The “Third Wednesday Free For All” on “genre” (4/17/19) set an attendance record for FFAs, with the usual suspects sharing the table and the conversation with some new folk as well as some long-time WFoD-ers who don’t usually join the “off-week” folderol. It was great chat, with lots of information and informed opinion flying in all directions. It seemed to me though that one thing we had trouble nailing down was a response (or responses) to Nicole’s query about “literary fiction:” what it is, how can you tell, and so on. The best we could come up with was “not some other mainstream genre.”
I suggest though that there might be some other telling attributes, such as:
- a elevated concern with characters’ interior lives
- digressiveness, discursiveness, i.e. being unafraid to wander away from the current plot point
- sometimes a lack of concern for the plot; certainly a lack of concern for the “rules” of a genre, even when the piece might look like some genre or other.
- a lack of fear of style
- <add your favorite here>
Write Free or Die 
My sense of LitFic is actually simpler than these — simply, anything written with some depth and purpose. This isn’t to disparage more formulaic writing, but I think of the latter as writing produced exclusively for entertainment purposes (which is fine), as opposed to LitFic, which challenges the reader more on some level. I love H.P. Lovecraft, but Steinbeck engages readers in far more complex ways. In the end, I can really come up with specific bullet points, but revert to the 1980s Meese Commission’s definition of porn: I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.
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Agree with “depth and purpose,” but they’re very hard to quantify and calling them out requires insight into the writer’s psyche at the time of writing. That’s not always a reliable place to go. HPL ‘s work was often purposeful , but not particularly nobly. When he evoked revulsion in the reader, he was often pointing to facts of the real life around him with his creations. I go for style over story, setting and language over plot. When someone tells me I’ve spent too much effort on setting, mood, and the sound of the words, and not enough on “the story” I suspect I’m hearing a genre-reader’s point of view.
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