I was reading an article a few weeks back, I think on the New York Times website, and it was talking about literary vs. genre fiction ("genre" fiction being romances, thrillers, science fiction/fantasy and whatever other stuff gets put in a separate ghetto in the bookstore instead of being lumped under the general category of "fiction"). On an excursion to Barnes & Noble this morning, that article came back to mind as I was getting a copy of a Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child novel (which if I ran the bookstore would be classified as a thriller, but B&N had it under general fiction).

My question: what category, if any, would you call a novel that isn't genre fiction, but on the other hand isn't particularly intellectually high-toned (it doesn't have to be a light read) such that calling it "literary" would sound a bit pretentious? Maybe somebody out there who's worked in a bookshop or library might have an idea?

Chick Lit? Heh

I worked in a bookstore for a few months (and I was a lit major) and I'd just call it fiction. Plain old fiction.

I always assume that all of that stuff that gets shoved into the genre sections are those dime-a-dozen generic novels that the author probably writes in about a month. ie. anything with Fabio on the cover.

This post explains why I've always had a hard time telling people what I like to read. I do read literary fiction (in fact, that's what I read most of the time), but I also read general fiction that doesn't really seem like it should be classified as "literary." Some people call it "mainstream" fiction. An example might be the author Jodi Picoult. I like her books -- she always tells a good story. But they're not as "literary" as something by Margaret Atwood or Ian McEwan, some of my other favorite authors. If you compare the books side by side in terms of writing quality, you can see a HUGE difference. I can't deny, however, that she's a good storyteller, so maybe I SHOULD call her "literary." Who knows? I've always had to tell people something like "I read everything BUT genre fiction," but they don't really understand what I mean. I just never could get into the genres, like romance, sci-fi, mystery, or thrillers, though I dip into them occasionally if I get a really strong recommendation. And I do read chick lit sometimes.

After just plain "fiction", mainstream fiction is the term you may see in libraries and from library vendors. (I work in a library.)

Genre fiction certainly includes a lot more than the bodice ripper Fabio covers referred to. Even within genres there are subgenres. I read mysteries, but more specifically I prefer amateur sleuths, and more specifically amateur sleuth cozy mysteries. Definitely not literary but not a Fabio cover either.

Fabio could be a sleuth if he wanted to!

okay... enough Fabio talk, he really makes me ill to even think about him.

I get frustrated by B&N for that reason (or any giant conglomerate bookseller for that matter). I go in looking to browse and you'd think it'd be easy to just head for a section of books I like... but since I like one of the tricky literary sub-genres I have to wade through the pop fiction in order to discover something that would interest me.

Another distinction I don't like is when I see "classics" separated from the rest of the lit/fic. Probably because I don't agree with the process of defining something as a classic and not others/I wrote too many papers on "defining the literary canon" when I was in college

Before B&N opened, the (chain) bookstore I hung out at most had sections on "literature", "fiction" and the genre stuff. The point of the article I mentioned in the OP is that Jane Austen's stuff is 19th-century chick lit, and Dickens wrote thrillers (mysteries and horror stories). In their time they may have been thought of as popular middle-of-the-road novels (you may know more about that than me, suitejudy), but now they're considered high literature just because their popularity has passed the test of time in spades

It's so true! They wrote popular fiction for their time. Sure, these things did set some trends in motion, particularly in the 18th Century when the novel basically developed as a form of literature, but that doesn't mean they're any better than something recently written but mind-blowingly good (er, can't think of a good example... The Unbearable Lightness of Being?). I mean, ever try to read Tom Jones? It's a nightmare, yet it's staple development-of-the-novel reading.

...but that's the english student in me talking. I need to get out of academia, pronto. I'm wayyyy too cynical for this business.

So true! In fact at the time they were written, reading "novels" (i.e. fiction) was often frowned upon. Kind of the same mindset as reading Harlequin Romance novels today!

I will admit freely that I read anything and everything. I read fiction, non-fiction, classics, junk. I read sci-fi, mysteries, romance, chick-lit, Oprah's list, pretty much anything I can get my hands on. I'm a voracious reader and usually have 2 or 3 books going at the same time. I average a book a day, although that depends on my schedule and so forth.

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Where would someone like Barbara Kingsolver fit? She's not exactly genre fiction, but perhaps not literature? I don't know, though--The Poisonwood Bible was pretty darn good.

Back when Dickens was alive and writing, there was a huge market for his work. Everyone read the latest Dickens. So, I suppose he would have been a mainstream novelist?

I love the phrase "defining the literary canon."

Jay

People sometimes say Dickens was like Stephen King -- prolific and popular. I've never been a huge fan of Dickens myself (nor of Stephen King, for that matter).

Jay, I'd probably classify Kingsolver as "literary" -- I loved The Poisonwood Bible. I guess it doesn't matter what we call books, huh?

Oh, and SuiteJudy, I loved Tom Jones when I read it in college! I was taking an English Novel class, and we read all those huge ones like that and Vanity Fair. Maybe it was because I was deep into my geeky English major mode, but I adored those books. Oh my goodness, and Matthew Lewis's The Monk. What a crazy, overly dramatic book. I reread it a few summers ago and just laughed at how insane it was.

I'm reading one of the Shopaholic series right now, so you can see my tastes don't always run to the highbrow...

Lisa -- you might be the first person aside from my english profs who have said they LOVED Tom Jones. Never once have I heard a colleague say it (and I'm in grad school for 18th C lit!).

And oh man, The Monk is all sorts of craziness! Along those lines, you should pick up anything by Eliza Heywood -- OMG. It's pretty much The Monk but about a million times more outrageous. She wrote novellas/short fiction primarily, so it's always a quick read. Try finding "Love in Excess." Or, if you ever had to suffer through Richardson's Pamela in English class, she wrote a rather amusing one called "Anti-Pamela." Both are all about women's fake virtue... cavalier men... that sort of wonderful 18th century scandalousness.