fiction" going to encompass everything that probably belongs under that umbrella.

[Anonymous No.6071098]

>>6071070
that's not really the same

[Anonymous No.6071103]

>>6071043
how?

[Anonymous No.6071110]

>>6071098
How is it not pretentious to try to legitimize reading a silly comic by the fact that work by the artist was exhibited at the Louvre?

[Anonymous No.6071114]

>>6071103
It is of the shonen fighting genre

[Anonymous No.6071118]

>>6071110
You're still a pleb if you haven't read Cicero, though. Time to rollick with the Romans.

[Anonymous No.6071122]

>>6071114
b-but he changed the game

[Anonymous No.6071126]

>TTKM thread
>sage

[Anonymous No.6071130]

>>6071110
>you're not allowed to read comics because I don't like them!!1!

You're the one who sounds pretentious m88

[Anonymous No.6071131]

>>6071095
>and that seems to me to be a pretty tight and effective description of what "literary fiction" is

I realize this is a common stereotype but it's completely wrong. First exception to cone to mind is Pynchon, excuse the meme. The fact is, even if a large portion of lit fic fits that stereotype, it is still not at all implied by its definition. It's like saying all sci-fi is cheesy space operas or edgy dystopian cyberpunk.

[Anonymous No.6071133]

>>6071095
>There are enough conventions in "literary fiction" (infidelity, depression, white-collar jobs)
Those aren't conventions of literary fiction, though. They are things that a few prominent works of literary fiction have been about

[Anonymous No.6071134]

>>6070991
>type in King Crimson cause I wanna hear real, artistic and dynamic music
>get animu

[Anonymous No.6071136]

>>6071134

[Anonymous No.6071137]

>>6071130
Wow how can you even manage to miss the point this fuckin badly

[Anonymous No.6071145]

>>6071136
>King Crimson vs Metallica
Lol what the hell kind of competition is this supposed to be

[Anonymous No.6071147]

>>6071134
>I wanna hear real, artistic and dynamic music
>types in King Crimson
you fucked up

[Anonymous No.6071152]

>>6071147
Faggot, I bet you never even into ELP, you popcore fag.

[Anonymous No.6071153]

>>6071147
True. Should have typed in Karlheinz Stockhausen or Brian Ferneyhough

[Anonymous No.6071155]

>You will have to get the blurays to get uncensored versions
why are you doing this to me, nippon?

[Anonymous No.6071159]

>>6071152
i don't like non-prog prog, sorry.
King crimson are alright, though
>>6071153
my dude

[Anonymous No.6071160]

>>6071145

[Anonymous No.6071167]

>>6071153
>muh obscure foreigners
>>6071160
what the hell

[Anonymous No.6071168]

King Crimson is one of the most original powers in literature history.

[Anonymous No.6071169]

>>6071131
Personally I would slot Pynchon under crime fiction or sci-fi before I slotted him under "literary fiction." He clearly takes as much influence from "genre fiction" as he does from lit fic.

>>6071133
Space travel is what a few prominent works of science fiction have been about, but I don't think that changes the fact that The Man in the High Castle and The City and the City are both probably best described as science fiction.

Ultimately genre distinctions are a little silly, but if we can apply them to mysteries and fantasies and stuff I don't see why we can't apply them to books about 40-something men lusting after younger women and having trouble sleeping at night because they wonder what it all means.

[Anonymous No.6071170]

>>6071167
Ferneyhough is English and not even slightly obscure faggot

[Anonymous No.6071171]

>>6071167
>i don't know anything about anything

[Anonymous No.6071176]

>>6071169
Genre is defined by tradition not thematic material by itself

[Anonymous No.6071178]

>>6071170
>>6071171
Yeah I knew you were popcore, I could recognize you plebs a mile away.

[Anonymous No.6071182]

>>6071178
>doesn't know about 'obscure foreigners'
>doesn't know what jojo is
yo

[Anonymous No.6071184]

>>6071178
>>6071178
IDK what that is as I don't listen to popular (genre) music.

[Anonymous No.6071185]

>>6071176
Right. And there is a long and established tradition of novels about the realistic social and personal difficulties of upper middle class men and women. That genre is "literary fiction."

[Anonymous No.6071187]

>>6071185
No it isn't

[Anonymous No.6071192]

>>6071182
>>6071184
Aha! fucking plebs, Aha! keep talking ignominious retards! AHA!

[Anonymous No.6071195]

>>6071192
Hah!

[Anonymous No.6071198]

>>6071169
>He clearly takes as much influence from "genre fiction" as he does from lit fic.

That's what makes him a good example, though, because he's as far removed from realistic slice-of-life as you can get and his works take obvious influence from genre traditions yet his focus on aesthetic and intellectual aspects still put him firmly under the lit fic category.

[Anonymous No.6071201]

>>6071185
Books like Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary aren't considered literary fiction because that's what they're about

[Anonymous No.6071216]

>mfw the only people that deny the existence of literary fiction are the ones that think they're too good to be categorized into a genre with the unwashed masses
cute

[H.Q.S.S.G No.6071219]

listen, genre fiction fans. u may be pleb but only slightly more pleb than "literary fic" plebs. prose is an inferior plebeian dweeblord form of expression

I honestly don't even see the point in arguing about it
>my pile of pleb shit is slightly less pleb than your pile of shit
congrats lmao. the poetry men r laughing at u all

[Anonymous No.6071223]

>>6071050
>literary fiction proper

No such thing, 'literary fiction' is a marketing category less than 50 years old.

>>6071052
It has a successful business model, strict boundaries (must be realist, can't be set too far in the past or it's 'historical fiction'), and a committed fanbase that reads little else, so it meets all the criteria of a genre.

[Anonymous No.6071228]

>>6071223
>No such thing, 'literary fiction' is a marketing category less than 50 years old.
It was only invented to distinguish real literature from genre fiction

[Anonymous No.6071231]

>>6071223
>It has a successful business model, strict boundaries (must be realist, can't be set too far in the past or it's 'historical fiction'), and a committed fanbase that reads little else,
None of those things apply to it actually, except possibly business model?

[Anonymous No.6071239]

>>6071201
In part, they are. When critics drew the line of what was considered "high" or "artistic" expression, they preferred novels about people like them struggling with things they related to over the fantastic.

>>6071198
So can The Dispossessed be "literary fiction" too because it's a great novel? Pynchon really is a sci-fi author (and frankly, has a lot more to say about science than most of them) who gets considered "literary fiction" for no reason other than that he's so undeniably good. Same thing happened with Marquez and Rushdie and Borges when people started using "magical realism" instead of fantasy because they didn't want to admit they enjoyed fantasy.

[Anonymous No.6071247]

>>6071239
>When critics drew the line of what was considered "high" or "artistic" expression, they preferred novels about people like them struggling with things they related to over the fantastic.
Except this never happened other than inside the brains of weird defensive nerds

[Anonymous No.6071254]

>>6071239
> when people started using "magical realism" instead of fantasy because they didn't want to admit they enjoyed fantasy

Magical realism is a completely different thing from pure fantasy though.

[Anonymous No.6071264]

>>6071239
>So can The Dispossessed be "literary fiction" too because it's a great novel?
If you feel it has aesthetic and intellectual merit feel free to argue so. I haven't read it so I can say.

Also, unlike most on this board, I don't consider genre and lit exclusive, so the fact that some books are both means nothing to me.

[Anonymous No.6071266]

>>6071239
Any critic who's worth anything will tell you that Borges is one of the greatest fantasists of the 20th century. Magic realism is a very specialized term invented by critics to refer to a particular kind of literature that includes fantastical elements, and which applies to Garcia Marquez more than anyone

[Anonymous No.6071278]

>>6071228
More like 'hmm, we need something to group Amis, Rushdie, Roth, and Raymond Carver together in bookstores.'

>>6071239
Part of it would be the fact that Pynchon has been published by mainstream publishing houses instead of sci-fi ones.

>So can The Dispossessed be "literary fiction" too because it's a great novel?

It can be a great literary work but it's much less clearly 'literary fiction' than a book like Never Let Me Go or Cloud Atlas.

[Anonymous No.6071287]

>>6071278
>It can be a great literary work but it's much less clearly 'literary fiction' than a book like Never Let Me Go or Cloud Atlas.
No it isn't and I don't care about bookstores

[Anonymous No.6071296]

>>6071254
This. If you've read magical realism and enjoy it and read say, the stormlight archive, you may vomit from the story's simplicity

[Anonymous No.6071314]

>>6071287
The market is the only situation where the term 'literary fiction' has any relevance, it has nothing to do with artistic value.

[Anonymous No.6071327]

>>6071314
Then the market is abusing the word "literary" and has no relevance to the discussion

[Anonymous No.6071437]

>>6071247
Not really true. When Hulk Finn was written, literary critics thought it was immoral pulp trash about a degenerate, especially inappropriate as it was the sequel to a children's book. The terms "literary fiction" and "genre fiction" didn't exist at the time in the way they do now, but Huck Finn was considered decidedly vulgar/"genre." It wasn't about the right topics. It's only become "literary fiction" over time.

>>6071266
>>6071254
Google Borges magical realism and you'll find plenty of people who disagree, which by itself kind of proves that nobody really agrees on the difference between fantasy and magical realism. I've read a ton of both and I couldn't tell you the difference except that the stuff that gets labeled magical realism tends to be better written. But "well-written fantasy" shouldn't be a genre any more than "good mysteries" or "not crappy spy novels."

>>6071278
I like both Ishiguro and Mitchell quite a bit as well, but I picked a Le Guin book because her work is more easily ghettoized into genre.

Look, again, genres are silly. But if you're willing to divide "genre fiction" off from "literary fiction" you should acknowledge that "the critically acclaimed realistic novel" has just as many hoary tropes as any pulp genre. I read a lot of both "literary" stuff and genre stuff and I don't find that I'm significantly more likely to be surprised by deviations from convention in either.

[Anonymous No.6072681]

>>6071437
>tropes
Was about to respond to this post but you had to misuse the word "trope" which is my litmus test for whether someone is worth taking seriously when talking about literature