literary fiction
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The Invisible Lower Class
Raymond Carver and other “Kmart realists” championed the working class in high-brow literary fiction. But has the realism of the 99% gone out of style? Electric Literature explores.
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Right on Time
The debate has typically been framed around whether it is ever appropriate for a writer to reference Seinfeld, Bright Eyes, or Facebook. What makes more sense is to talk about whether or not doing so is helpful for the specific…
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Literary Fiction is Popular Fiction
Some authors feel insecure about writing genre fiction and consider literature a luxury brand. Genre fiction, after all, is supposed to be the goose that lays golden eggs and includes books people actually want to read—except that may not be…
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A Brief History of Pandering
Erasing women writers like Woolson carries immense implications. It creates an environment ripe for the continued marginalization and silencing of women’s voices today.
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Latest Salvo in Genre War
David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks, has been nominated for both “literary” and “genre” awards, putting him in a somewhat unique position to comment on the ever-raging literary vs. genre war: “It’s convenient to have a science…
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Vehicles of Literary Inspiration
For the past century American writers and artists have been obsessed with that shimmering, sexy, liberating, lethal contraption known as the automobile…Is there a more potent metaphor for American restlessness, for the American hunger for status and sex, for the…
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The Rumpus Interview with Jeremy Hawkins
Author Jeremy Hawkins discusses his debut novel, The Last Days of Video, the resurgence of the independent bookstore industry, and allowing nostalgia to have presence but not precedence in one’s life.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Robin Black
“I wish I could manipulate time and space and whatever other dimensions necessary to publish my work once as a woman and then as a man – and compare the reactions.”
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By Its Cover
Jennifer Weiner’s recent claim that a serious author photos indicate serious literature is submited to scientifically unsound empirical testing over at Slate. Comparing the head shots of “Women’s Lit” writers to those of “Literary Fiction” best-sellers, Eliza Berman discovers an unexpected trend in the…
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Lit Fic Is Just Another Genre
Jane Austen wrote for money. She also made readers laugh. So why are her books considered literature rather than genre fiction? Clever marketing, claims Elizabeth Edmondson over at the Guardian. Despite many attempts to define “literary fiction” as something dry…
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Not All Genres are Created Equal
Science fiction has a hefty brilliance to contribute to the literary world, but people often scoff at it as light, genre fiction. The Atlantic explores why science fiction is just as, if not more, relevant than non-genre fiction. Science fiction, I’ve always felt,…
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Literary Fiction’s Dilemma
If literary fiction offers an alternative to more mainstream “narratives of reassurance,” can the oft-cited moral experiment of Heinz’s Dilemma help us understand why such challenging work isn’t more popular?