No, of course I'm not thinking of anyone in particular

[nancylebov]

Are there any writers who are emphatically opposed to literary fiction (no plot, no fun) who write decent prose?

Comments

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Alas, now I've read this brief article on what constitutes lit fic I've gone from feeling ignorantly and contingently unable to define it to definitively and clearly sure that I cannot define it.

It seems to mean "good writing," AFAICT, and if you're opposed to it I guess you might be self-consciously identifying as a genre writer? In which case you might deliberately eschew stylistic flourishes?

Who is emphatically opposed to literary fiction? Are they opposed to classics, or just to lit fic being written right now? Perhaps there is a narrow, mannered group of writers who are the true targets of this opposition?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I will tentatively assume that the people quoted in the article have imprinted on the literary fiction they like. There isn't a single underlying concept there to be understood. Or if there is a concept, it's that (successful?) literary fiction has more surprise to it than most fiction. There are a lot of ways of being surprising.

You might be interested in How Fiction Works. The title is an exaggeration, but it's got a lot about how the current concept of literary fiction happened, and whether a good bit of it is nonsense-- for example, some of the most compelling characters are monomaniacs who don't change in the course of the story.

Lewis' An Experiment in Fiction is excellent-- he suggests that books should be judged by whether people want to reread them rather than judging readers by which books they like.

And if you want something that has the official Lebovitz Imprimatur as LITERARY FICTION, try Gilman's Moonwise, fantasy's answer to James Joyce. It isn't as tough as Joyce, but it's the only time I've been impressed with a mainstream publisher having the guts to print something.