Literary fiction – do we need a new term?

A review in The Times of Milkman by Anna Burns, which has just won this year’s Booker, has me worried. (James Marriott: ‘Booker choice is all that’s wrong with literary fiction’.)

I haven’t read Milkman so I can’t say if I’d agree with Marriott’s review, but I absolutely share many of his concerns. He finds the book ‘a tough read’, self-indulgent in style and not particularly elegant or original. He concludes:

Nowadays literary fiction doesn’t mean “good fiction” … it means fiction that adheres to a set of stylistic conventions … novels as status markers rather than life-changing entertainments’.

If this is what ‘literary’ now means, do we need a new name for the other sort? The ‘life-changing entertainment’?

Actually, that definition of literary isn’t enough for me. To me, literary is nuanced, intelligent fiction that might not conform to genre tropes and seems to be bigger, deeper, truer, perhaps more inexplicable than its plot and characters. (Yes: more inexplicable. You could disappear up your own omphalos trying to define literary. If you like that, here’s another occasion where I’ve had a go.)

Literary novels don’t have to be plotless or weighed down by their meanings and value (see my post here where I tackle the ‘plotless’ question).

Neither do they have to be difficult – see this interview where Joanna Penn is talking to novelist and TV dramatist David Nicholls about his adaptation of Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels. Nicholls talks of ‘the British literary tradition that feels modern, startling and original’. (If you want another highly readable gem from the Brit-lit tradition, try William Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil.)

All of this is a long way from Booker-lit, but unfortunately Booker-lit is becoming the benchmark for all literary. If you’re a writer of the other sort (like I am), what are you now?

And that’s why I’m fretting. If a new term is needed for literary fiction, what should it be? Contemporary fiction? Modern fiction? Upmarket fiction?

Let’s discuss.

Psst .. If you’re feeling plotless in an uncomfortable way, try my plot book

Psst 2 … If you’re curious to know how my current novel, Ever Rest, is doing, this is my latest newsletter.

Man Booker, it’s time to open up literary prizes to self-published authors

It’s not my policy to run press releases, as this blog is my personal writing and publishing adventures. But this is a campaign I’m proud to get behind, and I think it will strike a chord with a few of you guys too.

Today, the winner of the Man Booker is announced, and Orna Ross (left), founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, has issued an official plea to literary prize organisers everywhere: it’s time to open prizes to the quality work being produced by self-published authors.

Here’s Orna:

‘As so many authors are now producing work of creative and commercial merit, a prize that fails to include author-published work is deficient: unrepresentative in a way that seems incompatible with the prize sponsors’ commitment to diversity and inclusion. We strongly urge the Man Booker Prize to find ways to include self-publishing writers in their programme.’

(You might also recognise Orna as past guest on The Undercover Soundtrack, advocate of slow writing and my co-collaborator in the Women Writing Women box set.)

Of course, including self-publishers in established literary awards produces practical difficulties. We know; we know. I’ve suggested my own solutions to them here – the post is intended for reviewers but the issues similar to those faced by awards organisers – the volume of entries, the variable quality. And it’s useful to understand the reasons that perfectly ‘publishable’ authors choose the indie route – a positive choice, not the last resort of a second-rate writer. Ouch. It hurt to write that.

Orna is well aware of the difficulties of such a change, and she also has solutions:

‘We recognise that there are challenges in doing so and The Alliance of Independent Authors has issued a guide to help those organisations that are sincere in ensuring that the best books, regardless of the means of production, are brought before their judges and committees. The Alliance runs an ongoing campaign, Opening Up To Indie Authors, which advocates for the opening of all book prizes – and other parts of the books industry – to self-publishing authors.’

 

For me, this is what it’s all about – rewarding the best books, regardless of the means of production. This should be said boldly and loudly.

And so I’m spreading the word as much as I can. Who’s with me?

Create your characters from different moulds

I’m somewhat preoccupied with characters as I’m finishing NYN 2: Bring Characters To Life. I’ve recently read two novels with several main characters – one that made them real and the other that didn’t. I thought it would be interesting to compare the key differences.

The former is Ruth Rendell’s The Keys To The Street, which uses several points of view, all with their own internal identity. The shaky one is The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. It follows eight separate people but they all sound exactly the same.

Briefly, The Keys To The Street is about a handful of characters in Regent’s Park, London, whose lives intersect over one summer. The Slap begins as an extended family gathers for a suburban barbeque. One of the children gets out of hand and one of the other parents gives it a slap. There is uproar and the novel explores the ripples.

In both, the narration is close third person, so although the ‘I’ pronoun isn’t used we’re following the thoughts and feelings of each individual.

Rendell is good at characters who sound distinct on the page. Their vocabulary, thought processes and speech rhythms make them into separate, recognisable people. Tsiolkas’s dialogue, both quoted and internal, sounds like it all comes from the same person.

Culture and social milieu

Characters might sound similar because they come from the same culture and social milieu. But even so, there can be individual variation from the characters’ different natures. In the simplest terms, some would be introvert and some extravert. Some will see the glass as half-full. The emotions and urges behind their speech and thoughts would not be the same.

In The Slap they all have similar levels of aggression and introspection. In The Keys To The Street, there are several characters who are homeless or nearly homeless, but each has their own internal landscape. Some feel persecuted, some are tragically numbed.

Indeed, characters in the same milieu have many reasons not to be similar. They might have an assortment of occupations, which would make them tackle a variety of life problems and people.

In The Slap we potentially have these, but none of the differences are used. The TV scriptwriter sounds just like the civil servant and the businessman. In The Keys To The Street, the girl who works in the museum has different daily influences from the former butler who walks everyone’s dogs. These environments shine through their vocabulary and the comparisons they use. Their back stories are also vastly different, which affect how much each of them will trust other characters. Again, the girl in the museum believes good of people whereas the dog-walker suspects nasty motives in everyone.

Behaviour in extremis

Sequences of anger, sex and other kinds of extremis should tear the characters’ masks off. They should show us who they really are.

In The Slap, all the characters default to one pattern of behaviour when upset or emotional. They want to smash things or people. They brood on conversations and  wish they had hit the offending person, pummelled their faces, grabbed them by the hair and shouted obscenities at them. When they curse, which they all do plenty of, they use the same words. Readers really notice when all the characters have the same curse personality. When they have sex, they all have the same preferences and urges.

In The Keys To The Street, the characters react according to their personalities, even when roused to the same emotion. When angry, the mentally unbalanced drug addict uses violence. The dog-walker resorts to blackmail or spits (or worse) in his employer’s tea. The museum curator’s former boyfriend is also violent, but immediately regretful. One emotion: three individual ways to handle it.

Other private moments

Other private moments can be very revealing. In The Slap, many of the characters are inclined to look at their reflection or a body part and think about their lives. In The Keys To The Street, the characters have their diverse ways of reflecting. Many of them don’t need to manufacture a specific thinking activity; they do something from their usual routine. This makes their reflective scenes different from each other. The dog walker collects his animals and does his job, meanwhile plotting and fulminating. The violent psychotic takes crack. The tragic down-and-out goes for his long walks, pushing the barrow that contains his possessions. What they do to get thinking time can be ways to differentiate their souls.

If you’re interested in either of these books, here’s Guardian Book Club on The Keys To The Street

And here’s a review of The Slap in The London Review of Books

Thanks for the pic r h

Have you read other novels that handle several point-of-view characters and differentiate them well? Or conversely, novels that do it badly? Let’s discuss!

GIVEAWAY On the Red Blog, Andrew James is giving away 2 signed copies of his novel Blow Your Kiss Hello. For a chance to win, he wants you to reply or tweet where the book title comes from. If you take the tweet option, include the link to the post and the hashtag #undersound. Find it on the Red Blog now

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