Beating a Dead Battle Horse

Again, I'm not sure why I'm continuing this. It's not like I'm getting much feedback. But I feel the need to clarify some things regarding this whole literary vs. commercial thing rampaging in my head. Call me obsessive--it won't be the first time, I promise.

You can read my first post HERE and my second post HERE.

What I want to say first and foremost is this: The whole thing started because of a chat I was in, where a commercial writer made some comments about having been snubbed by literary writers. A literary writer commented back--and let me be very clear: the literary writer showed no snobbery at all. She was quite gracious.

BUT, most genre and commercial writers have, at some time, experienced literary snobbery. It has put us on the defensive. My purpose for the two previous postings was to explain why. My last commenter made it sound as if we commercial writers misunderstand. That it's not snobbery that is pervasive in literary circles--but rather poor writing that is pervasive in commercial ones.

Um.

I'm fully aware of the amount of commercial garbage out there. Yep, I am. And when I started my first post I said that many literary writers would probably agree with me--as commenter did--that there's a good amount of literary navel-contemplating trash as well.

What I have meant to convey--and apparently failed at--from the very beginning, is the idea that when you compare GOOD commercial writing to GOOD literary writing the choice comes down to preference. A good literary story is not "better" than a good commercial story for the simple fact that it is literary.

Yet, there are literary "snobs" out there who don't see that. The one involved in the chat that started this didn't exhibit this quality, but others do. I know this because I have experienced it and so have other commercial writers I know.

What creates my frustration is that I know full-well that if I sat down with a group of literary sorts and plunked down a copy of their favorite literary masterpiece and said, "I don't get why anyone would read this by choice," many (maybe not all, but many) noses would rise, eyes would narrow, and in their minds my IQ would sink like a stone.

Am I saying that each and every literary writer out there is a snob? No. But nor is every commercial writer a brainless mass-pleaser. I think gobs of writing falls in-between commercial and literary, with elements of both. And good writers are found in every position along the scale. Both types of writing take a certain type of talent--that is all we on the commercial side want understood. We simply want the literary side to stop lumping us in with Twilight-mongers, and we need to try to see the difference between true literary art and splatter-painted toilet seats.

More on the Literary Battlefront

I have no idea why I'm doing a second post on literary fiction. I mean, I had all of one comment on the first post. But it's something that keeps lurking in the back of my mind. I looked up some other blog posts on the topic, and found an interesting one by literary agent Nathan Bransford: What Makes Literary Fiction Literary?

He boils down the difference between literary and commercial fiction as this:

In commercial fiction the plot tends to happen above the surface and in literary fiction the plot tends to happen beneath the surface.

I, personally, see this to mean pretty much the same as character-driven vs. plot-driven. The important thing he points out, though, is that literary doesn't mean "plotless." Things must happen--it's just that the changes take place inside the character. It is the character's inner journey that is most important.

This is why the books I mentioned in my last post are considered literary even though their style is very commercial/mainstream. Thirteen Reasons Why and Hold Still are the stories of the inner journeys of teens dealing with the suicide of a friend/classmate. Things do happen in the story. Those things create changes in the character, and those changes are the ultimate focus of the book. The book cannot, as Bransford says, simply be "a character musing about the vagaries and eccentricities of everyday existence."


I also like Bransford's description of genre fiction: 

Most genre fiction involves a character propelling themselves through a world. The character is an active protagonist who goes out into a world, experiences the challenges of that world, and emerges either triumphant or defeated. 

The character can--and in good genre/commercial fiction does--experience inner change during this process. But that change is generally secondary to the main, "outer" plot. In the Harry Potter series, for example, Harry grows up and grows stronger, discovering all sorts of things about himself as a person, but the main focus of the series is still the ongoing battle between Harry and Voldemort.

The fact is, literary and commercial writing are simply different animals. One is not "better" than the other. They serve completely different purposes. That is the end of the story.

BUT...

There is something that tends to go unsaid in this debate, and today, I'm going to say it.

This resentment between commercial authors and literary authors comes down to one thing--Intellectual Snobbery. There is a pervading attitude among the literary set that literary writing and its writers are simply smarter. Many literary sorts believe commercial writing is just that--commercial. Common. Base. Dumbed-down. For the mass of mindless drones that occupy this quickly degrading chunk of rock, who wouldn't know a simile if t hit them in the forehead....

To that I say, Bleh. No. Not so.

Literary does not automatically equal smart. I have the papers to prove my "smart"--IQ test, SAT score, high school and college transcripts. I promise you, I am not sitting to the left of the bulk of the literary writing world when it comes to position on the intellectual bell curve. And yet, I do not like literary as a whole. I don't like much mainstream fiction either--romance and mysteries rarely hold my attention because I know the ending by chapter three. My love is dark and weird, fantasy, sci-fi, and horror--and much of it falling into the middle grade and young adult categories.

I am perfectly capable of dissecting a deep and meaningful literary book. I love the messages behind books such as The Picture of Dorian Grey. I do savor the wording of much beautifully constructed prose...but nine times out of ten, I read a book because I want to be sucked into story. I want to be lost in another world.

That, folks, does not decrease my intelligence. And commercial writers and readers do not like being looked at as lesser, as inferior, as dumb. Your abstractness does not make our straight-forwardness less interesting, or less intelligent.  There, I said it.

I'm not deluding myself, though...the battle will most assuredly rage on.