When Popular Fiction Isn’t Popular: Genre, Literary, and the Myths of Popularity

http://electricliterature.com/when-popular-fiction-isnt-popular-genre-literary-and-the-myths-of-popularity/

by kawera • 11 years ago

31 10 11 years ago

dstyrb• 11 years ago

How esoterically meta.

coldtea• 11 years ago

Yeah, totally unlike discussions about Monads, or Haskell vs Idris, or the workings of YC, or FRP etc. on HN, which are completely non-esoteric and accessible to the general public...

carlob• 11 years ago

Iain Banks (who wrote both scifi and literary fiction) on this very subject:

"An ex-neighbour of ours recalled (in an otherwise entirely kind and welcome comment) me telling him, years ago, that my SF novels effectively subsidised the mainstream works. I think he’s just misremembered, as this has never been the case. Until the last few years or so, when the SF novels started to achieve something approaching parity in sales, the mainstream always out-sold the SF – on average, if my memory isn’t letting me down, by a ratio of about three or four to one. I think a lot of people have assumed that the SF was the trashy but high-selling stuff I had to churn out in order to keep a roof over my head while I wrote the important, serious, non-genre literary novels. Never been the case, and I can’t imagine that I’d have lied about this sort of thing, least of all as some sort of joke. The SF novels have always mattered deeply to me – the Culture series in particular – and while it might not be what people want to hear (academics especially), the mainstream subsidised the SF, not the other way round. And… rant over."

lmm3• 11 years ago

There may be no such thing as a fake reader - but most books bought aren't read. And the ratio of how many are read is different between "genre" and "literary" fiction.

Mitchell may always have written genre but he wasn't marketed that way. Likewise e.g. Margaret Atwood writes science fiction but feels the need to pretend it isn't. I'm partway through The Chimes, which was nominated for the Booker prize - and again it's science fiction in literary drag (not even literary-influenced; it's straight up classic SF). But I doubt it would have got the nomination if it had worn its genre affiliation openly. If authors who have the choice overwhelmingly prefer to position their works as "literary" rather than "genre" when they could fit into either category, doesn't that say there's something asymmetric about how we treat the two?

Honestly the Hugos were never about popularity. But they were a celebration of something deeply unliterary, and I'd like them to continue to represent that tradition, whether or not that means nominating books with higher or lower sales figures.

o_nate2• 11 years ago

The idea that the Hugos were a "celebration of something deeply unliterary" seems bizarre to me. Looking at the winners over the years it seems pretty clear they are generally works with higher than average literary merit within the genre.

lmm3• 11 years ago

"Seems pretty clear"? Maybe you should give some examples of what you're talking about? The Hugos reflect some kind of merit (plot, worldbuilding, plausibility) but it's in areas that the literary establishment places very little value on, and winners IME often have less of the literary virtues - less characterization, much less exploration of characters' mental states, often even less polished prose - than other works of (nominal) SF, simply because there isn't time for both.

Foundation's Edge is possibly the least literary book I've ever read; I don't think Asimov wrote a deeply-characterized human in his life. The same applies to most Heinlein, a lot of Dick, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and IME most Clarke (though it seems I haven't read either of his Hugo-winning works); it's true of David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson and Vernor Vinge. I've heard Neuromancer described as an "obvious first novel", and while there's something distinct about the Ender series, I certainly wouldn't call it literary.

maldusiecle• 11 years ago

If authors who have the choice overwhelmingly prefer to position their works as "literary" rather than "genre" when they could fit into either category, doesn't that say there's something asymmetric about how we treat the two?

Well, as the article says, "literary fiction is one of the larger chunks of the popular adult fiction pie." "Literary" fiction can reach a larger audience. Anecdotally, it's pretty common for me to hear an SF novel recommendation given with the proviso, "it's not like other science fiction." There's a larger audience for "fiction in general" than for speculative fiction, so it makes sense that authors would reach for that larger piece of the pie.

When Popular Fiction Isn’t Popular: Genre, Literary, and the Myths of Popularity

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