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A common question people ask when I tell them I write novels is, ‘What genre?’. Okay, so maybe they don’t use the word genre, but that’s often the gist of the second question. (Sometimes people ask what a novel is, but not every time, or even half the time. But way too many times.)
I usually tell them ‘literary fiction’, but I’m beginning to think that hardly anyone knows what I mean. ‘Like fantasy?’ someone said today.
I don’t mind calling literary fiction a genre. When I was a science fiction nut at sixteen and seventeen, I remember reading an impassioned article in Aurealis, perhaps by Van Ikin, about how literary fiction is just as generic as science fiction. The literary stories he analysed had a number of common features – a journey, introspection, the suggestion of illicit sex and some other things I can’t remember. Maybe not true of everything published as ‘literary fiction’, but the argument has validity.
What I can’t do is explain easily to people what literary fiction is without sounding elitist.
‘It’s a type of fiction which pushes boundaries… it could be about anything… but it explores the experience and meaning of life… often… sometimes… it’s read by highbrow people with English degrees… or just people with better taste… oh dear, I didn’t actually mean that…’
Because let’s face it, us literary fiction readers do look down on the rest of you. At least a little. Sorry.
Anyway, I feel this gulf between me and people who have no clue what literary fiction is. I guess it’s the problem everyone faces who has gone deeper into their field. I mean, I’m not going to appreciate the finer points of distinction between different types of motorbike racing or knitting, am I?
Nathan Hobby, a biographer in Perth 
Have you been to http://www.authonomy.com? It’s a huge slushpile for unpublished writers, and there was a similar struggle there to get ‘literary fiction’ recognised as a ‘genre’. There were categories for everything else, and some resistance from the HC staff to entering the new ‘genre’ — anyway, it’s not really for the modest author to claim ‘literary status’, is it? – but finally the button went on.
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Hey Jaeger, haven’t seen that yet; have to check it out. I like your blog. Good luck with your Confederacy of Dunces, so to speak.
‘Literature’ would tend to give an implication of excellence; I would tend to claim ‘literary’ as something that could be applied to trash as well as masterpieces.
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ahhh terms terms terms…(hey, you said write something please–be careful what you wish for–just kidding) –but yes, terms/labels/categories/genres–ah what heartbreak and headaches they can cause…—okay..literary fiction–as in ‘deadly serious fiction’? as in concsiously crafted writing? as in the stuff that academics dream of and hate their contemporary creative writers for thinking they can create?–hey, I think I ought to blog this…thank you…a post is abrewing…btw, how goes your novel writing?
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