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.)
Like Carver, and Ann Beattie, and Robert Olen Butler and them?Cause that's what I think of.(I mostly like them, btw.)
