Interesting idea. Literary fiction never actually existed; it’s an artificial construct.

I’d really love some professors to analyze a furry solarpunk story I wrote and dig through the symbolism like Virginia Woolf wrote it.

It would be interesting to see if a random internet dog’s scribblings can provide just as much content for discussion. From what other people have told me, it does.

Scifi is somewhere in the transition from "always genre fiction" to "sometimes respectable literary fiction" (people write serious analyses of sci-fi, now!) Granted, furry solarpunk might take a bit longer.

Don't have to go back that far :) - the author mentions Portnoy's Complaint (1969) which contains the big sight gags for the raunchy comedies Something About Mary(1998) and American Pie(1999).

Also Ulysses, of course; it was essentially banned in most English-speaking countries for a decade or so after publication, on grounds of obscenity.

Literary is a genre. Like all genres it has its popular tropes, fandom, cliches, etc.

A long time ago someone on a forum described a new lit fic book as a “TOBADNY” — a “trendy overhyped book about dysfunctional New Yorkers.” I LOLed and then realized this was totally the case and that this was a popular lit fic trope.

Hrm, not sure I _totally_ buy this; a big part of "is it literary fiction?" is just "it is _proper, respectable_ literature that people write analyses of?", and that tends to shift over time a bit. Some current novels which are not considered literary fiction today will be in 2050.

That's a genre. Genre boundaries always shift and are always a bit fuzzy. Most great works could be put in more than one genre.

I'd say literary fiction is a genre that focuses on the craft of writing, usually through either poetic prose or deep character study. There are bonus points if the topic or style is challenging, so you get tropes that lead in this direction: deep studies of complicated often problematic characters (Lolita), deep studies of society (Pride and Prejudice), unusual plot structures (Cloud Atlas), experimental prose style (Ulysses), etc. These are literary tropes because they're challenging to write -- in terms of the craft of writing itself. The most literary of literary fiction is "writer's writing" in the sense that some experimental jazz is "musician's music."

And of course you can have deliberate genre crossovers. Literary sci-fi has been popular lately, like Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go or the already mentioned Cloud Atlas.

I mean, maybe that's part of the problem, it's a genre that's just becoming less popular? Akin to Western novels?

Yeah, this is kind of the trouble with this sort of thing. Even ignoring the obscenity issue (_many_ great works of English literature were not originally published in English-speaking countries, but rather in France, which was more laid-back about this sort of thing), it is not that long ago that novels as a form were considered kinda inherently disreputable/low-brow; even into the 19th century, _all_ novels were kind of seen a bit like how we now see genre fiction.

This is something that gets forgotten all the time: the common man could go watch a Shakespeare play for a penny and sip on ale between one dirty joke and the other.

Pride and Prejudice, perhaps the most romance novel to ever romance novel in the history of romance novels, is described as literary fiction (and so presumably not genre fiction) by the author. I think history--and hundreds of entries on fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org where teenagers gush about their own dark-haired and standoffish but secretly gentle imaginary men--has shown that the reason she's remembered is the substance, not the subject of her writing, as well as the historical significance in her being a pioneer, of course.

I recently watched The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. A historically and artistically important movie, and then you go check the Wikipedia page and the producer described it to the effect "Yeah from the script it looked like some quick slop which would turn a buck."[1]

I think starting out with the idea of making a "literary" work and creating a genre out of "literary fiction" inherently doesn't work. I think the avenues for greatness are either making something experimental that breaks new ground, or something more conventional but that, in exchange, shows you complete mastery of that well-known material. But you can't be great just by appropriating the superficial qualities you identify in past works you yourself consider to be great, because again, it was the substance and not the mere subject that made those work great.

[1] 'Pommer later said: "They saw in the script an 'experiment'. I saw a relatively cheap film".' Citation [36] on Wikipedia

To be honest, I suspect that someone reading Pride and Prejudice _after_ reading a bunch of ao3 stuff is going to suffer from https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunn... to an extent; part of why was significant was just in establishing a bunch of tropes which have now been absolutely _done to death_.

I've made sure to reference "historical significance" when referencing P&P and the Cabinet for this exact reason. I think every classic undergoes some amount of 'rot', but I've also found a lot of classic to be perfectly enjoyable if you allow them some slack.

And, not to insult fanfiction writers (I've been known to partake), but I would guess Jane Austen still writes a better broody man than most of them... although probably not all of them. That's a secondary consequence of simply having more people partaking in art to begin with: the more millions of artists you have, that many more one-in-a-million geniuses you're bound to find.

> but I would guess Jane Austen still writes a better broody man than most of them...

Whatever about that, she remains absolutely unbeaten in writing awful vicars.

(I assume this wasn't her intention, but the vicar is by far the most memorable character, for me.)

I believe you have got it right. How do you think people will talk about half life in a few decades? Would it be considered high brow?

I think half life already is well on its way to be considered high brow. I played it a few years ago and while I did enjoy it part of my motivation to play it was "this is what the people who have more experience than me think is good".

I wonder which genre fiction today will be deemed as 'literary' in 2200s?

Sci-fi may be a slightly obvious answer; I think things like Blindsight would probably get tagged as literary fiction except that they are already genre fiction, say. That’ll probably happen sooner than 2200, tho; it has already started happening in edge cases where everyone kinda pretends it’s not sci-fi (Handmaid’s Tale, say).

I agree it's going to be SciFi, but maybe also some fantasy. So much of SciFi consists of speculative philosophy about the intersection of technology and society. Fantasy is somewhat similar if you abstract technology to include magic.

There are already debates as to whether Lord of the Rings is "literary" when it checks all the boxes.