Which books do authors need to read?
Ooh ah, literary, ooh, ah, literary, feels like nothing's gonna happen this yeeear
Today’s Bowie lyric subtitle parody was brought to you by TELLING LIES
Elitism and gatekeeping are some of the worst parts of any artistic community. But do elitists have a point? Is there a superior genre of literature that better equips writers to tackle ‘human problems1’ than any other genre?
The short answer is: Apparently.
According to a few people, that genre is ‘literary fiction’. If you just sighed and walked moodily out of the dimly lit sepia toned instagram cafe with typewriters in where people cry into coffees, I understand.
If you’re a fan of me, you’re probably not that into the more pretentious end of literary fiction, despite my reputation for making people cry about robots. So, I guess that means I am safe to rant about ‘literary fiction’ until the cows come home and sign the cow divorce papers in a creaking old 1800s Americana homestead whilst a saxophonist laments hurting his fingers building a cot for a baby that was never born, or something.
*BEEP BEEP BIP BEEP*
INITIATE RANTING PROTOCOL
Literary fiction is supposed to be emotionally intelligent, clever, and sometimes witty. It very rarely shows unusual scenarios or deep worldbuilding because why would it? It is concerned mainly with an ‘emotional landscape,’ or an attempt at saying something philosophical. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Even for someone like me, who prefers the ‘human vs universe’ style of socratic dialogue to push a narrative (Stephanie frequently argues with reality itself, for philosophical and comedic reasons) it makes sense to sometimes write or read a story that is set on earth, that does put the regular human first, that does unpick some issue you might otherwise struggle with.
Because good literary fiction, for me, explains something I didn’t get before. I wish I could remember the name of it, my favourite short story in the litfic genre was about someone going through the menopause, something I will never truly understand due to my hardware, but something that was written about so eloquently I could not help but be interested. If I find that story again, I will post it here.
But most litfic is not that interesting. I think this is because most people are not that interesting. I don’t pretend to be interesting, but I like to hope my stories are. It’s easier for us Sci-Fi people; if we have normal lives we can invent abnormal ones in our books. Litfic authors don’t do this. Either they find real life interesting enough, or they don’t know how to make a fake world up.
So what do I dislike about most ‘litfic’?
It takes the most emotional parts of modern poetry and spreads them even thinner than before, layering a transparent film of tears and saliva and fruit juice and sweat (in that order) over a manuscript. It takes plots and pushes them to the side, making heavy space for ‘character driven’ storytelling. It is this storytelling that is meant to be deep and meaningful, at least to the people I’ve asked about it. But it isn’t usually. I’ve been to the real world. I currently live there against my will. I have seen toilets and crossed busy roads and eaten biscuits and drank tea (though I don’t know how to do it properly, as I’ve only tried thrice).
Of course, there are litfic elitists who I’ve met who are probably not allowed to donate their organs because surgeons worry their pungent arrogance might live on in their abused livers - but for the most part, like most people2, people who enjoy literary fiction are normal, well-adjusted members of society. They can go to the shops, they can hold a conversation, and they have an amount of sexual partners that pleases them. Some of them have hobbies, and many manage to etch out fulfilling lives. So it’s not terminal. If you think literary fiction is good, you can still enjoy your life.
(I said I would be mean)
I find sometimes when people say 'literary fiction' they seem to mean stories about recently divorced characters talking for 8 pages about an orange. I've read a few 'literary' short stories which were incredibly dry, brutal things to scrape through. Stories of people staring at vases and thinking about mowing the lawn, both things which the writer could have made interesting but decided not to. Stories about old ladies talking about other old ladies who once put up wallpaper but then took it back down because the house got warm. Stories about endless American fields and how one of the character’s grandfather’s sister’s primary school teachers once got cancer and how she painted a picture of a hedge and her daughter had an affair with a priest. Those are all real examples, most of which are from the same terrible story I read at uni. If you know what story it is, comment below and I will bore you to death with a poem about the froth on coffee.
So to me, ‘literary fiction’ means ‘books about humans living on earth doing normal human things which are meant to be very interesting, but are not, because I am a human doing human things and I want some escapism in my literature.’ but I understand that is not a catchy title. And I don’t think all litfic is bad either, it’s just people throw the label over the bad literature like a heavy tarpaulin covering up a hideously deformed radioactive mutant baby.
As you can tell, I have a bad relationship with the ‘literary’.
I have a bad relationship with the ‘literary,’ not least because it is often strictly in the domain of traditional publishing, and I take a project-by-project approach to my books, but because in many cases, it takes its refusal to be interesting as a sign of its inherent superiority. It looks down its nose at Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and others. It is “the proper way of writing” (and I have heard that in several ways over the years). So maybe it’s not the genre itself, maybe it’s the fans, which is funny. If that’s true, if it’s the fans that ruin it, then literary fiction isn’t as far from Star Wars as it wants to be…
That said, I think there is a sweet spot between 'easy reads' and 'literary stuff' where a novel can be both literary and fun. People often look down on genre fiction but writers like Asimov or Heinlein managed to make the human aspect of things entertaining. The complex emotional landscape, whatever you want to call it, was not the main bulk of the stories but it was an important piece of the puzzle. They were somewhere between the categories. The characters were real, three-dimensional (if not more-dimensional) humans who related their human experiences to the strange and fantastical. To me, that is proper existential literature. The stuff that frames us tiny primates in the timeline of an entire universe. It’s beautiful to find a human out there in space, like finding a small flower tucked away in a cliffside. Both life forms are fighting to stay alive in a universe typically unaware, ignorant, or actively fighting against their existence. It’s a beautiful story and I don’t care how often it is recalled or retold.
So I don’t hate the literary, really, but I did enjoy the above rant. It’s good to be mean-spirited sometimes. Nice to vent.
My point is that ultimately, any good story transcends these reductive boundaries between genres, and that therefore any conclusion about which genre is best for developing a 'complex worldview' is biased by which books are thrown into which categories.
In my view, the best Sci-Fi does not take itself too seriously. The best poetry is accessible. The best short stories are entertaining. The best litfic is fun. And much as it might irritate some academics, the entertainment value of a book is what keeps most people reading3.
To conclude, I think genre boundaries are useful for marketing, but not for assessing a book's impact on an individual, as that individual may pick what they read based on their personality, rather than their personality being informed by what genres they read. It's impossible to see which is which.
This post was inspired by this article,
which in turn was based on this.
https://www.nickbuttrick.com/files/PSPB2022Preprint.pdf
‘human problems’ would be an interesting lofi hip hop band name, and was also the diagnosis my Martian doctor gave me after I trapped my left testicle in a starship door.
This is a rare moment of kindness. Cherish it, for I shall not be providing more (only joking, free book coming soon).
That is, unless the reader hates themselves or wants to show off, in which case they'll suffer through a boring book just because it was on a reading list. We've all known a few of them.
Sounds like we might share some similair experianes of the poetry circuit; it's part of the reason why I started a Substack.
Humour is vastly underarted as a tool and often undermined.
What are the names of your collections?
I enjoyed that article. I veer towards literary fiction over sci-fi but I’m certainly not averse to the idea that the former can be shite and the latter can be brilliant.
I think you’re right in calling out the snobbery of some aspects of it. Same can be said of certain types of theatre and poetry.
But more importantly, your article made me laugh, mate. Great stuff