Popular vs Literary Fiction

Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre for Books has an impressive range of events listed in their promotional brochure, so recently I went to check out one of their Lunchbox/Soapbox talks.  The title of the talk appealed to my funny bone as it was “In Defense of Trash Fiction” and given the huge sales of books by authors such as Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer, there are many people who read this type of book but don't admit to it.  The session was led by Toni Jordan, a Melbourne based author whose debut book, “Addition” which was published in 2007.

Toni was an amusing and eloquent speaker and made some interesting comparisons between popular (she thought that was nicer than “trash”) and literary fiction.   Firstly, what popular fiction is not.  It is not read for the “beauty of its narrative or the poetry of its sentences”.  The characters in popular fiction are not deeply developed.  Where popular fiction wins is in the story.  Most people will finish a popular fiction book as the aim of the author is to ensure that the reader keeps turning the page. Toni uses the example of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code to demonstrate, as the main characters seem to running for the lives in every chapter leaving us wanting more.  We read popular fiction to be entertained and taken away from what we are doing now, be it caring for young children, working in a stressful job, or lying on a beach on holiday.

In comparison, literary fiction is seen as beautifully written with vivid and dialogue, “complexity of themes”.  and maybe, a thought provoking message to deliver. However, this can mean that sometimes it is hard to keep with the plot.  I have to confess that I have been known to skim whole paragraphs in my desperation to get back to the story in some books.  Reading literary fiction has a certain snob appeal for many of us, to show how clever we are, and often we start one of these books but never finish it.  I can relate to this with A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Tolz which was not my cup of tea at all.  In literary fiction, the characters are often not likeable or are generally of the odd variety and I quote from Toni's talk, “literary fiction has characters that if they were real people sitting next to you on the train, you would get up and move to another carriage”.

It is a clever writer who can write a novel of both literary merit and catch the reader’s interest – in Australia, novels such as Tim Winton’s Breath and The Slap by Chris Tsolkis come to mind as such examples.  For the complete talk, you can see this vodcast on the Wheeler Centre for Books website here.

This talk complements some other discussions on the web lately. On the Kill Your Darlings blog (a new literary magazine in Australia) there is an interesting post on why women are less represented in literary prize short lists. A case in point is that the Miles Franklin award longlist this year features only 3 women of the 12 listed. It is posed that women are often writing about their own experience – domestic life, relationships, etc – and thus have their fiction labelled as women’s fiction or popular fiction. No matter how good the fiction, in the eyes of the judges, these are subjects not worthy of the literary gongs, and thus are disadvantaged at the outset.

Gideon Haigh's article in the first issue of Kill Your Darlings entitled "Feeding the Hand that Bites: The Demise of Australian Literary Reviewing" has provoked an interesting discussion on the book reviews that feature in Australian newspapers.  I’ve been collecting The Age newspaper’s book review sections from the weekend papers over the last 7 months and it struck me that many of the books currently being talked about in our independent bookstores are not featuring, especially in the larger reviews. For example, where’s the critique as to why books such as The Guernsey Literacy and Potato Peel Society, Mr Rosenblum’s List and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand are so popular at the moment as reflected in the independent book store sales.  Elizabeth Bard was in Melbourne in February, but there is no interview with her on her book, Lunch in Paris but obviously others are hearing about it as it too has been in the Independent Booksellers top ten List over the last few weeks.

Where’s the reviews on current authors in the crime genre? While Stieg Larson’s personal life (author of the bestselling Millenium series) has been written about extensively, not much is written about the books themselves, and only small columns have appeared for fellow Swedish crime writer, Henning Mankell’s new book The Man from Beijing.  This is despite Mankell being in the top 10 best selling fiction writers in Europe for the last few years. Are there no other crime writers of worthiness out there? What about Anna Gavalda’s new book, Consolation, that I mentioned in an earlier post. I have not seen a review of this writer’s work, despite Anna being a best selling author in Europe and her book has been in the bookshops for several months. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a best seller for independent bookshops last year is another case in point.  I consider these writers as worthy of review as the latest books of Peter Carey and Alex Miller.

If you have been reading my posts you will know that I like both popular and the more literary types of fiction and I get my book choices from a range of resources both printed and on the internet. I think that the Australian public want more from its reviewers and writers than a past reputation or a book that does not engage the ordinary reader. Maybe that’s why popular fiction is popular and sells so much better than literary fiction, and what do these labels mean anyway?  I think readers just want to read a novel that engages our emotions and our brains.
What do you think? Do you hide your popular fiction addiction, or is literary fiction your cup of tea. Can we enjoy both? How do you pick the books you want to read?