how mainstream NaNo-ers define literary fiction

I've been questioning my own definition of literary fiction all up one side and down the other lately, especially after getting an unsettling critique of my writing in the critiques forum. (I'm having a weird fit of insecurity about my novel, is what's going on—but never mind that.) Out of curiosity, I went in search of definitions from outside this forum: I went to the mainstream fiction forum, their thread "How do YOU define mainstream fiction?"

I found the following intriquing bits:
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(1) I think mainstream fiction is plot-driven and literary is character-driven. But these definitions are pretty wishy-washy by themselves, so if it helps think of it like this:

Literary fiction uses original or unusual literary techniques and narrative styles. A novel about two characters and their intertwining thoughts that goes back and forth in time and/or uses lots of pretty words and phrases would be a typical literary novel example. Think Ian McEwan or Douglas Coupland (though McEwan veers into the mainstream from time to time, so he's probably not the best example).

Mainstream fiction usually plays out in linear time, and it's about the story that plays out between these two characters. It's about finding out what happened, and the writing can be great but it's not necessarily strange - the point isn't to wow the readers with your incredibly innovative narrative style, but to tell them a story in the best possible way.
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(2) A big difference I've noticed between mainstream and literary is literary fiction writers are more likely to be masters of prose and poetics than mainstream writers. Mainstream for me feels easier and quicker to read, easier to digest, but then also easier to forget.
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(3) My view is that a mainstream or a genre novel is one that has fairly straightforward and easy to perceive appeal -- it's not an acquired taste, you don't have to struggle to get into it or enjoy it. 

But I would say that plenty of mainstream/genre novels are _also_ literary fiction, in that they have deeper themes and characters, or more pleasing or graceful or beautiful or engaging or amusing writing, or in some other way transcend ordinary fiction.

So I don't see the two as separate at all. And the literary fiction that is entirely an acquired taste, where the appeal is difficult for the average reader to perceive... I tend to distrust that fiction and to seriously consider the possibility that it's not literary fiction, it's just pretentious. :)
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(4) When I think of mainstream fiction, I think of any book that may possibly be optioned by Hollywood.
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What really strikes me in these examples, and in the discussion as a whole, are the references to what the readers and writers of these two "genres" are like, especially readers of mainstream fiction vs. writers of literary fiction. Readers of mainstream fiction are characterized, without apology, as "average," as preferring books that are "easy" and "straightforward" and Hollywood-ready. Writers of literary fiction are characterized as using unusual, difficult, original, strange, pretty, and/or pretentious language and techniques—and as aiming to "wow" their readers.

Example (3) just blows me away—the way this poster uses the word "literary" as a term denoting quality: mainstream/genre fiction can definitely aspire to and succeed at being "literary," but literary fiction that is "entirely an acquired taste, where the appeal is difficult for an average reader to perceive," is not "literary" at all but just pretentious! So do we need a third category for pretentious fiction?

It's like there's this conflicted relationship between some readers and some authors, and the definitions of mainstream vs. literary fiction are located in that conflict! I feel so sorry for these people holding these books they apparently dislike so much. I don't know how to make sense of it. My head is still spinning...

Any comments? I'd appreciate hearing from y'all!

I know what would help me come up with a definition. Can you list at least five examples of what is meant by non-genre, not literary, mainstream fiction (contemporary or otherwise)? Because to be honest, I feel like I'm dismissing a genre I haven't even read.

Literary fiction is so hard to pin down. I do not think that mainstream means shallow or bad by any stretch. Nor do I think literary fiction means the best.

Here's what I think LitFic isn't:

I do not think literary is the hard-to-understand stuff. I don't think when you're literary it means you've got references to great literature or anything. I don't think it means that you always write using dark themes or you kill off characters left and right or monologue a lot or have barely any dialogue. There's many ways to write LitFic.

I don't think LitFic doesn't have a plot. It does have a plot, although usually it is harder to pick it out in LitFic than mainstream because of the way the conflict is most of the time completely internal. A plot is an organization of events that happen in a story which the author shows how they are all related, and how the events in turn change the character(s). Literary fiction has all of these things.

On to a different topic.

Why We Fail at Defining LitFic:

As one person said (and I quote):

"The attempts above [to define LitFic] are wrong because they all try to trace the boundaries of literary fiction, to make clear its outline or form in the hope that what is captured within the outline is the essence of the thing. This approach fails because the “literary” characteristic cannot be broken down into smaller pieces, it cannot be defined by a summation of its parts or a listing of its qualities and conventions. It just is.

When we try to list out the characteristics of something that cannot be further broken down (because it is a characteristic itself), we end up ascribing qualities common to many other things to that thing.

So all fiction (regardless of genre) can have exemplary craft, innovative style, a focus on characters, terrible sales, tell a boring story, pretentious language, poetic prose, submerged plots etc. Those characteristics do not define literary fiction specifically in any way. They are (detailed) HOW questions and we are asking a WHAT question." (End quote).

And here, I think, is what really defines literary fiction:

A message. I often feel like the majority of people who claim to be writing literary fiction say that they're writing their story because it is a message they want people to hear. I think that's why a lot of people say that their main antagonist when writing LitFic always seems to be society. It seems that there's always something LitFic authors want to point out about people in general.

And here is an opinion from the same person I quoted before:

"Literary fiction is ANY fiction that attempts to engage with one or more truths or questions. By 'engage,' I mean reveal, examine, disprove, change, answer, confirm and explain. By “truths or questions” I mean any facet of the human condition established in fact or feeling. If a novel has “something to say”, it qualifies as literary fiction, irrespective of the quality of execution." (End quote).

Extra Little Tidbit on LitFic:

LitFic to me seems very raw (for lack of a better word), bent on pointing out emotion and epiphanies characters experience. It always seems to be there because the author is pointing something out that is important, whether it be so the character comes to an epiphany, to point something out about people in general, society, etc. Whether or not you write this in lyrical prose or prose with lots of dialogue or short to the point prose doesn't matter, I think.

All right, I'm repeating myself now.

At least that's what I think about LitFic. ^^' What say you?

Can I add a question to this thread? Why does it matter whether or not a novel is literary fiction?

The comments Fiona quoted were irritating, but mainly because it's annoying that there is this idea that there is this other class of literature that is accessible only to certain kinds of people. (Depending on your perspective those people are either smarter or more pretentious than the "average" person.)

But as for labeling one's NaNo novel... So this year the only genre lounges I watched were this one and Erotic Fiction. The reason I watched them had nothing to do with the novel I was writing. Those were the two genres that had the most interesting--to me--conversations started in them. I won't be able to tell you what genre my NaNo novel is until it's done, but my money is on lit fic because that's the way I tend to think. It might be badly written, abandoned lit fic, but it will probably be lit fic. So what? The label is meaningless. Now over in Erotic Fiction they have lots of discussions about the line between erotic fiction and pornography. That seems like a more legitimate concern. No one is going to ban your novel or file obscenity charges if it accidentally crosses over into the mainstream fiction category :)

I'm starting to suspect that I might have a much broader definition of what books in (and outside of) the canon are lit fic.

Re why does it matter whether or not a novel is literary fiction? -- Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't. It probably doesn't matter whether I write the novel at all. But ...

My first NaNoWriMo novel was a fantasy. Yet I didn't feel "at home" in the Fantasy forum, because most of the things they were discussing and that concerned them weren't very relevant to what I was going to write; and there was also a mismatch between what I was writing and what most fantasy readers would expect. I'm not saying that as any kind of point against them. It's just that I was doing something that didn't really fit. I dealt with that by taking Lit Fic as the primary genre. It was still a fantasy, but it was literary fiction more than it was fantasy.

That mattered to me, because the Lit Fic forum did feel like home. And it could matter to anyone who heard about my novel, because they'd know it might not be what they'd normally expect if they just heard it was fantasy,

I'm not suggesting that there's a simple litmus test for literary fiction, but one definition I offered earlier in the month was that lit fic is tied into our cultural understanding and appreciation of the literary canon itself. That is to say, it's modern fiction that reflects an awareness of our literary heritage. Perhaps it refers to older literature in an overt way, assumes a reader's familiarity with methods and themes prevalent in the canon, or is simply aimed at people likely to be well-read in the classics.

I'd say this still allows for a lot of overlap between lit fic and other genres, but at least it doesn't depend on subjective judgments about "good" prose or "deep" characters.

-Shem

What about Beauty? Messages about human beings or human society are part of the literary tradition, for sure, but without an aesthetically pleasing vehicle, are those messages really literary? And are such messages really necessary, if a work of fiction has sufficiently beautiful language? All through this discussion, I keep thinking, again and again, that the word "literary," for me, is in fact an adjective denoting quality of language, beauty of language—or sometimes, beauty of structure.

Think of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, for example. What really makes that novel literary, in my view, is the crystalline, even mathematical, beauty of its structure. Its table of contents alone is aesthetically brilliant—and thus literary.

Anyway, what's wrong with wikipedia's definition of literary fiction?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_fiction

Wow. You guys have made quite an effort here. But might I point out the elephant in the room that no one has addressed much? Literature means prize-worthy and critically acclaimed. That's the best way to put it.

Arguing with this definition could mean:

1: You write or read fiction that doesn't get much appraisal from the type of people who determine what literature is, so you've decided to point out that such work doesn't appeal to many people, and therefore it's inherently pretentious and too difficult to understand. So literature is stupid anyways.

2: You consider yourself a writer with culturally valuable work but you don't want to come off as pretentious to others, or, instead of stigmatizing contemporary literature, you try to broaden the definitions. You're jumping the gun and trying to get into the literature club by other means.

Not to offend anyone, but I say, let it go (although I too must admit that this debate is very intriguing). I'm a bit hesitant to post this because you all are obviously very smart people--as smart as (or more than) the type of people who hand out such literary prizes--and you could easily debate with me here. Maybe you're simply asking: Why do critics like the type of work they like? But again, who cares? The length of this thread suggests to me that you simply can't pin the semantics down beyond: Literary = prize worthy, and Mainstream = work that doesn't conform to popular genres, but doesn't win prizes either--it's nothing to be ashamed of. Work hard, and if people like it, congratulations. If not, maybe it's still a really good piece of art. Shakespeare wasn't considered timelessly valuable until after he died.

Thanks for your interesting comments, Marxist!

A few comments:
• in order for the statement "Literature means prizeworthy & critically acclaimed" not to be tautological, you need to demonstrate that there is something that all the disparate works winning prizes and being acclaimed by critics have in common that is different from those not winning prizes and not being critically acclaimed...good luck with that! =grin=
• as for "who cares?" and why we didn't "let it go," the point of the above conversation was not to "pin the semantics down," as you put it, but in order to have fun, to socialize with each other, to have a conversation
• I really don't think anyone here is worrying over much about whether their own work is literary or not: they (we) are just curious about what 'literary' might mean, if it means anything at all: the powers that be at NaNoWriMo.org seem to think it means something, because they've given it a separate forum

Happy Winter Holiday everyone, and Happy New Year! See you in 2012!

I used to work as a bookseller for a large (now defunct) chain. There were sections for genres: crime and thrillers; sci-fi; fantasy; romance; etc. Everything else came under the umbrella of "literary fiction". There was no distinction between "mainstream" and "literary" - if it was a genre piece it went in the appropriate section, if it wasn't clearly in a particular genre *or by a writer associated in or established in a particular genre* then it went in the general melee of literary fiction.

Life seems easier that way.