Literary Literature

Literary Fiction stands along in the modern pantheon. I believe this is because it defies classification. Sometimes it defies classification because it is unreadable, but often it is simple fresh and original, in the mold of the word Novel, meaning NEW.

Literary fiction, despite the aspirations of authors after the Great American Novel, is distinct from Literature in the sense of works that have stood the test of time and entered the canon of great writing.

Literature, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the work of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, offer a window into a past age, providing vivid detail about life and social issues from the formative years of our culture. Sometimes, like the continuing cruelty with which we treat African Americans, are echoes of our ambivalent history with slavery. A people who were once enslaved must be flawed, and therefore worthy of abuse. Uncle Tom’s Cabin still reminds us that Blacks longed for freedom, and would do almost anything to obtain it.

In the beginning, I suppose it wasn’t difficult to write something novel. No one had ever done it before. The field was wide open. By the 1920s, the field was so heavily plowed; all the good stories had been blown away by the erosive winds of creativity. People like Virginia Wolff and James Joyce had to delve into the bizarre to produce something original. The same thing happened in music and painting. Their work was unrecognizable as literature, much less great storytelling. I believe that disease persisted through the 1960s. From what I’ve heard, Jack Kerouac is not an improvement. With the rise of the drug culture, LSD fueled a new revolution in incomprehensibility.

Literary fiction is alive and well today, but it appears to have recovered from the virus that nearly destroyed it. Writers like Jonathan Franzen claim literary preeminence. I was unable to detect a plot and the characters seemed boring, but at least his sentences are recognizable as such.

All this is prelude. Steeped as I am in crime fiction, where a plot and characterization are essential, I hope to write a literary novel. Unfortunately, it has a plot, which may disqualify me from consideration by agents and editors, but the premise is sufficiently strange that it might attract some attention when the time comes.

I’ll spare you the details. From the viewpoint of six pages of manuscript and a synopsis, the whole project is so daunting, I don’t want to curse myself by making promises I can’t keep.

Maybe I should stick to mysteries.