NP - On James Wood

[Paul Mackin]

On 10/11/2012 1:57 PM, Markekohut wrote:
> Okay....I'll stir the stone soup with contrarian pepper.
>
> FIRST. I resist and would reject the division into " literary" and genre (or commercial) fiction.
> that division was (mostly) created by publishers and should not be applicable to real works most of the time. (Of course, once created, publishers get writers to create within the labels)

Why would publishers create the division if it wasn't needed?  The two 
different kinds of fiction are designed to fulfill different needs or 
desires on the part of readers.  Needs and desires are complex, but just 
one example might be: readers of literary fiction usually want 
originality and freedom from cliche, whereas genre readers welcome a 
goodly degree but not too much similarity to what they've already 
read.   I'm not talking here about different  kinds of people who read.  
For example, there's a well regarded postmodernist poet used to live in 
my neighborhood whose husband told me the only novels she reads are 
mysteries.   And JFK is supposed to have liked Ian Flemming.  Maybe 
that's the only thing he read--I don't know but the point is, reading 
desires and needs are not infallibly or even mostly determined by class 
and social status. But that's a side issue. I don't know about other 
p-listers but I at least imagine I can tell the difference between the 
two kinds of writing by just reading the first paragraph--maybe the 
first couple three lines. Don't test me though.

>
> was Dickens literature when published? was Wilkie Collins? Poe's stories?
I would guess yes, or else we wouldn't think so today.  Didn't Scott 
Fitzgerald write for the Saturday Evening Post?

>
> SECOND: in a spin on Bunny Wilson--nicely semi- refuted by Jochen--I ask are all themes possible (in genre fiction)?   ( you can refute me with a spin on a recent remark of Jerome Charyn's " All fiction is crime fiction"    But I'm an innocent bourgeois reader who needs convinced.

I don't know about ALL themes but probably most.  A theme is just a 
topic the author wants to put emphasis on.

>
> 1.5 million copies of Gone Girl have been sold, I read. everyone loves it. I got hold of a
> Yet-unread copy due to Paul and other plisters.........
>
> Yet, I resist cause however well done it is, what I hear is it is another kind of marriage novel
> And craziness novel that seems less....ambitious....less the tackling of BIg Truths than other plist favorites from DeLillo thru DFW thru David Mitchell, Luminarium, etc.

You don't have to reach the heights to be included among the literary.  
And what have you got against Jane Austen?  :>)

>
> refute me.

Have made a stab at it.

P


>
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> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Oct 11, 2012, at 12:09 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> On 10/11/2012 10:03 AM, David Morris wrote:
>>> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/11/national_book_awards_genre_fiction_dissed_again/
>>>
>>> What you won’t find [in the National Book Award list] is the book that
>>> many, many literary fiction buffs read and loved in the past six
>>> months: Gillian Flynn’s best-selling crime novel, “Gone Girl.” Flynn’s
>>> book is inventive, shrewd, mercilessly observant and stylishly written
>>> — qualities that are very welcome and likely to be celebrated in a
>>> literary novel. Her theme, the dissolution of a marriage in
>>> recession-era America, is substantive. Her technique (which, at the
>>> risk of spoilage, I’ll vaguely refer to as unreliable narration) is
>>> sophisticated. But let’s face it: “Gone Girl” is still considered a
>>> crime novel, and the likelihood of any work of genre fiction being
>>> seriously considered for a major literary prize still seems as
>>> far-fetched in 2012 as the election of a black president looked to be
>>> in the 20th century.
>>>
>>> The National Book Awards is no more to blame in this respect than any
>>> other prize: The Pulitzer, the Booker and the National Book Critics
>>> Circle prizes have all refrained from honoring any title published
>>> within the major genres. (True, some observers considered “Snowdrops”
>>> by A.D. Miller — shortlisted for the Booker last year — a crime novel,
>>> but the entire 2011 Booker selection process was enveloped in
>>> controversy arising from the judges’ much-denounced remarks on behalf
>>> of “readability.”) The genres have their own prizes, but the most
>>> prestigious of the awards remain the private reserve of literary
>>> fiction.
>> I certainly can see along with Matthew that Wood's book should be entitled 'How Literary Fiction Works.'  The divide between literary and genre is about as binary as anything you are likely to find these days. There IS a big sociological (guess that's the right word) crossover, but that's a different question. And correct,  Gone Girl should have been recognized by everyone from the start as literary not genre.
>>
>>
>> About the symbolic violence question,  is the example really very violent?  Wood is certainly opinionated about what a 'true character' should be--in the case of a villain he should be frightening.  And some readers will take this as gospel.  But what are ya gonna do?
>>
>> P
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