Kavalier and Klay Toni Morrison's Paradise Maybe IJ although it has a massive WTF? quotient chez moi(what's on the Entertainment, so I could go on with my life? Feel free to e-mail me.) Seconding Plei's Atwood emotions.

George Saunders.

My nominations for canon-worthy evwen in the future- Alice Walker- The Temple of My Familiar or The Color Purple
John Irving- The Hotel New Hampshire The World According to Garp or The Widow for One Year. I also think Irving would make a good addition to "canon" because of the various similarities that run through his work and then a sort of break from them in his last three books.

John Irving- The Hotel New Hampshire The World According to Garp or The Widow for One Year.

I've only read A Prayer for Owen Meany. It took me some time to get used to his rather Dickensian writing style, but I loved how all the little digressions you thought were irrelevant ended up being important by the end.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is my least favorite-- not that I didn't like it. The ASSCAPS drove me a bit buggy though.

I can see how yuo find his writing dense, although strangely I don't have a problem-- I just zip right through. Dickens I find myself skipping scads and scads and still really getting the story. Perhaps this is because he wrote most things as serials-- so no revision? (If this is correct).

PC-- as long as you don't find brother-sister incestuous love unbearably squicky, I would definately suggest giving Hotel New Hampshire a try-- I find it has lovely things to say about the art of really living through the tragedies of life. Plus-- a bear on a motorcycle and German Prostitutes!

PS-- my keyboard is really dying and i am having an swful time with capital I's (must press the caps lock key, and not shift-- and commas whof which I either get none or 500! So please excuse the excreble typing.

PC-- as long as you don't find brother-sister incestuous love unbearably squicky

Did you miss the part where I love Faulkner and Quentin Compson is my homeboy?

Plus-- a bear on a motorcycle

I keep hearing about Irving's thing with bears, and there were no bears in Meany. I felt gypped.

Did you miss the part where I love Faulkner and Quentin Compson is my homeboy?

I'm hoping you don't pattern your life too closely on his....

Did you miss the part where I love Faulkner and Quentin Compson is my homeboy?

BWAH! I think I need to re-read Faulkner. I read several books- The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying and a book of "Southern Nysteries". I have only read them once, so I have little to no memory of them.

I don't know if anyone else has this problem-- I need to read a book 2 or 3 times befor I have any real recall of it (unless I read it for a class in which case I recall the discussion). All the books I can speak of in-depth I have read upwards of 3 times-- so I can speak with knowledge about comparatively few books, and many, many of those are classic youth stories and serials, some of which no one else seems every to have heard of.

I honestly think "literary fiction" is too vague of a term, and its description too amorphous and subjective, to call it a genre or sub-genre. Any two people could read the same novel and disagree on whether the emphasis was on language over character, etc.

So how would you define "literary fiction"?

And if the emphasis *is* on language over character, that really seems -- to me -- to be the authorial equivalent of masturbation.

Emphasizing language doesn't mean character is unimportant. I also don't see a delight in language as any less directed at the reader than an investigation into character.

But then I don't see anything wrong with masturbation, either.

My nomination for future canon-worthy? Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Gorgeous language, Good and Evil, and one of the coolest fathers in a book, ever.