Super-Literary HF

[Margaret]

I think the fact that it's historical fiction already adds a difficulty factor for the average reader, because of the unfamiliar setting - strange customs, terminology, and so on. So any literary style complications have to be really well done, or they're liable to really turn readers off. In the case of The Elephant's Journey, the authorial voice might actually help to minimize confusion to some extent, because he steps in to explain certain customs from/for a modern person's perspective. Of course, the lack of quotation marks is a stumbling block!

[Ludmilla]

[quote=""Margaret""]I like Erdrich. She's certainly a literary writer, but I don't know that I'd call her super-literary in the sense of violating the usual storytelling norms. [/quote]

That's true for quite a few of her novels, but The Antelope Wife stands out much more as a work of magical realism than some of her others. For example, I remember at one point even the dog has a PoV.

I think most the non-linear or metafictional novels I've read have been in the speculative/SF sphere. You might find some historical psychological thrillers that utilize creative narrative techniques. Another book I can think of that isn't entirely linear is Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger (WWII) where there are shifts from 1st to 3rd person and the narrator goes back and forth in time and assumes the perspectives of those she's known.

I wonder if the non-linear storytelling approach works best when trying to tell stories where people are under extreme duress (such as during war, etc.).

[Katherine Ashe]

Margaret,
Might you call Virginia Wolf's Orlando literary HF? It is certainly literary fantasy, but with a sweeping historical insight from Tudor times to the near present, and with some of the most exquisite description of long past time and place.

[Leo62]

Don't know if I'd call him super-literary, but David Mitchell very cleverly combined stories across both time and space in Cloud Atlas. I think he's a great writer, because he dares to take on big ideas - which literary fiction doesn't, necessarily.

Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is another example that comes to mind. It's set in 1840s Texas and New Mexico and is written as a kind of Biblical fable. It's an astonishing piece of writing, but probably not to everyone's taste. It's one of the few books that I've actually longed to read out loud because the language is so wonderful

[Margaret]

I'd call Orlando literary, certainly, but I found it one of the more accessible of Woolf's novels. It's almost like one of the more recent popular fantasy novels, except with lovelier writing.

Cormac McCarthy's admirers are many and avid. I started to read one a while back, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. I hadn't heard any of his novels described as a Biblical fable before - maybe that's part of why his work appealed to my minister father.

You're right, Leo, that literary fiction doesn't always, or even most of the time, necessarily, take on big ideas. A lot of the time, it seems very small. Or maybe it finds the large in the small? Actually, literary fiction is probably even more varied than non-literary fiction. Non-literary writers are a lot more fussy about adhering to various writerly rules, whereas literary writers are more likely to disregard them in the service of whatever idea or effect it is they want to get across.

[Katherine Ashe]

Margaret,
Your observation regarding non-literary writers being fussy about rules is of course so right. I cut my infant teeth on Edward Dahlberg's Flea of Sodom (my parents were quite shocked I was reading that) and, I fear, developed a somewhat cavalier view of rules. It is effect that is important, but in HF it is clarity also, so one cannot stray too far into exotic bendings of words. Unless of course one is not terribly concerned about being understood by most of one's readers. Thanks for that right spelling of Woolf, I do know it but missed it.

[annis]

Peter Ezerhazy's Celestial Harmonies is my literary HF bête noire. I've had a couple of goes at it, but haven't managed to finish it.

[Leo62]

[quote=""Margaret""]

You're right, Leo, that literary fiction doesn't always, or even most of the time, necessarily, take on big ideas. A lot of the time, it seems very small. [/quote]

Yes, so true - I find that, with a lot of lit fic, while stylistic experiment is encouraged, there seems to be a very narrow range of "acceptable" content. with miserablist navel-gazing being de rigeur. Though there are encouraging signs that this is beginning to change (e.g. the newfound literary respectability of HF!).

[Texas]

Two questions:

(1) Would my work qualify?

and

(2) What is wallbanging (??)

[Michy]

[quote=""Texas""]
(2) What is wallbanging (??)[/quote]

wallbanging

- noun

The act of throwing a book against the wall, because it is so terrible that you cannot force yourself to read one more word.