I said 'LitFic' when I should have said literary fiction, because I was talking about my definition of books which are literary, not the booktrade's genre of LitFic. I agree, there's work published as LitFic which isn't very original at all, just wears 'literary' clothing.

Emma

how do you relate all these genres/descriptions to the simple distinction between writing which is beautifully constructed, with fresh imagery etc, and writing which is a bit 'lazy' and hackneyed and full of cliche?

Now there is a good-bad distinction I'm prepared to acknowledge!

Emma

Emma - I hear you. These terms are so problematic and you have to spend so long defining them before you can begin that that whole thing becomes a bit ridiculous. I think what you said about trying to define something for yourself is helpful.

Just a couple of thoughts here that might or might not relate. In painting you often have to choose - are you going to be more original in terms of painterliness/process, or are you going to be more original in terms of concepts and ideas? It is interesting that a lot of early abstract work concentrated on totally unoriginal subject-matter (Picasso and Braques ground-breaking cubist work used traditional subjects of still-life and portrait) and that when new suject-matter comes in with - say Pop Art - that the style is unoriginal, flat, easy to read and using graphic design effect.

I think sometimes (tentatively - sometimes not always) that it can be similar in books. That the litfic section in the bookshop will often have books written in a more experimental line-by-line vein but are often very prosaic and realistic in their subject-matter. Compare this to say - science fiction and fantasy, the best of which (eek, here we go) can be totally experimental in terms of ideas and concepts and worlds, but the line by line nature of which tends to be more prosaic and straightforward and not trying to do anything confusing with the sentences, style or words.

I think this is partly because you lose your reader if you go for both. An audience needs a structure by which to look at something. When you look at a cubist work you can relate it to the traditional motifs and know where and how to view it. You also see its originality through contrast with this more traditional frame. When you view Pop Art, you know what you are looking at, if you were looking at totally unfamiliar subject-matter and totally experimental painting at once, you would not be able to read it at all.

And it is interesting that Abstract Expressionism did not move into unfamiliar subject matter rather than "inner" expression. Removing the problem altogether.

Just some thoughts for you there which are personally helpful to me. But might or might not fit in with the debate.

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Perhaps I should add that it is not that the concepts of the experimental line-by-line or the brush-stroke-by-brushstroke can't be original - but they tend to be more about the nature of art itself as opposed to the nature of the world outside (again, another problem that litfic can fall into.)

All this being said, I don't think it at all matters whether the whole of something is a hundred percent original or not. That part of it is, or is surprising and new can be better and say more than something totally original in every single way that can't be read properly.

I think a synergy between tradition (form) and newness is the thing in all genres, and in all artforms too. Because that represents so much more about human beings and ourselves in the world: an individual exists as a lone viewpoint and as part of a wider society too. Stability and change. History and future.

I think there can be wonderful things created with all those approaches I've outlined. And some really shit things too. :)

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Errr. For example. Malevich's black square. Fabulous. And strangely beautiful too. Black squares since, however, have been done to death. Original? Well, if you push it you could say that the next black square is original because it is aware it is no.2 and so on and so forth. But I get bored of them, now.

Back to defining terms. When is to make a statement about the nature of art itself original and when has that been done to death? Can any of these things be done to death? What is an original concept? Oh hell. See, Debac, now what have you done.

I think you have to just decide for yourself what does it for you and leave the judgement of the world to one side whether that be in terms of category or originality or whatever, whatever.....(*slowly going mad*)

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And last point: something can be original and saying something COMPLETELY not worth saying...

The only reason I'm banging on about this so much is that originality is such an issue in visual art. And sometimes a problematic one.

Snowy, I think what you're saying is that there is conceptual originality, and there's originality in the way you use language, and that often there is one without the other?

You probably know far more about this than I do, but ISTM that conceptual art can be wonderful and magnificent and revealing, and really make you think... or it can be dull and feel unoriginal and you end up noticing the lack of skills necessary to physically create it. (I'm not sure that bears direct analogy with writing, though.)

I think an original concept is one which makes you stand back and think 'wow!' because of the concept itself. It stands out as new and different. If it doesn't give that feeling then it's probably not an original concept.

Emma, I guess my comment about the fresh, well constructed writing v. the lazy, cliched writing was meant to delve into whether these two extremes can be mapped onto any of these other descriptions? You see, to me they can, but by no means exactly. Pick up your average fat beach read, for instance, and it's full of cliches and I can't bear to read it.

And how do plot-driven and character-driven map onto the descriptions? In theory not at all, perhaps, except that IMO more commercial fiction is plot-driven, because that tends to make a pacy page-turner which many consider more appealing.

Oh, it really is a minefield trying to line these descriptions up into some kind of diagram which interrelates them all. Maybe you're right that we shouldn't even try.

Deb

No I wasn't talking about conceptual art there, I was talking about painting really. Never mind. The interesting bit for the purposes of this discussion, was that you can't change everything at once. That if you are being very original in one area, you need to hold onto something familiar in another. In fact, you might argue you can't be original without this or else you have no comparitors built into the piece.

My analogy with writing would be something like: a fresh original description of an interior, a feeling, something very familiar. Litfic does a lot of this. However if your subject-matter is very very unusual, new, or conceptually different - let's take something familiar - Animal Farm say. If this book was written in a style that made all the familiar unfamiliar it could be too much and not easy to follow. The concept is massive, therefore the language and imagery should allow us to see the picture, not see something else into the picture. This is not the time for rendering ordinary images and feelings extraordinary. THis is a time to make the extraordinary, ordinary (believable).

The other stuff you are talking about seems to be about what is better again. I'm really not sure it is a genre versus litfic issue. There is good and bad writing in all genres (including litfic as a genre there).

Snowy, re. Animal Farm I agree. That's what I thought you meant.

The other stuff you are talking about seems to be about what is better again

Yes, I am talking about what is better. Fresh, well-constructed language is better than a bunch of cliches - for me, and for Emma (only saying that because of her post in response to me).

Why shouldn't we talk about what is better? Personally I aspire to 'better', so I want to think about what it means.

But clearly there are different types of writing for different markets. For instance, my husband likes a good page-turning plot, but he doesn't care a jot about cliches. He'd admire cleverness, but wouldn't be impressed by subtlety, because although he's a clever man he doesn't want to work hard when he reads fiction. He wants it to be easy, and enjoyable, and unchallenging, and to give the right payoff at the end.

If someone is writing for that market then maybe they don't bother with the fresh language and avoiding cliches, because perhaps their market simply doesn't care?

So that's what I'm getting at. The person who wrote that easy read might be skilled enough to also be able to write something that I would call more literary and less commercial.

Deb

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I suppose what I'm getting at is that different skills are valued differently by different markets. Someone can be fantastic at all the skills, or just at some of them. If not brilliant at them all, then their particular strengths (plot, characterisation, use of language, innovation) might point them at which genre/style/market they would be wisest to aim at.

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But obviously their personal taste and their choice will come into it too. They may simply prefer character-driven to plot-driven, but be perfectly capable of a romping plot.

The concept is massive, therefore the language and imagery should allow us to see the picture, not see something else into the picture. This is not the time for rendering ordinary images and feelings extraordinary. THis is a time to make the extraordinary, ordinary (believable).

Yes, I think that's a real skill - to tackle big ideas and make it seem easy. "Literary" writing (let's say, verbose, highly descriptive, obscure - I'm using the most extreme, negative interpretation of the word) doesn't necessarily do all subjects justice. Proust's highly "literary" style was applied to rather mundane details of daily life. Orwell, on the other hand, tackled Big Ideas with little words. As I teenager, I wanted to write like Proust...now, as an adult, I can see that Orwell was, in many ways, a more skilled writer.

The danger, I think, with writers who try too hard to make the extraordinary ordinary (and I'm at risk of this myself, writing a story about a 13 year-old witnessing the rise of far-right movements in Flanders before WWII), is that your writing can start to feel contrived, sentimental, or manipulative. Part of what irked me about "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" was its incredibly simplistic - and, I thought, downright wrong - portrayal of the Holocaust. The idea was that it was "allegorical"...but in the end, I simply felt that the author couldn't be bothered to do his research, so wrote something simplistic and minimal to create a work about lost innocence, or summat.

Interesting thoughts, here...

I just don't agree with this. The assumption here is that genre fiction is badly written in comparison to litfic. But it all depends. Some is, some isn't. If you are going to use the term litfic as a genre/categorisation then you have to accept that within it there is going to be good stuff and bad stuff too.

I don't think that subtlety means something is better written, or lots of poetic imagery. It is all about context and what the author is trying to do. Subtlety and poetic imagery would be utter tosh in what I am writing. But could be marvellous in another kind of book. It would be confusing and inappropriate in Animal Farm. It would be OTT in riotous comedy. There are loads of different styles and different genres and people can be at the top of their game in any one of them and part of that is understanding what suits the genre and what you are trying to say.

HHGTTG - brilliantly original, certainly at the time. But it is a comedy. It would be a BAD comedy if it suddenly launched into some self-conscious mood writing about the feel of material against skin. Unless it was a parody.

It is not less than litfic, it is just different. I think the danger of the generalisations you want to make are that you are not looking closely at the match between what a piece is doing, how it relates to the rules of its genre and what is appropriate for it. Good fresh imagery is good fresh imagery in what context and plain silly in another. Nothing exists in a vacuum.

You keep talking of beach-reads and page-turners. But this isn't really engaging with genre, is it?

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"Proust's highly "literary" style was applied to rather mundane details of daily life. Orwell, on the other hand, tackled Big Ideas with little words."

Brilliant. That is what I was trying to get at and probably failing. Much better put, MF. Interesting thoughts = have to dash now but will reply later...

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Sorry - just to say I crossed and the first bit was answering Deb's post.

Confused.

Snowy, you've hit the nail on the head in saying you can't be original on all fronts at once, and your analogy of Picasso vs. surrealists is spot on. At least, you can be orginal on all fronts, but you'll take precious few people with you, because most of us need some solid, familiar ground to stand on while we tackle new things. The more towards the literary end of the scale a book, the more aspects of it are orginal, and the more people, lacking the compass-points of familiarity, won't like or get it. And of course if the originality is in the language, and it's hard to get, that tends to get in the way of the understanding of other things.

A reviewer of TMOL said that the characters and situations of TMOL are prosaic, but the narrative of photography is electrifying. Well, prosaic hurt a bit, but I'm the first to admit that there's nothing stunningly original about them, though I hope they're interesting and well-written enough to make the reader care about them. Whereas I really do think I was doing something new in the way I used photography as both subject and metaphor, and I'm thrilled to bits that a reviewer got it.

Because, arguably, originality of writing is the hardest for people to penetrate, I think it's probably the first originality to go, when moving towards the genre end of the spectrum. My own experience of good genre fiction is that the word-by-word writing does the job nicely, and conveys the story, the characters, the themes well, but isn't, in itself exciting, because it's not original. If it's a genre I enjoy - detective fiction, for instance - I don't mind that in the least, because I get a lot of pleasure anyway. Bad genre fiction, yes, among other things, uses clichés and tired language.

(I also think that plain writers, like Orwell, often don't get the credit they deserve, just as light comedians don't versus Dustin Hoffman, because it looks easy even though it isn't.)

Emma

Snowy, I find most of that answer to me quite patronising. I still like you as much and that doesn't mean I want a spat, because I certainly don't, but that's how I feel.

I feel that you've taken what I've said and told me you're contradicting me when you're actually making many of the same points I made myself.

You say 'the assumption here', by which I think you mean that you think I am making that assumption. But I didn't say that. And you say 'if I am going to use litfic as a category' - actually, I have never used the term 'litfic'.

I think subtlety and use of poetic imagery are entirely different things, yet you equate them, and then use them together to disagree with what I said about only one of them, changing the point completely.

You say that 'It is all about context and what the author is trying to do', and imply I was saying otherwise, yet I pretty much explicitly said this!

I think the danger of the generalisations you want to make are that you are not looking closely at the match between what a piece is doing, how it relates to the rules of its genre and what is appropriate for it

What - I'm not looking closely enough, or you worry that you would not if you made generalisations? I thought I was doing exactly what you suggest I was not. Did you not read my last msg? Please re-read it. I was suggesting that different types of book (let's get away from these ambiguous definitions) need to shine in different ways depending on who they're aimed at and what those people want. How can you say I am not looking closely enough at what is appropriate...

Please, Snowbell, I have no problem with us disagreeing, but I am irritated by your apparent lack of attention to what I've actually written. How can we have any meaningful discussion when you seem to not be reading my msgs properly??

Deb

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Or are you actually just knee-jerking because you think I'm dissing genre fiction? (which I wasn't, btw)

Look Debac

I'm really sorry - again - if I offended. I did warn you that you shouldn't start me on this subject matter!

I'm afraid I think the best thing would be to call it a day. I am not at all uninterested but I can't can't can't bear more quarrels and personal irritations rising up. I am seriously not trying to be anything - patronising or otherwise with you. I was arguing with what i saw to be some of the arguements you were exploring, that's all.

I am irritated by your apparent lack of attention to what I've actually written.

And I'm sorry about this too but this is just a forum and not a court of law and I am afraid I am not going to pick through everything in so much detail. If I got it wrong, I'm sorry - I am very sorry if you feel I have got your arguments wrong. Perhaps I have my own bugbears with this issue and can't see straight? Perhaps I just want to put my own arguments? Perhaps I'm less subtle in my reading of what you are saying than I should be (that is a joke and seriously not a nasty one to you so much as to myself). I don't know. Whatever, I apologise. I do prefer to talk of specific examples rather than generalising too much because it is hard to analyse what is going on with such a wide set of stuff: there are so many genres, so many styles.

So I think I will duck out, if you don't mind. Interesting debate, mind. Perhaps we can do it again on a different subject...

Snowy, my Added bit crossed with your reply, so sorry about that.

Fair enough. Perhaps we were misunderstanding each other - and it is true you said at the start you didn't really want to get into this discussion.

I find the problem with specific examples is that we won't necessarily have read the same things. I am naughty, I guess, in that I don't read very widely (ie, not much variety) because I am quite particular and won't read what I dislike.

The subtle joke was funny, and I did spot it before you said...

I'm sorry too - perhaps I was being over-sensitive. Anyway, no hard feelings from over here, and perhaps you're right that we should enjoy discussing something different on another day.

Still friends?

Deb

Deb - absolutely still friends and i think quite noble of you to say about the reading widely thing - and there's no reason why you should. Just to say though that if you are going to make generalisations about genres that other people are really seriously engaged with that it might not be very fair if you haven't read them. Not dissing you, but I suppose you talked of beach reads and then were extrapolating to "genre" fiction which is so vast and multifarious that you just can't do it and if you attempt to, you should probably be armed with loads of info and knowledge having read in a wide number of genres or else it does just come across as prejudice - if you see what I mean. I think there is lots of confusion in this thread - probably because we keep using lots of different terms interchangably and you pointed this out yourself and you are quite right. The whole thing is a mine-field.

Hope you don't take any of that amiss. I just have to stand up for books I think are good. And for all the people writing them too!

Snowbell, going back to your earlier posts about art v's literature, you might find this article interesting:

Publishing? It's an art form The Times, Sat June 23rd

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1971187.ece

- NaomiM






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Actually, I've copied this onto your thread in the Lounge.
Hopefully David will move it into the Private Members forum, since it is writing related rather than chat.

Thanks Naomi. Interesting article. I'm finding all these forums a bit tricky. But I'm sure i'll get used to being good and trying to use them properly.