Does anyone know what exactly it is that makes a piece of work 'literary' and another piece not, - how do we know when we are reading a literary work? I mentioned a short story mag I was interested in looking at to a friend in the business and she told me she heard about the mag all the time, but that it was not 'literary', - I didn't want to ask her what she exactly meant by that, but it got me to thinking that I'd never tried to analyse the difference, even if I knew instinctively when I read something, what that difference was. It can't just be down to good versus bad writing can it?

Becca, this question has bothered me for ages. I only wish I knew the answer. Some writers are obviously literary, others not. Iris Murdoch is, Jilly Cooper's not, I'd say. Surely it's not just down to excluding all popular easy-read fiction and selecting the stuff that takes more effort? Perhaps it has to do with the intellectual background of the writer? Does anyone really know?

For me perhaps literary is something that inspires one to think , to scratch below the surface,to add a dimension. Not necessarily to do with effort.... I am sure Jilly cooper spends hours researching.. and may agonise as much as anyone. Yes, her stuff is popular and I used to find her very amusing as a holiday read..but its all very one dimensional...doesn't exactly challenge one ..but it has a place but non literary i would have thought..

Perhaps its that ... and also creating a picture with words perfectly so you forget there are words and are just left with what they create....and where no word is superfluous...and yes surely vision and intelligence must have quite a lot to do with it all too......

Ellie

oh dear.

Isn't literary anything that isn't an instruction manual?

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I must admit to being a bit shocked and disappointed to hear that Jilly Cooper is obviously not literary. I shall advise my mother to stop reading her immediately.

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Now there's an idea for two more writers groups, Literary & Non-Literary...what d'ya think David?

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...and with my lack of vision and intelligence I know where I'm heading

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You know, this is the first time since I've been a member that I've felt ever-so-slightly disturbed about the subject matter...

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...and some of the responses.

Good question Becca, not sure this is the answer, but it's how I make the distinction.

Some novels fit easily into genres. For example;

romance
murder mystery
"Chick Lit."

These novels tend to have fairly formulaic plots. Ie, a murder mystery story will usually feature an investigator hunting down clues in order to determine the identity of the killer. In a "Chick Lit," book, there's usually a strong, beautiful indepenent women with a great career, missing only one thing. A man! With her posse of witty female friends and a stereotypically camp gay male friend (often called something like Tarquin), she has a series of experiences finishing with her falling for someone she hated at the story's beginning.

Other novels (such as J G Ballard's "Hi - Rise.") don't follow any predetermined plot. I think these types of novel often tend to be of higher quality, because there's less of a market for them and so a rule, their harder to get published. It's these that usually get called literary novels.

The problem for me is that people assume all genre novels are of worse quality than literary ones. Obviously, this isn't always true. Personally, I think Stephen King (a horror writer) is superb. I can't remember who said it originally, but I read a really good quote, saying that a great genre writer uses a predetermined plot as clothes on top of the story's body. A bad genre writer simply constructs an elaborate outfit with nothing underneath.

Perhaps a better approach is to call literary work general fiction, something I've noticed is actually being done more and more.

Sorry for the length of this - I may have got a little carried away!

Ben

Interesting that you think Stephen King is 'literary,' Ben, although compared to most of the writers in his genre, I guess he is. His early stuff, although maybe written less smoothly, was also less obvious, more exploratory, than things that followed. Maybe the difference lies there somehow. Do you think 'literary' is just the difference between popular fiction and non-popular fiction?

Hi Tweed, well maybe it's an absurd distinction, but it's still one that's made, so it's kind of hard to avoid contemplating it, don't you think?

OK, I've just emailed my friend and fessed up to my ignorance, as I should have done in the first place.

Becca, please let us know what she says!

Maybe I'm a little too simple, but I don't see such a thing as a worthwhile distinction to make.

Literary?
Non-Literary?

How about "worth reading" and "not worth reading".

One thing that really gets up my nose is needless classifications and sub-classifications that don't add any value or help people choose a product but instead serve only to feed some absurd hunger for more classifications.

We don't need to classify books into three hundred thousand different categories. All books are different, which is why they have a synopsis on the back...

I was told once "oh you must read the Master and Margarita"mikhail bulgakov "Incredible piece of literature"... but I couldn't ... so I obviously missed out , whilst having my head in Marianne Faithfulls autobiography, a document of the sixties (literary?)

We read what we do as the mood takes us surely ...and .. and yes IB there isnt much point in classifying... will start singing Bob Dylan in a minute..

Ellie

Good thinking IB, I agree about the classifications and ... genres. Perhaps novel writers don't have to ponder on genres so much as shorts writers. Short story mags are more likely than not to have defined what they represent and the material they want, and it's often a pain in the butt to see where you might be able to hawk a piece of work, this is off the subject now I know, but related never-the-less because something like 'horror/fantasy writing is considered very dismissable and often 'bad taste,' so then you get full circle to the literary/non literary thing again.

IB - I'm not keen on classification either, but while publishers etc. ask for work that falls into certain catagories and dismiss work from others one surely needs to know the differences.

Tweed - sorry the responses have disturbed you 'ever so slightly' (there I am aplologising again) but it's worthwhile discussing these things, and it's good to 'talk'.

And do you think that David has reinstated the owner edit just for those of us who keep having afterthoughts? Possibly.

Ellenna - Oh God - I was once given The Master and Margarita by a close friend who said it was their favourite book - I finished it with difficulty - there was one good joke in it where he slips on the spilled oil towards the beginning - thereafter it was bloody hard work to the end.

I'm sorry nell, (my turn to apologise) but I agree with IB when he says 'I don't see such a thing as a worthwhile distinction to make'. Call me old fashioned but I get very concerned when the kind of literary/non literary fascism that I hate so much begins to rear its ugly head (especially on my favourite web site). For me this usually signifies the beginning of a bleak, dark period when people find themselves incapable of finding meaning in the simplest of things. In my view a dangerous state to be in and time to call in the Jedi.

come to think of it someone recommended that book to me too, but, perhaps not to bother, - got a worrying stack of books at the moment to read, but trying to do DIY, so am not reading anything.