Comments on: Notes on An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction (part 3 of 3)

By: Tumperkin

Tumperkin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:02:00 +0000

I skimmed this really quickly and I’d still like to read the actual book (though admittedly less so now *g*!) but the main thing that struck me about this section was the implication that literary fiction doesn’t have a ‘system’. As though each and every example of literary fiction is unique.

In fact literary fiction has many many recognisable traits (the deliberate whimsy; the defiance of reader expectation etc.). My view is that, like the best genre fiction, the best literary fiction ‘transcends’ its system (by which I mean that it becomes something more whole and complete and doesn’t ‘feel’ put together) but those are the exception and not the rule.

By: Shawn

Shawn — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:26:27 +0000

“The gateway to the paperback bookscape is the supermarket, the gateway to the literary bookscape is the classroom.”

[snark_mode='on'] I never knew the supermarket was so exciting. I gotta shop more often….[snark_mode='off]

By: Ariel/Sycorax Pine

Ariel/Sycorax Pine — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:46:50 +0000

Oh, there is so much wrong here, but there was one point that I found evocative (as a scholar of literature and a free-wheeling literary tourist): this idea that “Experts have a residence in the literary landscape, amateurs travel it. ” Not least because this puts pleasure-in-reading in less, well, profoundly puritanical terms than many of his other ideas do. Is expertise a variety of intellectual ghettoization? A move towards fixity and rigidity and away from the flexibility and openness of readerly exploration? When you are on the job market, it sometimes feels that way. When you are teaching an introduction to literature class (and asked to be both a generalist and an enthusiast), it doesn’t.

By: Liz

Liz — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:16:00 +0000

I think taking his own experience a the only possible experience of junk fiction did not serve him well at all

I think you nailed it there. As I read your summaries, I kept thinking, this is a guy who is generalizing from his own experiences. He reverences and studies the canon and enjoys slumming in genre fiction in his spare time (but would never talk about doing so with others), and he pretty much thinks everyone else reads like he does. His main argument seems to be “I know it when I see it.”

Hence, perhaps, the vast middle ground (literary fiction which is not yet and likely never will be canonical, but which isn’t genre fiction or The Godfather either) which again is missing–maybe he just doesn’t read it. What is literary fiction before it has had a chance to become canonical? Who reads it before it enters the classroom? Does it just hang around waiting for reverence? Also, 50 years to enter the canon? Hmm . . . 1990 isn’t that long ago. The canon wars were already getting going, as was the teaching of contemporary fiction, which quickly developed a “canon” of its own (the same short stories, for instance, are anthologized over and over). Although to be fair, it may be easier to disparage his idea of the canon now than it was 20 years ago (this book makes me feel old. It is very much a dispatch from another century, and one I can remember all too well).

By: Ann Somerville

Ann Somerville — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:59:18 +0000

okay, i read this ‘distinction’ between author and writers and my head *exploded*.

Back when I can stop swearing.

By: Milena

Milena — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:06:35 +0000

Ungh. So much is wrong here, but I’ll just stop at one point: dismissing fandom is wrong, wrong, wrong. Fandom is capable of being very silly, but also of providing deep and real insights into its given genre. Modern SF theory first started in fanzines, not in academia. And the reason why it started was exactly because that was the place where people who wanted to “study read” (whatever exactly that’s supposed to mean) the genre could share their ideas with other readers familiar with those same texts.

Oh, and as for having no reverence for genre writers… that’s just plain silly. No other word for it.

Sigh. And now I’ll have to go and read the whole book… I’ll need a lot of green tea and Vivaldi to keep me calm.

By: Jocelyn Z.

Jocelyn Z. — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:37:05 +0000

I suspected it was building up to this. What a disappointing ending to a book with a great title.

Thank you for reading this book so I don’t have to.

By: Victoria Janssen

Victoria Janssen — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:07:24 +0000

I vote for an author versus writer cage match.