I think it is mostly structural - though I will also note the following (very few comments) over the past year

for example:

Feb 25,
Ginger

I know a number of people who pretty much only read "literary" fiction and do give me a look of disdain when I admit to mainly reading mysteries, science fiction and nonfiction. I'm just not much on most modern literary fiction. I want something to actually happen. The New Yorker once ran a cartoon that was making fun of a lot of the stuff the New Yorker buys. A man is making a peanut butter sandwich and the caption says something like, "He smoothed the thick peanut butter across the bread, watching the slow swirls cover the rough texture of the bread. It reminded hiim of the peanut butter sandwiches his mother had made long ago, back in the house on the sunlit hill...." For me, at about that point, I would want something to explode.

Note two things. This is in response to a genre snobs - so the rage is justified. But she is putting down not individual works, but an entire genre - literary fiction. If someone put down science fiction in that way theyd get one hell of a smackdown - even if it was in response to someone putting down romance.

OK two more recent examples: from June 16

June 16

Susan W

This is where it helps to not give a damn about classifying them ... why does that matter?

not just one work.

Connie

I've never read Ulysses. It's one of those things, like eggplant, that people say you're supposed to appreciate, but which I've never been tempted to try.

Just one work - but unread, and a bit casually dismissive.

I think it is two things here. Certain types of books get (certain parts of 'canon') get piled on here more than any other genre. And you get away with dimissing the entire "literary fiction" genre in a way you cannot get away with any other genre in this thread. So those things combined do contribute to a little bit hostile atmosphere.

Oh and hec - was the bowlderized shakespear the version most people would read? I thought it was mainly professional performances. There was Lamb of course, but I always thought of Lamb as more late 19th century than mid or early. OK really big area of fuzzy memory here, so I'm preparing to be corrected.

Oh and hec - was the bowlderized shakespear the version most people would read?

It was really the only thing available. Corrected, accurate versions of Shakespeare didn't come around again as widely read until sometime in the 20th century (as I recall). Actually, it's not much different than the heavily edited versions of things like Wind in the Willows which are current now. You'd have to search to find an unexpurgated one.

And you get away with dimissing the entire "literary fiction" genre in a way you cannot get away with any other genre in this thread.

Can I just note that (while there are actually interesting arguments to be made for this case) calling literary fiction a genre drives me batfuck. Which may be one of the things that pings me here but literature is not bound by genre conventions. Certainly there are literary genres like Carver-esque minimalism or Southern Gothic, or New Yorker Short Stories. But I can't set Flannery O'Connor on the same shelf with Louis L'Amour anymore than I can talk about Three's Company in the same way I can talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (A deconstructionist would not make that distinction - but I'm not one and I do.)

Literature aspires to greater levels of complexity, sophistication, language, characterization. That doesn't exclude genre works which achieve those levels of quality. At all. In fact, I have my own canon of works which were written in genre and which achieve my standards of literature.

Hard boiled mysteries have a set of conventions which mark them as genre in a way that cannot encompass "literary fiction" which stretches (in today's discussion alone) from Moby Dick to Madame Bovary to Ullysses.

Right..the loner detective, cut off from the family unit...stuff like that.

Perhaps I was being unclear. It's a little hard to think back to February. I wanted to describe a particular kind of modern fiction that's currently dubbed "literary fiction." I don't particularly like the description either, and I certainly don't think of it as a genre. In fact, as I think my other discussions will attest, I like a great deal of "literary" fiction in the larger sense.

In fact, as I think my other discussions will attest, I like a great deal of "literary" fiction in the larger sense.

I was gonna note, you've spent more than a little of your time in the wilds of literature.

Just for the record, and the sake of clarification: Teppy if you read Moby Dick and you hate it you're jake with me. I disagree, but if you put the time in and read the whole damn thing then you're beyond reproach.

Can I just note that (while there are actually interesting arguments to be made for this case) calling literary fiction a genre drives me batfuck.

Hmm. I can see why, but in many (again, mainly modern) cases, I can also see why it becomes easy to genre-ize it.

To name a couple of my favs, I shelve Slammerkin with Possession, mentally. They occupy a specific slot in my head, much the same way as RAH and Asimov are mentally slotted into the sci-fi section. (These slots are not always entirely logical: my collection of pulp fiction is mentally slotted with my collection of vintage pulp true crime, for example.)

In fact, I have my own canon of works which were written in genre and which achieve my standards of literature.

Which is probably what's generally meant by "transcends its genre", an expression I have shockingly few issues with.

Susan W

This is where it helps to not give a damn about classifying them ... why does that matter?

In the interest of accuracy--IIRC, this was deb.

Which is probably what's generally meant by "transcends its genre", an expression I have shockingly few issues with.

I guess - except I don't think you have to transcend the genre to be read as literature. You can be entirely genre, just better written. If James Joyce took every trope of a western and invested all his writing skill into it then I wouldn't say he'd transcended genre.

In the interest of accuracy--IIRC, this was deb.

Yep. Or, I'm sure it wasn't me at least.

(And, FWIW, when I use the term "litfic," I'm referring to its modern incarnation, not the classics.)

Teppy if you read Moby Dick and you hate it you're jake with me. I disagree, but if you put the time in and read the whole damn thing then you're beyond reproach.

S'cool.