Throughout this past year there’s been a persistent idea percolating around the literati: could literary fiction really be dead? No for real this time?
No less an authority than Philip Roth wondered last year whether people still had the patience to read novels. Last month Lee Siegel wrote an article wondering “Where Have All the Mailers Gone?” and wrote, “fiction has become culturally irrelevant.” A few months ago, in an article titled “The Death of Fiction?,” Ted Genoways took stock of the explosion of creative writing programs coupled with the vanishing space for literary stories in magazines. Last year David Shields published REALITY HUNGER: A MANIFESTO, which examined culture’s thirst for reality, and why current literary novels feel lifeless as a form.
Now, the idea that fiction as a whole has become culturally irrelevant is patently ridiculous when you consider that people are currently buying TWILIGHT underwear and when Avada Kedavra has been a trending topic on Twitter the last few days. The novel is far, far from dead, and Carolyn Kellogg at Jacket Copy wrote a gleeful takedown of Siegel’s article.
And let’s also acknowledge that this is not a new idea. Here’s a post from The Guardian in 2001 wondering about the end of literary fiction, and here’s one from the Times in 1992 predicting the end of the novel as we know it due to, wait for it, hypertext.
But could there be something to all of this hand-wringing this time? Sure, J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer, and James Patterson are some of the bestselling authors of all time and have created cultural tsunamis, but that’s genre fiction. What about literary fiction? Do our current literary luminaries pack the same cultural punch as their counterparts did in the past?
Major publishers are publishing fewer literary novels. Review space is almost nonexistent. The Internet has empowered the crowd at the expense of elites. Could it be real this time?
And if we are witnessing a slow decline in the impact of literary fiction, what’s behind it?
Most of all: is this something we should fear?
(If you’re wondering what makes a novel “literary,” here’s my take)
Wild Orchids for Trotsky says
To Amy B, who laments a lack of anyone other than white guys writing literary fiction, I'd like to recommend Jhumpa Lahiri and Toni Morrison. Both excellent non-white non-guy literary authors.
Amanda Sablan says
So long as people are willing to keep on buying hybrid fiction, I'm happy. I personally love to write literary fiction with action elements, and I would absolutely love to see more of that out there. Maybe then literary fiction wouldn't have its rep as the books "where nothing apart from philosophizing happens."
cheekychook says
Four years is not a long turnaround time for a book to be made into a movie—it's probably about average—sometimes it's much quicker, other times it's way longer—it's dependent on multiple factors (director interest/availability, studio interest, screenwriter schedules, market analysis, release schedules/trends).
I think the more relevant question is how many novels published in the past few years have had people buy the rights to make them into films eventually?
Nathan Bransford says
robert-
Good recommendations, but please post without the personal attack.
John Jack says
The times when town crier doomsayers most demonize a niche is when those gifted few rise to refuse the veracity of such self-serving agendas.
The motivations of the gifted and the doomsayers are identical, to be heard and to promote personal agendas and to rise to challenges.
Impishly, literary writers pursue proving literary genre doomsayers wrong. Saying it's dead, dying, whatever, encourages someone to prove it's doomed is wrong. Nature abhors a vacuum, which is a way of saying things gravitate from high pressure areas to low pressure areas, and where there's a niche to be exploited it will be.
There is a literary masterpiece or two in the augurs which will supress all the nonsense for a while. Just as dragon fantasy once was on the outs, came back, is out again, building for a comeback, biding its time. Vampires were all but extinct in the '60s when Anne Rice said no, they're not.
Literary fiction's niche is not as large as most. What the scratch, recognition of the genre as a distinct category is barely half a century old, far younger than fantasy, adventure, Western, science fiction, mystery, thriller, romance, etc., in fact, it is the current youngest genre category distinction, sub-subgenre groupings notwithstanding.
Switch-handed orphan stepchild literary fiction is still finding its place in culture.
The next literary masterpiece will generate buzz, Buzz, BUZZ, be a great global novel, and come into its own in its own time. Soon.
ryan field says
Literary fiction will just evolve, like music and the visual arts. But it's never going to lose it's place in culture.
B. A. Binns says
I certainly hope literary isn't dead. (At least not as long as literary isn't a synonym for boring and pompous) The literary novel may be a little sick, but then in today's economy there is a lot of that going around. I think part of the issue is that people once bought "literary" books to show off, they might not like the books themselves, but they wanted people to know they read so-called upper class books. Those days, and those kinds of books, can go. But books that speak a message outside any of the popular genres, and that do so in an interesting and page-turning manner, should continue. At least I hope so, since my own literary YA novel is being published in October. I'm hoping people will consider it more than just literary – I want it considered good. And fast paced and enjoyable, something that does not belong on their coffee table to impress others, but in their hands to read and re-read and think about and discuss…and enjoy.
jjdebenedictis says
Argh, commenters.
Enough with the snobbery; when a book doesn't sell, it's almost always due to the content.
Literary fiction isn't dying because people are too stoooopid to comprehend its brilliance–it's dying because it isn't giving enough people what they want from a reading experience.
Smart people still exist. And smart people do still read and have an appetite for clever books.
Honest, society is not devolving into a pack of grunting Orcs anymore than it was 20 years ago.
Polenth says
The article makes it sound like literary fiction is the only one hit, but the truth is the whole short story market has suffered. For example, many women's magazines no longer publish, or have cut back on, romance and women's fiction.
In genres were short stories are still surviving reasonably, literary is well received. The SFF market has more professional magazines open to literary work than it's ever had. There were more magazines in total in the past, but they wanted pulp and action-adventure. Now, a literary tale is often easier to sell than an action-adventure.
So I'm not convinced this is a special singling-out of literary works when it comes to the short story market. It's more a case that short stories as a whole are suffering. Fiction-only magazines of all genres have been struggling to keep going.
(I don't know enough about the literary novel market to comment on that side).
Kelly Wittmann says
"I think the identification of ‘literary’ as a genre has had a stultifying effect. The things I like best as a reader have both literary credibility and perceived populist features like narrative drive and a focus on relationships. But my perception (looking in at adult novels from children’s publishing) is that if you write a book that is good in both those ways you are actually sunk nowadays because, increasingly, both literary and genre publishers will consider it too far outside the ballpark to fit their list."
This has absolutely been my experience, Anna Bowles. I have heard it time after time: "This too literary to be mainstream and too mainstream to be literary. I don't know where I would slot it."
Ramsey Hootman says
I think literary fiction isn't disappearing, it's just being moved into genre classifications. The best two examples I can think of are Iain M. Banks and China Mieville, who both write incredible literary fiction… shelved in SF/F.
Most literary fiction probably has an element that can be linked, however loosely, to some genre classification. Genres sell better, so literary fiction is being shelved there if at all possible.
Nicole Grotepas says
Particularly salient to this discussion is B.R. Meyer's Reader's Manifesto, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Reader%27s_Manifesto) which outlines the failings of much of what's passing for literary fiction these days. I don't want to criticize anyone's heroes, but the works and authors the critics currently herald as great seem a little vapid and self-indulgent.
Someone on here pointed out that a lot of those who strive to be literary writers are in MFA programs and have little life experience. I think that's true and it doesn't contribute to the stories they tell.
What passes for voice in the current list of literary greats is actually just bad writing, as B.R. Meyer's points out. And I tend to agree. I tried to read a McCarthy novel and there was a pompous tone to his work that offended me. He seemed to say, "Oh, I'm doing something awesome here. Too awesome for you to understand." While some buy into it, I don't.
I don't think literary fiction is dying. I think it's still a beautiful thing to aspire to, and I think there are loads of fantastic writers out there. They're simply overlooked at the moment because the system is seized up like an engine without oil. There's a good old boys network in the literary fiction realm and it consists of the editors at the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly (places like these), and the prestigious universities hosting MFA and Phd programs in creative writing.
Your thoughts?
p.s. I don't write literary fiction. And since leaving college, I haven't read much of it, unless we're talking about the old greats like Tolstoy, Hemingway, Cather, et. al.
Steven Till says
I think a lot of these things are cyclical, whether it be in fiction, in music, etc. Readers' tastes are constantly changing, so at some point there will be a stronger return to literary fiction. On a national scale, we have even returned to the written form as the dominant form of communication, where decades ago it used to be the telephone, and before the telephone, it was hand-written letters. Email, texting, twittering, blogging (while not hand-written) are a return to the form of written communication. Literary fiction will have its place at some point in the future, yet again.
Ideas Man, Ph.D. says
I suppose it depends on how we define "literary fiction." If we think of literary fiction as a certain kind of highly introspective writing that developed esp. in the 20th century when there was a mass market for "intellectual" fiction and when magazines like the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the NYRB, Times Literary Supplement, Granta et. al were nurturing short stories that created a market for mass appeal intellectual writers — well, then probably — because that market doesn't exist anymore.
But that doesn't mean that we should worry that equally smart fiction won't be written, read and disseminated.
While the wider implications of the e-book for the publishing industry are hard to discern, it's pretty clear that one thing it will allow for is the commercial viability of mid-market, as opposed to mass-market fiction. I think that one of the reasons why we're accustomed to seeing the occasional high-quality stylism/"literary"-lite writer in so-called genre fiction is that genre-fiction has a viable marketing model that helps to predict a certain commercial success and builds up a potential readership. Relying more on individual authors' reputations and without being situated in any particular "genre" straight-
up literary fiction runs the risk of being too costly to fail on.
I think of the many prizes, magazine outlets and review culture that makes "literary fiction" as a way of building and channeling the small market that there is.
On the other hand, when the cost of production and distribution go down, it becomes possible to succeed with a high quality book that doesn't necessarily appeal to everybody. I'm not talking about self-publishing or vanity writing, but work that professional writers and serious readers recognize as good but can't guarantee a wide market.
My suspicion is that this will reduce the distinctiveness of literary fiction as opposed to other genres of fiction. we will find that some of the characteristics that make literary fiction good (experimentalism in style, emphasis on deep development and ideas over quick action or shallow plots, attention to prosody, moral imagination) will show up in a wider range of "styles" or "genres" because attention to these matters won't only be rewarded for the small walls of "literary fiction."
Of course, that's really the way it's always been.
One of the great stylists of the last century was P.G. Wodehouse, who wrote puff high society pieces that all have virtually the same plot. But try to imagine Salman Rushdie without the rub of polyglot Indian English against the polish and wit of high-society British passed through a Wodehousian lens.
Rushdie fits squarely into the world of "literary fiction," but he doesn't just dwell within a literary fiction bubble. His work ranges over the whole field of literature. As Milan Kundera, another great and succesful writer of "literary" fiction reminds us, the task of the novel is to discover what only the novel can. This isn't distinctive to one genre or another, but is true of any novel worth devoting hours or days of reading to.
Amy says
If literary fiction goes away, I won't cry for it. I read a few literary books each year, and I always wind up regretting it and asking myself why I even try to connect with this genre. It's full of silly pretentiousness, like leaving out the quotation marks (WHY?), and why do we think a novel can't be serious unless it has a tragic ending?
Weren't most of the books we consider classics today actually considered popular fiction at the time they were written? I'm not sure that setting out to write a classic is the best way to produce one.
I do like some literary/genre hybrids, like Thomas H. Cook's mystery novels that have a literary bent but don't go overboard with it. Some end in tragedy, but not all of them do, so I'm truly in suspense with each one, having no idea how it will end.
Nicole says
I think it's time for lit fic to be considered a genre, just like everything else. Rather than being the pinnacle of writing (as it so often seems to be considered) make it one of many options. I don't think it's dying, I just think it's not the popular genre at the moment. These things are cyclical, based on who is writing what, and how well.
Aoife.Troxel says
I LIKE LITERARY FICTION. Sorry, I know that's shouting, but I am. I also like other fiction, but I don't think literary fiction should be allowed to die. I suspect it will just evolve into something else. I don't mind as long as that something else is up to standard or better.
Perry says
If Literary fiction dies, who will win awards and what will schools, colleges and universities use for their English courses.
I don't know that literary fiction is dead, perhaps it's going through a major change as the genre writers tiptoe into literary style. As long as people read it someone will publish it.
Alex says
The concise version of your definition of "literary" might be Neil Gaiman's quote, paraphrased as "There is room for stories to be about more than they're about."
By that standard, I don't see any change in the percentage of literary fiction coming out each year. If it happens to involve something other than mopey WASPs, well, that might pull it off of the radar for a lot of folks. Seems fine by me.
Rebecca says
I don't think literary fiction is dead or dying. Some of mine and my kids' favorites are newer literary fiction. Books like Sharon Creech's Heartbeat and Walk Two Moons, even her Love that Dog–these are books that are more about what happens below the surface than external forces.
Perhaps literary fiction is evolving a bit, just as readers are. But it won't go away.
Fawn Neun says
I adore literary fiction. Quite frankly, I think the trend is that literary fiction isn't so much dying as genre fiction is beginning to catch up with the cache.
Now, JKR, Brown and Myers are no where near literary fiction, but I do believe that in order to stand out, genre writers are incorporating literary technique into their fiction. I think this is catching on and I think the trend will continue.
So, maybe as a genre, litfic will die out, but I think the principals and standards by which genre fiction is held will escalate.
We'll get more hybrids, like The Road and Nightwatch. Which is fine by me. After spending three days paddling through Atonement, I had to shake my head and wonder why, as beautiful as it was, I'd spent three days on a short-story's worth of actual plot. There's no excuse for that.
Peter Dudley says
No for real this time?
Thanks for my biggest laugh of the day. So far.
Michael Pickett says
I think that your post about the definition of literary fiction gets at something very important: no one agrees about what literary fiction is. In so many of my undergrad English classes, literary was synonymous with "good." If they liked it, it must be literary, because they would never condescend to like genre fiction. These days the boundaries are blurred, so maybe literary fiction is disappearing as it gets swallowed by the genres.
Literary Cowgirl says
Not dead. Just evlolving. There is no reason why something new can't take everyone by storm just like the genre writers have done. To skip over to another art form for a second, in Victorian times painting was ornate and filled to the brim with details. Along came Whistler's Mother. It was sparce and ahead of it's time, but when it took off in the 30s it took off! It was front page news for two years in the US. We're just waiting for Whistler's Mother to show up in the world of literary fiction. It will be sparse and catch our limited attention spans. It's coming, and likey it is already out there waiting to be discovered.
Video games didn't kill the game of chess, but people play chess on computers.
Kristin Laughtin says
I don't think it's completely dead or ever will completely die, but I think the market is doing as much to kill it as the readers who are supposedly not reading it. Books have to have action! and be less than X number of words and appeal to __,___, and ____ segments of the market or they won't sell.
Also, perceptions of what literary fiction is might be changing, since so many books cross genre lines. Literary books that become very popular are usually noted as commercial, at least in the eyes of the public. And there are many genre books that are literary, but they are categorized as genre first. Perhaps people don't know what to expect or how to define literary novels, and thus think of them as dry, boring, books you're forced to read in school when you're young. I think it's also associated with a certain amount of snobbery, given the Hollywood culture of books these days. Not that that's a fair assessment, but it happens.
Mostly I think literary fiction is just evolving with the culture, as every genre is want to do. We can look back and say they don't publish books like ____ anymore, but fail to realize that _____ wouldn't be published if it were pitched today. Our books and the way we categorize them change with us. Literary fiction isn't the exception.
Meghan Ward says
I think this article in The Nation explains a lot: https://bit.ly/aKeyVA
I love literary fiction, but discounters like Amazon are making it impossible for a) Readers to discover new authors and b) for publishers to be able to afford to publish books that aren't guaranteed to be mega-bestsellers. The perfect example is The Passage by Justin Cronin (which I'm reading now). He's a literary fiction writer who's won the PEN/Hemingway award but needed to pay his bills, so he sold a vampire trilogy for $3.5 million.
John Jack says
Fawn Neun wrote, "genre fiction is beginning to catch up" and similar sentiments by others, reflects my view convention-based genres are adapting more and more creative literary methods. Most importantly subtext, which goes to Mr. Bransford's opinion, "In literary fiction the plot tends to happen beneath the surface."
Cultural coding expectations from literature tend to level out in strata. Narratives that challenge readers to understand subtext, and readers enjoy the challenge, fit the generic definition of literary.
Pete Miller says
A lot of what is selling now is YA fiction or fiction being sold as YA fiction. That can only be healthy for the world of literature at large – children are still actively reading. I think this is a bit of sky is falling panic.
Since YA is considered a 'genre' the people reading that 'genre' tend to not consider genre nearly as much as adults do. They'll read fantasy, sf, contemporary, and what ever else is in the section with much less regard than adults.
They will soon enough be adults who read across genre and maybe even read literature.
scott g.f.bailey says
Someone in one of the comments wrote, "only time anyone really reads literary fiction is if it's for a school assignment." Which is just a mistaken idea. This post is slanted to make it seem as if literary fiction is in fact dying, when in fact it is not. Excellent novels in beautiful, world-class prose are published almost daily and are as widely read as literature ever was. That it's less visible among all the noise of other forms of fiction and all the non-fiction books has to do with markets, but are there any hard facts (not opinion pieces writ by folks who don't like literature and want to see it die, or by folks who don't like genre/pop fiction and are afraid it's killing literature) about literary fiction readership/sales? Why are people like Peter Carey, David Mitchell, A.S. Byatt, Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, ZZ Packer, Phillip Roth and others able to make livings writing literary fiction? Why are people like Victor LaValle, Jonathan Evison, Jon Clinch, Vendela Vida, Gina Frangello, Sam Munson, Lorraine Adams (and the list goes on and on) getting book deals? Literary fiction is in pretty good shape for a corpse.
G says
I stopped reading literary fiction (mostly short stories) years ago. I don't know about you, but the absolute last thing I want to do while reading is having to go intellectual while reading.
I rather become emotionally attached to a story than intellectually stimulated.
After all, is that what textbooks are for?
S Yarns says
Honestly, and I can't quote facts or books, I think it's a cycle.
I think back when I was in school, I didn't want to read anything that made me think. I wanted an escape, but only if it was quick and easy and mindless.
I grew, and my tastes changed. Literary fiction became what I wanted, BECAUSE it made me think.
Now that I am even older, (we wont go there)I read everything. Whatever I can get my hands on.
I don't think that there can be an -ist or -ism attached to the writing. It's simply a matter of one writing what one is comfortable with. How can it be otherwise? An agent doesn't know what color you are or what sex you are by a query letter or a full manuscript. Or maybe I am just not getting it…
No, I don't think that literary fiction is losing it's place. There are simply more people writing for different genres.
Or, I could simply be naive.
MJR says
I think there's a certain prestige value in literary fiction and it will still be sold and people will still want to read it. I don't read it much anymore. I like well written commercial fiction, like THE HELP (I don't consider that literay fiction), quirky books like The Elegance of the Hedgehog, etc. I wish agents and publishers would think about people like me more often–we want to read well-written novels that aren't necessarily following any trends…but aren't self-consciously literary either.
Anonymous says
The only time anyone reads literary fiction is for school???
Right.
Look at Jhumpa Lahiri or Zadie Smith's success. Doubt it was all "for school".
I just finished' Zadie's "On Beauty" and then picked up a mainstream book. I am SO missing the rich writing, the depth of Zadie Smith's prose, the fullness to her characters, the MEANING of her work. It's like going from gourmet to fast food. I'm quite sure I'm not alone, based on her sales/reputation.
gsfields says
I don't mean to be flippant, but who cares?
I have never sat down and read a genre. I read stories. So who cares if someone in an academic or journalistic ivory tower declares the end of a genre.
Stories will still be written by people who have stories to tell regardless of what category it is placed.
Rebecca says
G said: "I rather become emotionally attached to a story than intellectually stimulated."
Why can't it be both? Just because a book is considered "literary" doesn't mean it won't be an emotionally stimulating story. Actually, I would say that a literary work is MORE likely to be an emotional read than most popular fiction.
scott g.f.bailey says
@G: I like the way my brain feels when I'm thinking. Intellectual stimulation is sexy. The opposite is also true.
K.L. Brady says
No, literary fiction will never lose it's place in culture because the world will always be laden with book snobs who love nothing more than reading books that give normal people headaches.
I'm sorry…that was my outside voice. lol
just kidding…I like some literary fiction. Toni Morrison is one of my favorite authors. Her work makes my head hurt but in a good way. It makes my brain expand. We all needed that from time to time.
Anonymous says
If you were going to be a snob about something, wouldn't literature be a good place for that? I mean, it's an intellectual thing that you're insisting on high standards for, not a car or a pair of jeans or something. We complain about the dumbing down of our kids and then somehow elevate it when we grow up and don't "have" to do it anymore. You can eat Oreos all day, too, if you like. No one's going to stop you.
Thad says
As an author, owner of a small press, and bookstore I can tell you without any doubt that people are as hungry for literary fiction as ever. It's almost exclusively what we sell and publish. And we are thriving.
The book industry is imploding because it (collectively) cares more about money than art and readership. The outcome of this trend (which we are now approaching the end of) is that the market is glutted with so much content competing for readers' money that readers are lost in it.
Provide readers with specific recommendations and choices limited to what you can guarantee to be exceptional literature and people can't get enough of it.
There are literary writers out there writing brilliant works and being almost completely ignored because readers can't find them amid the marketing plans and the dreck congesting the shelves at B&N.
The sooner the big six die, the better for our reading culture. Selling books for a living has done nothing if not prove to me that this business has been sick and upside down for years. The death of such a bloated, profit-hungry, titanic of sycophants is the best thing that can happen for writers and readers both.
Anonymous says
I think this culture is going through another phase. Remember the game show phase? The superhero phase? Well, this is a reality phase. People will tire, especially when they've had their fill of bad reality.
People still enjoy hearing a good story and always will as long as imagination exists. And, I think imagination will exist until mankind no longer exists.
Aimee says
Uh, that last one was me, Aimee, Midgedear, https://whiteroses-aimee.blogspot.com–Meeeee!
Victoria says
Readers are looking for a good story, well told. Something that can transport you, make you laugh, make you cry and maybe even make you re-examine your life a little. Things that can do this, regardless of genre, style, or literary status become bestsellers. (Or in the case of film, major must-see events. Do I need to reference Avatar here, or is that pointing out the obvious?)
In an e-book world where books of all styles will be available, I believe the cream will still rise to the top. Regardless of what genre the creams is designated to be.
Hopefully, this will make some people reconsider their snobbery regarding genre fiction.
Vic K
Jeff says
Nathan's take on what is literary and what is not is a nice flashlight in the right direction. I recently bought a book of Orwell essays and, apparently, the argument in 1936 was the death of the novel itself (In Defense of the Novel.) Orwell blamed it on the critics who for money wrote that any book they picked up was just fabulous! I thought it was a contrived argument to perhaps spur writers to write something new, and who knows, maybe it did. So my knee-jerk reaction to this question is of course the literary novel is not dead. But perhaps they seem boring because popular psychology has become such an integral part of our thinking there doesn't seem to be any unexplored caverns in being a person. But is that true? Is popular, ganglion based understanding the height of intellectuality? Formulaic emotional and moral reactions to, hopefully, a strange plot? I don't think it needs to be boring at all. I think if literary fiction writers dug around a little more, the genre of literary, in Nathan's definition, would become interesting to more people again. Although, maybe I'm stretching for my last gasp.
my lonely journal says
"Could it be real this time?" I think not.
"And if we are witnessing a slow decline in the impact of literary fiction, what's behind it?" If anything, a rise in bad taste.
"Most of all: is this something we should fear?" I'd say no. We live in a consumer driven society. If there's demand, there'll be product, and I know dozens of people who demand good literary fiction, and thousands of people who will continue to provide it.
Melanie says
Just curious: How much do publishers and agents care about their authors winning awards like, say, the Pulitzer? Surely there's still some incentive for a handful of great literary novels to make it through the cut, no?
Also, my guess is that if the big houses stop or seriously cut back on literary fiction, there will still be plenty of small presses who are undoubtedly dedicated to publishing ONLY literary fiction, and they will only benefit from the shift. I think we'd see more people looking to that arena for the books they want to read, if that's what they're into. As MFA grads find out how bleak the job market is, many of them are starting their own journals and presses, so no, I don't think literary fiction will die. The market may just look different.
And finally! I find it somewhat ironic that the General Public's insatiable appetite for reality is what makes them less likely to enjoy literary fiction, the best of which delves into the deepest, universal questions of the human condition. TWILIGHT, for example, isn't based on reality. I'm not knocking it, but the dialogue is heightened for romance, and character development only goes so far to let the pace stay quick. These things make it less-than-reality, don't they? It seems that the term "reality" should really be substituted with "snippets of melodrama extracted from countless hours of real life," which is turning into "snippets of real people pretending to have dramatic lives because they've seen it on TV extracted from a few less hours of tape." (This is, of course, based solely on reality television, not reality books like biographies. Unless they're memoirs about former reality show contestants.)
Joshua Peacock says
Cormac McCarthy is pretty big. He's literary to my understanding. People still really like books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men.
But will this continue? I dunno.
Sally Jo says
Nah. I think it's just that the packaging is different AND that it's at the mercy of the Great Unwashed–which is how I feel I am viewed because I read more genre and less literary, because let's face it, literary characters are often just so dang unlikable!
There, I said it.
Sally Jo says
And one more thing, The Road made me want to stick a fork in my eye.
Adam Heine says
I dunno. Isn't one of the defining features of literary fiction that it is unappreciated in its time?
Laura Martone says
I'm not sure if it's the end for literary fiction as we know it, but I sure hope it isn't – it's my top genre of choice as a reader… and as a writer.