July 11, 2019
What Is Literary Fiction: not what You Think It Is
What is literary fiction? Well, I could offer you a definition – and I will, in a while. But let’s get this out of the way. Literary fiction is probably not what you think it is.
Literary fiction is not a “genre”. Indeed, it is the very opposite of “genre” fiction (we will discuss this, too).
Moreover, literary fiction is not “high-quality” fiction. It can be, of course, but there is mediocre literary fiction, as there is stunningly brilliant genre fiction.
And so, if someone asks you what is literary fiction, how should you reply? Allow me to throw the A-bomb and then we’ll take a closer look: Literary fiction is an aesthetic framework for approaching the human condition.
If you feel confused, worry not. I’ll unpack it for you right away.
What Is Literary Fiction: the Basic, Prosaic Definitions
Literary fiction is a bit like the Gothic. No, not in that way. But I mentioned the Gothic because, if you take a look at my article on the differences between the Gothic and horror fiction or science fiction, you’ll see an important point I make. The same point applies to defining literary fiction.
And so, I then said:
If I asked you whether Bram Stoker’s Dracula belonged to “the Gothic genre”, you would most likely say yes. After all, it’s a story with a castle, with supernatural creatures, with a sense of dread and threat lurking in the air, and with issues related to patriarchy. Okay, fair enough. But let me ask you this: would, then, Hamlet be a Gothic work? After all, it features a castle, a ghost, fear and threat, and – most definitely – issues related to patriarchy. And yet we instinctively think of Hamlet as something different from Dracula.
The crux of the matter – and the reason it’s relevant to a discussion about what is literary fiction – is this: You can’t rely on generic markers to define genre. In the case of the Gothic, you can’t rely on decayed settings, supernatural characters, or fear.
The problem is even more accentuated with literary fiction, because it’s not a genre at all (Gothic isn’t either, but if you’re interested in that discussion, read my article linked above).
The (Unsatisfactory) Defining Elements
And so, to answer the question “what is literary fiction?” we can’t rely on the following, although they are present in literary-fiction novels.
- Literary fiction always looks beyond a specific situation. Indeed, the specific context – the given characters, settings, and situations – are only reflections of a wider reality.
- As a result, literary fiction virtually always offers commentary on sociopolitical, cultural, or existential concerns. Occasionally this can be direct, but more often than not it’s symbolic.
- There can’t be literary fiction without deep, realistic, highly complex characters with rich inner worlds. Period. In literary fiction plot is insignificant; having realistic, engaging characters is everything.
- The mood is dark, naturalistic, realistic. There can be happy endings – if they are inevitable endings – but an excessively, out-of-place jolly narrative ending in a literary-fiction novel virtually always symbolizes something else. It ought to, at least, if the author is a skillful one.
- Lyrical, poetic, border-line experimental language that still needs to make sense. This is a very subtle point, and you very often separate mediocre from good literary fiction based on this alone. Many inexperienced authors confuse elegance with verbosity, or lyricism with words unsuitable for the register involved.
At this point you might be wondering, “Then how on earth are we to tell what literary fiction is?”
What Is Literary Fiction: back to Aesthetics and the Aesthetic Framework
I’ll repeat the “definition” (it isn’t) of literary fiction I gave earlier: Literary fiction is an aesthetic framework for approaching the human condition.
In other words, literary fiction is a mode of writing that explores the human condition with a focus on aesthetic, rather than descriptive (let alone prescriptive) appreciation.
Does this ring a bell? You might have seen something similar in my post about negative capability:
Want an even simpler definition of negative capability? It’s when you write beautiful things and you don’t care if they make sense.
The trick, of course, is that beautiful things always make sense because meaning exists within every reader. Great readers produce great meaning. Unsophisticated readers can’t see beauty.
Of course, let’s not fall into the Emperor’s new clothes trap. If you can’t see beauty in a text, it’s not necessarily so that you are unsophisticated and the text is beautiful. It may well be so that the text is incoherent. But a truly beautiful text of literary fiction can only be appreciated by sophisticated readers.
What Is “Genre”?
At the beginning of this post I mentioned that literary fiction is not a “genre”. Indeed, it is the very opposite of “genre” fiction. What does that mean?
Genre fiction refers to, say, detective fiction, romance fiction, etc. Broadly, you can think of it like this: Anything focusing on plot and generic elements, rather than characters and aesthetics, is genre fiction.
If you focus on complex, mysterious conspiracies, with stereotyped characters such as the corrupt politician or the dirty cop, you’re dealing with, say, political thrillers or detective fiction. If you focus on rich bachelors wooing independent-but-oh-so-willing women who love to hate the said bachelors, you’re dealing with romance fiction.
Taken to the extremes, literary fiction is not even… fiction. That is, it’s not even a novel the way you expect it to be, with a “beginning”, a “middle”, and a “conclusion”. It can be an amalgamation of reflections, some sort of cyclical (spiral?) never-ending poetry.
What is literary fiction?
4 Comments
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Really interesting. You state the distinctions clearly. 👍
Thanks! Glad to hear you’ve found it useful 🙂
I would argue that ‘literary’ fiction is a spectrum, and it can be all navel-gazing on one end – and still be a traditional novel with plot and characters at the other.
And a reader can prefer a literary PLOT and THEME along with their literary CHARACTERS. Or not.
Of course, it takes a lot more space (words) at that end. Where writers such as Umberto Eco and The Name of the Rose, or even Walter Miller and A Canticle for Leibowitz or Frank Herbert and Dune live. Real novels. Real stories, beginning, middle, and end (or are they a little circular?).
My own opinion, of course.
Oh, absolutely. To be clear, when I said “plot is insignificant”, it doesn’t mean there can’t be one; only that I’d consider it far less important than style, aesthetics, and affect. If anything, literary fiction precisely defies definitions and borders. As with the Gothic, we go back to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and his “I know it when I see it” definition of pornography. 😀