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.

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.

And if the emphasis *is* on language over character, that really seems -- to me -- to be the authorial equivalent of masturbation. This is simply *my* opinion, and I have known to be totally crack-headed, but I think in any work of fiction, character is paramount. They drive the plot, make the writing compelling.

I would like to point out that there is no work of literary fiction which is not rendered in words. So it boggles me somewhat that you'd dock a writer for an emphasis on language. Admittedly, this is my college brainwashing, and betrays a strong Modernist aesthetic, but better written equals better altogether in my mind. I think Teppy's got a strawman going because other than Finnegan's Wake there aren't a ton of books considered masterpieces in English which focus exclusively on language. And even Finnegan was a purposeful exploration of what is possible with English, and expanded the range of the novel, pushing its boundaries outward, creating space for other writers to do more.

It is certainly an arguable point (and much criticism after the Modern area did engage in this argument. Note how I didn't use the dreaded "post-modern"...uh, shibbolleth) - but I can't treat an emphasis on language as a category on the same plane with character or plot. Character and plot are rendered in language.

And what does "an emphasis on language" mean except that more care and attention are paid to being well-written?

When you look at Van Gogh's cypresses, you don't discount his painting technique to compare the rendering of the cypresses with a photograph of a cypress. The way he paints it is the painting, and what makes distinctly his own.

I really think this notion that style is separable from content is illusory. Kavalier and Clay is the whole of Chabon's writing ability - his characters are vivd because of his facility with language.

Canon Balls: I don't think Alice Walker will survive into canon. She spends way too much time in dialogue with the surface issues of her time (and also her later works pitch story and character out for speechifying). I mean even among contemporaries among Black women novelists, I think Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid and Gloria Naylor will prove more durable.

eta: Mind - that's just my opinion. Alice Walker defenders should feel free to throw kumquats at me.

It's easier for me to think about genre writers who might prove interesting in fifty years. Again (with my bias showing) books which are better written, which do have a finer grasp of language endure. Also, historically, writers with very strong, distinctive sensibilities - which stand out even in their time - tend to last. Moreso than writers who only reflect the mores of their time. It's the extremely black, bleak perversity of Wuthering Heights (among other things) which makes it more than just a 19th century novel. As I've noted before, the damn thing opens with a bunch of dead puppies strung over the back of a chair. Dead puppies! That'll catch your attention. She makes Wm. S. Burroughs seem like a cuddly sentimentalist.

To counter my own point though (and in agreement with what Micole suggests) - I do also think each era produces its own kind of generic High Literary Prose Style.