I see everywhere on /lit/ people degrading genre fiction. As a dumbass, I was wondering what is wrong with said genre fiction
Don't take it seriously.
>>7398778
hohoho you are a cheeky m8
It won't do very much to help you in your quest to the top of the literary mountain except to sustain your basic passion for words and stories. Do whatever you want, mang.
normies read it
>falling for the memes
>>7398778
They're simplistic page-turners. I'm not some super elitist who would shit on someone for reading genre fiction but all of these tumblr type pleb positivists who try to rank it alongside decent literature can fuck right off.
>>7398796
So is Dhalgren a "simplistic page turner?"
Tell me why Jane Austen tea party stories and Charles "Penny a Page" Dickens are "decent" literature but quality genre works aren't?
All novels were once considered frivolous entertainment to the people who wrote the vaunted 'canon' anyway so I'm not sure where the superiority is coming from.
>>7398778
Start with the Greeks and find out why.
>>7398808
>quality genre works
tallest midget, etc.
and your genre works would not exist if it weren't for jane austen, anon
Every time you use the term "genre fiction", your IQ goes up by 0.001 points.
>>7398808
>quality genre works
Oxymoron
>>7398808
>a few decent outliers completely negate the typical mediocrity of genre fiction
Don't be so obviously looking for an argument here. You're grasping at straws.
>>7398811
thistbhfam
>>7398778
there's nothing wrong with genre fiction as a concept, it's just that 99.99% of genre fiction is trash
>>7398820
Your prose is awful; apply yourself.
>>7398816
>literally being a cheerleader for another man's dick
Don't make me say it. Because you deserve to hear it.
>>7398820
these are the words of someone who literally grew up on /v/, like a suburban child's atheism
>>7398827
>implying I'm not actually Gene Wolfe
Look like you're the c*ck, m*te.
>>7398830
>you're the c*ck
I was going to call you a good wingman but I know positivity is unfashionable on /lit/. It's not my fault that you naturally associate what you've said with something shameless.
>>7398833
I never blamed you. It's not your fault.
>>7398834
>Gene Wolf fan with bants this shit
Literally Reddit.
>>7398847
It's not your fault.
>>7398858
>you
>bants
>>7398873
It's not your fault.
>>7398873
You're the Yank, you bastard.
>>7398882
Don't do this to me doc
>>7398901
>yeah well you're gay!
>>7398921
Joke's on you, I'm from ebaumsworld
>thread about /lit/'s opinion on genre fiction descends into an irony contest
tell me more papa freud ;)
>degrading genre fiction
>degrading
>>7398923
Same thing, and still pathetically fishing for that last reply.
>>7398778
It won't get your balls lick/ box punched in college.
Or anywhere else for that matter; even GRRM would struggle to get his dick sucked.
Most "genre fiction" on the market today appeals to its audience by allowing them to self-insert into a fantasy that suits them. This is not challenging and is unlikely to reveal many new perspectives on the real world.
What we call literary fiction makes a case for seeing the world a certain way. Following that case is challenging, but can expand the reader's mind as he struggles to see things the author's way, or in some cases figure out what the author is getting at in the first place.
Genre fiction can be good. As it stands today, it simply doesn't try to be.
>>7399032
Good is also a relative term. Most genre fiction is aimed at casual readers, who make up the vast majority of the book buying populace. These are people who read maybe one or two books every couple of years.
To them, "good," has a pretty different meaning than somebody who reads 50 books a year. Yeah, most Genre fiction is terrible with interchangeable plots and basically just the same old shit slopped around, but they'd never know that because they hardly ever read.
I wouldn't call this a bad thing though. It is what it is, complaining about it and calling people plebs isn't going to help. If anything, this should be a source of hope, as it clearly shows that even relatively unimaginative, shitty writers can make it, and make it in a big way.
Truth is though, the people who bitch about this stuff aren't even talented enough to create shitty genre fiction. It actually takes a shit load of talent and hard to work to be a shitty writer, and most lit fic humping aspie shut-ins are far away from even producing this kind of shit.
Like, complain about stephen king all you want, yeah he's a shitty writer but i guarantee you he still has more talent in his left nut than you'll ever have.
>>7399054
>Truth is though, the people who bitch about this stuff aren't even talented enough to create shitty genre fiction. It actually takes a shit load of talent and hard to work to be a shitty writer, and most lit fic humping aspie shut-ins are far away from even producing this kind of shit.
>Like, complain about stephen king all you want, yeah he's a shitty writer but i guarantee you he still has more talent in his left nut than you'll ever have.
Projecting: the post
You grossly overestimate how easy it is to be a career genre-fiction writer in the age of online self-publishing.
>>7399203
>You grossly overestimate how easy it is to be a career genre-fiction writer in the age of online self-publishing.
So that's what you're doing for a living I assume?
Cliché stereotyped tropes.
>>7398778
Depends on what you call genre fiction. No genre fiction is up to standards in language and story as Shakespeare or Joyce but it's decent. I like Fleming for example. However, most genre fiction today is not a quick adventure novel with decent language and plot but a mess of action scenes spliced together. Think of modern action films.
IQ essentially is how quickly you pick up on patterns, so plebs and proles can read genre fictionand watch tvand remain entertained like a baby with peekaboo. The best literature is pattern defying.
genre fiction doesn't challenge any literary boundaries. genre fiction is also usually plot driven unlike literary fiction which is character driven. good fiction is a tool to use words to take you beyond words. genre fiction is like junk food. it's fun to enjoy once in a while but it's not exactly going to challenge your brain and widen your perspective.
>>7399246
Borges for example is clearly not character driven. He actually said many times he was unintereste in psychological depth and complex characters. I think what's cool about literary fiction is that there are always exceptions to sweeping judgements. It just doesn't conform to expectations. Most genre fiction, on the contrary, can be reduced to a bunch of rearanged tropes. Which is not a bad thing in my mind, just a distinction. I love Robert Louis Stevenson, for example, and he is genre as fuck.
>>7399277
What you are discounting is that you can have character driven crap (I'm sure a lot of mediocre but not awful love books fall into this) and plot driven wonders. Why not Asimov as Aesop? Why must Borges be bound by the mere actuality of what people are like, non-character based literature allows transcendental writing.
>>7399294
That was exactly my point. That Borges being not character driven does not discount him from being great or from being literary fiction, contrary to what the guy was replying to suggested.
>>7398808
>All novels were once considered frivolous entertainment
No.
>Tell me why Jane Austen tea party stories and Charles "Penny a Page" Dickens are "decent" literature but quality genre works aren't?
Because works by Austen and Dickens are, more or less, well-written and address serious issues or topics in interesting and adult ways.
>>7399331
Many 'genre' works address 'serious issues' in 'adult' and interesting ways. See 'The Dispossessed' or 'The Fifth Head of Cerberus'.
>>7399207
Yeah, for real. I get tired of these wannabe faggots who produce mountains of postmodern bullshit, and complain they're not published so they should just write some YA sci-fi thriller chick lit thing and make a ton of money.
I always say, "Yeah, you should! Go for it!"
Seriously, go do it. Give it a shot. They never will of course, and claim that they don't want to compromise themselves or some other bullshit reason. The real problem is they know they're not even talented enough to produce shitty, mainstream genre lit and despite the aspie notion.
>>7398808
Charles Dickens is inauthentic trash who padded his stories out for money. Not to mention, his style is way to verbose for a lot of people's tastes - I know the Victorians were squeamish about female sexuality, but a fucking period here and there wouldn't go amiss.
>>7399467
Do you seriously believe literature is to be measured by it's authenticity? What kind of authenticity? Emotional? Intellectual? Political? And are we to measure said trait? By the author's supposed intention/biography? By whether we 'feels' it is totally, you know, authentic and stuff?
It is always sobering to remember that Shakespeare did not write down most of his plays, and that most of them were made very clearly to entertain specific audiences. Maybe they were padded or compromised in many ways. And yet it is hard to argue that they're not great.
>>7399564
I think the intent is an important thing to consider in appraising an author's work. Shakespeare would have had commercial interests, playing up the Jacobian blood and guts drama in Hamlet shows that - but there was a deeper, profound message to his best plays; immortal truths that any reader could take and reapply in their various directions.
You are right that it's dangerous to judge an author by their intent, especially in how abstract such an intent can be, but in this case, I think Dicken's writing style is far more distorted by the whole "paid by the word" dogma than Shakespeare - his social commentary is good but fleeting to a modern audience, his plots were always purposefully absurd, and really, only his fairly stellar (but too lengthy really) prose remains, which is not enough for me to consider him a great by any stretch. Intent definitely matters as a factor, not the be-all-end-all but it's interesting to consider how a specific angle or view can "limit" an author's work in a certain regard.
