Kevin's Watch

Stonemaybe wrote:I can't connect to the Malazan forum. I suspect the bhok'aral have crashed it...

It was down for a couple of days, but it's back up now.... in fact, it crashed when Luci started this thread... hmmm....

Orlion wrote:

Stonemaybe wrote:I can't connect to the Malazan forum. I suspect the bhok'aral have crashed it...

It was down for a couple of days, but it's back up now.... in fact, it crashed when Luci started this thread... hmmm....

er....

I swear to God, it looked exactly like that's what happened!

lucimay wrote:

Murrin wrote:"What if" can cover a helluva lot of territory.

exactly! thank you murrin, that's exactly what i meant. for me that single phrase is what fiction is all about, thus why i said all fiction is speculative.

Ok, I can see that. I just think it's imprecise.

--A

Avatar wrote:

lucimay wrote:

Murrin wrote:"What if" can cover a helluva lot of territory.

exactly! thank you murrin, that's exactly what i meant. for me that single phrase is what fiction is all about, thus why i said all fiction is speculative.

Ok, I can see that. I just think it's imprecise.

--A

i understand. i think "fantasy" is imprecise as well. so is "science" fiction for that matter. historical fiction is much more precise. but frankly, ALL fiction is just that to me. fiction.

Somebody on a panel at WFC said he thought of literary fiction as another genre. I thought to myself, "I wouldn't say that in a roomful of MFA candidates, if I were you."

aliantha wrote:Somebody on a panel at WFC said he thought of literary fiction as another genre. I thought to myself, "I wouldn't say that in a roomful of MFA candidates, if I were you."

oh i KNOW! i had actually written in that last post a long rambling luci rant about what i like to refer to as "the genre-fication" of fiction and "the canon" and whatnot but i decided i didn't want to blather on the topic so i deleted all of it. however, that's one of my pet peeves, that whole "literary" fiction thing.
that's what people are calling it now, further separating the "legitimate" fiction from the "genre" fiction. it's just stupid. and elitist. fiction is fiction.

It's totally elitist -- and I think it's worse here in the US than in other parts of the world. Which is especially entertaining since we're supposed to be all egalitarian and stuff.

I agree with you. Good fiction is good fiction.

It serves a purpose, to point out that a certain category of fiction that some people hold up as inherently superior is in fact just as much a genre, with its own standards and tropes and broad quality spectrum, as the marketing categories that get disparaged. People just need to be careful about not making it a generalisation.

Oh, I agree, Murrin -- after thinking about what the guy said, I do believe literary fiction is just another genre. I'd just never heard it put that way before.

And I still wouldn't say it in a roomful of MFA candidates.

well they're using the wrong gddmn word.

lit·er·ar·y (lt-rr)adj.

1. Of, relating to, or dealing with literature: literary criticism.
2. Of or relating to writers or the profession of literature: literary circles.
3. Versed in or fond of literature or learning.

Imprecise huh?

--A

At the local literature festival last year, I saw China Mieville ripping shreds out of one of the recent Booker Prize judges about 'literary fiction'.

He was trying (and succeeding, but I may be biased) to make him see that the Booker prize is a prize for the best book in the literary fiction genre, NOT in literature as a whole.

well then china mieville's got it wrong too! i mean more power to him that he was rippin the guy but i'm sorry, "literary" fiction is a redundancy. it's not a genre. what's it's conventions? that is HAS no conventions? here's a prize for all those stories that have no conventions! LOL! and here's a prize for all those stories that take place in space! and here's a prize for all those stories that take place in barbados! and here's a prize for all those stories that have magic in them! and here's a prize for all those stories that have detectives...oh wait, this story takes place in space and has magic and a detective....we'll make a prize for that too!!

just...absurd.

But the people you're annoyed at didn't create the term, it came out of elitists calling their work "more literary" or claiming that genre work lacked literary value. It doesn't matter so much what the words mean, it's the use and origin of the phrase that they're taking advantage of to make their point (discrediting such arguments by turning the favoured fiction style into a defined genre using their very own terms).

lucimay wrote:well then china mieville's got it wrong too! i mean more power to him that he was rippin the guy but i'm sorry, "literary" fiction is a redundancy. it's not a genre. what's it's conventions? that is HAS no conventions? here's a prize for all those stories that have no conventions! LOL! and here's a prize for all those stories that take place in space! and here's a prize for all those stories that take place in barbados! and here's a prize for all those stories that have magic in them! and here's a prize for all those stories that have detectives...oh wait, this story takes place in space and has magic and a detective....we'll make a prize for that too!!

just...absurd.

I may have misrepresented the argument. iirc he was trying to make the point that the Booker Prize goes to a certain type of novel only (what's known as 'literary fiction', ie, a 'detective' novel, or a 'fantasy' novel, won't get the prize)

Stonemaybe wrote:

lucimay wrote:well then china mieville's got it wrong too! i mean more power to him that he was rippin the guy but i'm sorry, "literary" fiction is a redundancy. it's not a genre. what's it's conventions? that is HAS no conventions? here's a prize for all those stories that have no conventions! LOL! and here's a prize for all those stories that take place in space! and here's a prize for all those stories that take place in barbados! and here's a prize for all those stories that have magic in them! and here's a prize for all those stories that have detectives...oh wait, this story takes place in space and has magic and a detective....we'll make a prize for that too!!

just...absurd.

I may have misrepresented the argument. iirc he was trying to make the point that the Booker Prize goes to a certain type of novel only (what's known as 'literary fiction', ie, a 'detective' novel, or a 'fantasy' novel, won't get the prize)

no stone you were quite clear. see murrin's post above yours.

i'm annoyed that there are people in the world who want to divide fiction into genres when it's all actually fiction.
no one genre of literature is more valid or more "literary" than any other.
sure there's good writers and not so good writers. and some of those not so good writers actually have a market and a readership. there's no accounting for taste after all...but as murrin said above, i'm annoyed that there is good, really EXCELLENT and progressive literature out there that is being discounted as "genre" rather than "literary" (see my definition up thread of the term literary.)

in other words, all fiction is fiction and should be considered for the fiction prizes, the booker prize, the pulitzer, etc so on and so forth. all literature is literature and is, therefore, literally literary!!!
instead we've got Hugos and Edgars and Daggers and the like because those works would otherwise NOT get any kind of awards or recognition for excellence.

now having said that, i realize that it would be a nearly insurmountable task to consider fiction prizes that broadly.

i'm just tired of some of the best writers in western literature being relegated to a marginal genre by elitist critics who couldn't write their ways out of their own assholes, is all. (and that includes some of the writers on those prize panels - toni morrison comes to mind, great writer but what an elitist asshole) and i hate those contradictions in the terms. or absconding the term and redefining it.
it gets my steam up.

Genre's make things a lot easier though. Even if you didn't have "official" ones, we'd still do it informally, because it's a useful way of describing a style of fiction.

--A

My favorite genre is "fictional fiction". But don't try to look that up - it's a fictional genre, too. The best thing about it is that the awards are fictional. "Or I Will Sell My Soul For Guilt" won a Fickie last year. No one objected.

wayfriend wrote:My favorite genre is "fictional fiction". But don't try to look that up - it's a fictional genre, too. The best thing about it is that the awards are fictional. "Or I Will Sell My Soul For Guilt" won a Fickie last year. No one objected.