Oof. I conked out for the night and missed more fun discussion.

And I'd like to nominate P-C, on account of he made me feel the stupidest with his Quentin Compson love and all. I have never been able to read more than six pages of Faulkner, ever; he makes my head pound with my total intellectual inadequacy and lack of anything, and people who read him willingly, for pleasure, are like unto demigods to me.

Eek! God forbid I make anyone here feel intellectually inadequate. This happens when you end up reading half of Absalom, Absalom! in one day cause you're so behind. That much concentrated Faulkner changes a man, I tell you. That and using the Cliffs Notes to figure out The Sound and the Fury on the second read. And really, my Quentin Compson love comes almost entirely from this one passage, which I love to bits, and if you can follow it, you might understand why:

Because you make so little impression, you see. You get born and you try this and you dont know why only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they dont know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way like five or six people all trying to make a rug on the same loom only each one wants to weave his own pattern into the rug; and it cant matter, you know that, or the Ones that set up the loom would have arranged things a little better, and yet it must matter because you keep on trying or having to keep on trying and then all of a sudden it's all over and all you have left is a block of stone with scratches on it provided there was someone to remember to have the marble scratched and set up or had time to, and it rains on it and the sun shines on it and after a while they dont even remember the name and what the scratches were trying to tell, and it doesn't matter. And so maybe if you could go to someone, the stranger the better, and give them something--a scrap of paper--something, anything, it not to mean anything in itself and them not even to read it or keep it, not even bother to throw it away or destroy it, at least it would be something just because it would have happened, be remembered even if only from passing from one hand to another, one mind to another, and it would be at least a scratch, something, something that might make a mark on something that was once for the reason that it can die someday, while the block of stone cant be is because it never can become was because it cant ever die or perish...

Okay, now that I look it up, it's not Quentin at all, but a letter from Charles Bon, but the point is passages like that are why I love Faulkner. Quentin I've apparently become attached to for other reasons.

Have you read or seen Arcadia? Lovely language. And I love Stoppard's way of layering his plot threads.

Mmm, that's a great play. Very funny, and yes, definite love of layered plot threads.

Though Stoppard's The Real Thing is playing locally this fall.

I saw that and wasn't that big a fan. It was like, "Ooh, adultery. All plays, ever, must be about adultery."

Does anybody have any contemporary stuff that they consider "lit'rachoor" that they would like to discuss? Perhaps things they think will be in "the canon" of the next century or something?

I have a feeling Cryptonomicon and/or the Baroque Cycle seems poised for longevity.

I'd love to shove Sean Stewart in there, but I think perhaps more people need to be reading him first or something.

Pleeeeiiii! Okay, I haven't actually read any Sean Stewart books, but he was the head writer of the A.I. web game, so technically I know what a great writer he is. Also, he knows my name. Well, he's probably forgotten it by now, but he addressed me by name in the post-endgame chat, and it surprised the hell out of me. Apparently, people take note of people named "Polter-Cow."

Ple & Nutty: Damn, you're two of the most analytical people I know and you weren't backing me? WHY??!!! I must blame it on my poor articulation of my position. But also...Damn you for your autonomy and differing conclusions!

I don't back people who are completely wrong-headed! More to the point, whether right-headed or wrong-headed, I have a habit of not backing people who come across as jumping down other people's throats.

Actually, most to the point, I still disagree with you completely and still don't see the stimulus that caused your outburst -- especially because I don't equate GREAT BOOKS WESTERN CANON with "literary fiction". The LF discussion was about recent books that don't fit a specific genre (and BTW it was Angus who loathed them loud and long); the canon is something else entirely, which I personally define first and foremost as recent.

Gibby's not alone in using brand names as short hand signifying social class and like that.

Personally, I loathe this habit is writers. I first came across it in full force in Dennis Lehane's first, and it made me crazy. It was so unbelieveably distracting, and added nothing to the story. Not having read Gibson much, I can't comment on whether it's useful to his anthropological enterprise, but it always strikes me as vaguely lazy when people like Stephen King do it. Also, it tends to make the story age poorly (as in Lehane's case), and my wittle brain is just foreseeing pages and pages of endnotes explaining each brand name for the audiences of 100 years from now.

One of my marks of a possibly-canonical work is if, reading it several times over my lifetime to date, it strikes me in different, but still powerful ways each time. When I read To Kill a Mockingbird at 11, I read it as Scout's and Jem's journey. When I read it again at 27, it was a novel about Boo Radley. (In both cases, I still worshipped Atticus Finch, but we never get anywhere near inside his head.)

I am too slow a reader to be very well-read; if I read one "classic" per month it would be all I read, and I would probably fall behind.

The LF discussion was about recent books that don't fit a specific genre (and BTW it was Angus who loathed them loud and long)

My ears are burning! (Quite true though, I do seem to remember getting on a high horse about literary fiction a few months ago.)

But I hear you all just had a big fight without me!

So, speaking of Sean Stewart, Salon is running excerpts from his new novel, Perfect Circle (which is excellent). Chapter One is here.

I don't think there's any point in trying to guess canon, and I disagree with David about "literary fiction"--it's a subgenre in exactly the same way cyberpunk is, the way "mainstream" is a genre the way "science fiction" is. Which is to say there are some broad general characteristics and tropes that books wthin each category share, although they are mainly treated as marketing categories.

I also think in fifty years it will be clearer what in Chabon and Stevenson are about our time instead of the past they ostensibly cover (I say this as an article of faith; I haven't read either).

In terms of litfic I think is worth reading -- this would be easier to answer if a third of my bookshelving hadn't collapsed Thursday, meaning many of my books are still in ignomious mounds on the floor. But I'll say: Margaret Atwood (I'd opt for Cat's Eye but I haven't read Surfacng), possibly Robert Olen Butler (need to reread), A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Edward P. Jones, Geoff Ryman's Was (as well as his more sfnal/fantastical work), Christina Stead (who should be better known than she is), Sarah Waters, Sandra Cisneros ... a lot of people in D-S who I'm going to be embarrassed to have forgotten when my books are cleaned up.

My list, of course, tends to books with elements of the fantastical and the historical, and to women writers -- because those are the things that interest me. So David's list, I am sure, would be quite different.

I'd also note that although we're in a historically rich period for the production of literature in English -- has the language ever been more widespread, or utilized by people of more different social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds? -- we're in a relatively poor period for the production of *translation* into English. A lot of what's going to be in the world literary canon centuries hence may be tremendously popular in its own language -- but invisible to the monoglot English audience, which is currently a notorious hard sell on translated literature.

Which is to say, yeah, that Haruki Murakami really blew me away.

I've been skimming The Kerfluffle, and I haven't seen any definitions of either "literary fiction" or "the canon." Did I miss them? Trying to guess from context isn't helping, as "literary fiction" would seem to overlap "the canon" quite a bit. Was there a post or two where these terms were defined?

goes back to reading the Star Wars books

I would define "mainstream fiction" as fiction without counterfactual elements in the environment, plot, or event; that is to say, they're unreal because they're fiction, but they don't contain fantasy or sf elements. I would define "literary fiction" as a subset of mainstream fiction which is characterized by some but probably not all of the following attributes: an emphasis on language above character and character above plot; structure based on epiphany or reverse epiphany rather than action; and with the class markers of certain publishers or lines.

Like sf, horror, and mystery, it only dates back to WWII as a genre, although like sf, horror, and mystery, it has significant precursors throughout history and particularly since the 19th century. (This is not a popular belief. But I hold it anyway.)

The canon is the set of works universities or educational authorities hold it necessary for a well-read person to know well enough to recognize allusions to. It's going to change based on time period, culture, university, and who you respect as an educational authority.

Which bit don't you think is a popular belief Micole? Because I would pretty much agree on every count. (Except that universities, at least lit departments, will these days generally say they don't believe in a canon or in the idea of being "well-read"--although of course in spite of that a canon of sorts is re-emerging.)

Most people I've talked to date the formation of genres further back than I do. WWII may be too facile, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense to use contemporary genre categorization to discuss works before the 20th c.--except very carefully, with lots of disclaimers--but I see a lot of people arguing for 19th or even 18th-c. dates of establishment.

I don't feel oppressed. ;) I just thought I should make it clear where my terms where less than generally accepted.

I don't have a sense of whether or not my ideas of "litfic" are accepted or not, since "literary fiction," as Raquel pointed out, is a term often used but seldom defined.

Hmmm, well of course the idea of genre itself is very old (Plato!) but it used to mean something much broader...fiction itself is a single "genre" in the older sense. But in the more recent sense where we talk about SF, fantasy, crime etc as "genres" I'd pretty much agree with you...all these genres have extensive genealogies but it's only recently that they've been considered distinct enough to have, say, their own sections of the bookstore. (Although crime/mystery might be an exception there... for example I think Penguin Books was using the distinct green covers for crime titles right from the beginning, ie 1935.)

Oh, and I really like your description of literary fiction!

I have just spent the last hour combing through our stacks. I found stuff I have that's been mentioned (usually they were bought at book sales) that I haven't read- Pligrim's Progress, The Things They Carried, I think there were one or two more.

Books that weren't mentioned- The Stranger, Siddhartha, Brave New World, Sheridan's plays, and some more (those were the first that popped into my head.

Also I have roughly 15 books on Shakespeare (not counting the actual plays and cute "Shakespearian Insults" type stuff. Some of them are wonderful insights into the works or the man, some of them I think are wrongheaded (Mr. Bloom I'm looking at you) but I've enjoyed reading every one of them. I was going to try to connect that to literary criticism, but now I don't feel like finishing that point.

As far as future cannon books, on my shelves Eco, Adams, Wodehouse, Irving, and Tom Robbins.

Agree with Plei and think Cat's Eye would be the one.