Is There Any Good Literary Fiction?

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I’m defining literary fiction here as the genre of self-consciously serious fiction that’s coalesced relatively recently — so more or less in the last 30-40-50 years I guess, maybe a little earlier. John Barth and John Updike would count, Hemingway or Mark Twain not so much.

Anyway, it’s a genre I tend to be very skeptical about; most of the fiction I admire post-1950 is sci-fi or comics or something that isn’t literary fiction. But there are a couple exceptions. Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy was great, and I enjoyed Confederacy of Dunces. And I really loved Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which I read recently (when I worked on the Shmoop study guide).

So…what lit fic do you like? Or/and, what lit fic would you recommend to a lit fic skeptic?

62 thoughts on “Is There Any Good Literary Fiction?”

  1. Votes for Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin; Niall Williams’s History of the Rain; Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, Jon McGregor’s If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things; Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch; Jennifer Egan’s Welcome to the Goon Squad

  2. Funny, after finally reading “Kindred” and “Bloodchild” — how embarrassing! — I was just about to ask the same question about sci-fi.

  3. Some quick titles before breakfast, since 84:
    Marilynne Robinson, GILEAD
    David Mitchell, BLACK SWAN GREEN
    Toni Morrison, BELOVED
    Philip Roth, SABBATH’S THEATER; AMERICAN PASTORAL; EVERYMAN
    Thomas Pynchon, MASON & DIXON (iffy on this one, but it stuck with me)
    Denis Johnson, JESUS’ SON

    Must go, but will keep thinking. BTW, the Egan novel is “A Visit from the Goon Squad”

  4. Hah! If there’s any good sci-fi? There’s lots of things you’d probably enjoy more than Kindred and Bloodchild…Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Gwyneth Jones, Philip K. Dick, John Christopher, Stanislaw Lem…

  5. I just read Beloved recently…it’s okay, but there’s a default pomoness about it, especially the ending, that puts me off. I kind of hate Philip Roth.

  7. From the last decade:

    Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers
    Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
    Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son
    Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
    Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
    Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage (short-story collection)
    Roberto Bolaño, 2666

    I second the vote for Egan. I’m also currently reading Rebecca Makkai’s The Hundred-Year House, and I’m having a good time with that.
    Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

  9. You may not have enjoyed Beloved, but for the lit fic skeptic, I’d recommend The Bluest Ey or Song of Solomon first. (Although Jazz is my favorite novel by her, which I don’t recommend that you read, because I don’t think I could stand to hear you trash it, lol.)

    But outside of Morrison, have you read Colson Whitehead? The Intuitionist, Apex Hides the Hurt, and Zone One are my favorites.

    Also: Percival Everett’s Erasure is awesome.

  10. You know, here’s a question. Is there a genre history of literary fiction? Or a study of literary fiction as a genre? I can’t find anything through google….I’d love to read such a thing, but it may well not exist….

  11. I’ve read Song of Solomon years ago and had some of the same problems…I don’t think I’ve read the Bluest Eye or Jazz. I don’t hate Morrison or anything; I just don’t love it.

    Haven’t read (or even heard of) Colson Whitehead, or Percival Everett…maybe I’ll give those a try.

  12. Okay, this from the description of Erasure:

    “Thelonious “Monk” Ellison’s writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been “critically acclaimed.” He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited “some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days.””

    That’s hysterical. I’m sold on giving it a try at least.

  13. I’ve read some Murakami…I just always wish I was reading PKD instead when I read him. The one thing I read by Eugenides was a blisteringly dumb essay, so that’s kind of put me off…I should try Egan….

  14. Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I would be surprised if you didn’t like it. Its really funny. Read the first page and you’ll know if it’s for you.

    I’m assuming you’ve read Atwood and Chabon, but if not, check them out (Cat’s Eye and The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay would be my suggestions). Chabon won a Hugo, so maybe he doesn’t count, but Atwood hates being called a spec fic writer, so her personal seriousness should bump her into the self-serious category.

    The prose in Ron Carlson’s Five Skies is, I think, as lovely as McEwan’s, although his story is much more straight forward. It is, however, a book about men doing men things (in this case, building something in the wilderness) and coming to terms with being male. Which, given the vast overabundance of such tales, might not appeal to you.

    I’m not quite sure if it fits your categorization, but I think of it as literary fiction—Jojo Moyes Me Before You. Have you read her as part of your romance reading? I suspect Me Before You would be shelved in the lit fic section of most catalogs, but most of her books (including her great new one, One Plus One) get categorized as romances.

    A few short story collections: St. Lucy’s School for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell. I think the title tells you all you need to know. Which obviously leads to Flannery O’Conner (but you’ve read her, right?); and You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Hasslet.

    Finally, the book that made me take lit fic seriously as a pleasure: Katherine Weber’s Objects in the Mirror Are Closer than They Appear. Such a book to swoon to. Its Weber’s debut and there are elements that somebody with McKewan’s experience would have handled better. But its a joy.

  15. A few quick ones, I like:

    William Gaddis, The Recognitions
    David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress is probably the best “starter” one
    Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai
    Evan Dara, The Lost Scrapbook (or Flee)
    Gilbert Sorrentino, Aberration of Starlight

  16. I don’t know if these really qualify as literary fiction, but I can’t think what else they’d be. Contemporary fiction? Is that a genre? Anyway, I really enjoyed Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist, many books by Chris Bohjalian, especially Trans-Sister Radio and The Night Strangers, and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (maybe that one’s biography). Oh, yeah, and The World According to Garp by John Irving and Bright Lights, Big City, and Ransom by Jay McInerney.

  18. Noah, you haven’t read Bolaño? I’d recommend 2666 or The Savage Detectives before Jennifer Egan. Oh, and absolutely check out Gone Girl. I mean that in drop-everything terms. It’s an extremely smart piece of crime fiction. If nothing else, you might have to see the inevitably crappy David Fincher movie adaptation with Ben Affleck for a job assignment when it comes out later this year. This is definitely a case where you want to read the book first.

  19. I have issues with the term “literary fiction” as a genre – but then again, I have an issue with the concept of “genre.” But I will be happy to recommend some (relatively) contemporary fiction for you- though I feel like you will hate it b/c that is what you do (it feels good to accuse someone else of that, since I have too many friends who say the same of me).

    The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
    The Fortress of Solitude – Jonathan Lethem
    This is How You Lose Her (stories) – Junot Diaz
    Familiar – J. Robert Lennon
    A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
    Stone Arabia – Dana Spiotta
    Tropic of Orange – Karen Tei Yamashita
    The Round House – Louise Eldrich
    Underworld – Don DeLilo
    Dreaming in Cuban – Cristina Garcia
    – Cristina Garcia
    Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
    Zone One – Colson Whitehead
    Slumberland – Paul Beatty
    Love is the Law – Nick Mamatas

    I like some of these more than others, but they are all worth reading.

  21. So many good works up there, all. And I can give big seconds to Diaz and Bolaño (please add “Last Evenings on Earth” and “Savage Detectives”).

    And if it’s okay to vote for first-halves of books, toss my vote in there for “Fortress of Solitude.”

    Noah, I am definitely your bunkmate in the Dick > Murakami camp! I do like all those sci-fi writers, from what I’ve dabbled, but I noticed that their big works are mostly a tad older than 30 years. I occasionally try out one of the more recently touted scf-fi authors (Miéville, Stephenson, Leckie), but they tend to leave me cold. SOLARIS is beautiful.

    Any other additions for lit fic? How about:
    Lydia Davis, COLLECTED STORIES (but more fun in abbreviated collections)
    Most of the tales in Joshua Cohen’s FOUR NEW MESSAGES
    Markson’s VANISHING POINT
    Alan Hollinghurst’s THE LINE OF BEAUTY

    (Down votes myself, for what it’s worth, for GOON SQUAD, GREAT WORLD SPIN, and GOLDFINCH.)

  22. The first half of The Fortress of Solitude does not work without the second half (and the Liner Notes interlude middle section)

  23. Allow me to recommend :
    Mid-period John Banville if you appreciate well-crafted prose akin to poetry,
    Rupert Thomson’s The Five Gates of Hell for pretty much the same reason,
    M. John Harrison’s Climbers ( a novel, incidentally, that throws the gauntlet to most
    practioners of lit-fic, as it is Harrison’s only foray in that area ( usually writes sf/ weird fiction) and he just writes rings around almost everybody. Absolutely savage.)

    Another vote for Bolaño here. 2666 should hurt your feet ( because of the dropped jaw, see).
    And Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria quartet i contend still remains something of a
    standard of excellence in that area.

  24. Where do folks such as David Lodge and Nick Hornby fit in? As easy and funt to read as Wodehouse, but with a bit more depth, no?

    Despite certain sequences reading like treatments for an anticipated film version, I liked the first half of Kavalier and Klay a lot, but that’s another one (like Lethem’s FoS) where the second half (or so) seemed to be a completely different and less interesting novel.

  25. I don’t think Lodge or Hornby have more depth than Wodehouse…and I think they probably fit broadly within lit fic, though Hornby is trembling on the edge of something like YA? Lodge is a lit fic parody, but I think it still also works as lit fic.

    Peter, that’s interesting about recent sf struggling; I hadn’t thought of that, but maybe agree? Gwyneth Jones is more recent, and she’s spectacular, IMO, but she’s also largely unknown, so she’s something of an exception that proves the rule, perhaps.

    Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang is pretty good; Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death is pretty good — neither is great though.

  26. Any mention yet of Zadie Smith’s NW, which I much preferred to WHITE TEETH. Joseph O’Neill’s NETHERLAND, too.

    I do agree that there is a lot of poor Roth (INDIGNATION, PLOT, BREAST) mixed in with the great, with many that pull both ways for me (STAIN). But I honestly think the three above are worth your time. Maybe GHOST WRITER too.

    But I think I’m old-fashioned, having defended early Hemingway and Updike’s Rabbit Quartet here already.

  27. If Toole counts as “literary fiction”, then I don’t understand the category, but I’d add

    Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy
    Foucault’s Pendulum Umberto Eco
    The Insult and Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson
    The City and the City by China Mieville
    Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and John Higgins…well, you did say “self-consciously serious”…

  29. Dan Chaon is everything. Read Dan Chaon.

    Seconding recommendations for Colson Whitehead, Michael Chabon (Kavalier & Clay), and Cormac McCarthy.

    Have you tried Murakami’s After Dark? That’s one of my favorites but I never see people recommend it.

    I love Jennifer Egan but Goon Squad is her worst, IMO. I’d recommend Look at Me or maybe The Invisible Circus.

    Also Jim Coetzee and Ann Patchett.

  31. No, you wouldn’t like Oscar Wao, I don’t think, but Bolano’s a decent bet. Savage Detectives is good. Peter, I too liked NW a lot, but I don’t think it’s in White Teeth territory. Noah, you would like White Teeth, at least the first half of it. Very funny. You also might try Murakami’s short stories (The Vanishing Elephant and other stories). The novels tend to wander and not really cohere. I don’t think Chesil Beach is the next McEwan to try. In fact, it’s probably in the bottom third of his output. I’ve been reading through all of his, and I think The Innocent is the one that’ll knock your socks off. I’m a big Julian Barnes guy too, esp. Flaubert’s Parrot and Talking It Over (and Love, etc., the sequel). I liked the Corrections by Franzen, but I doubt you would. Stay away from Jonathan Lethem.

    Have you read Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policemen. It predates this question and probably doesn’t qualify, but you should drop what you’re doing and read it. Couldn’t be much stranger.

  32. Jones, Foucault’s Pendulum is really a wonder. Glad to see somebody else remembers it. Eco’s last couple of books have been terrible.

  33. Noah,

    I don’t know which Atwood’s you’ve read, but you should try Oryx and Crake (though it is SF, so doesn’t really qualify here), and The Blind Assassin, which is a brilliant book.

  34. I’ve read Handmaid’s Tale, Lady Oracle, maybe something else, and a bunch of short stories. I really don’t like her much.

    I have read Flann O’Brien. He’s very funny.

  36. Another vote for Ishiguro–Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go are written rather brilliantly, I think. In general I agree, though. The genre (if it exists) manages to produce more forced depth than real substance in general.

  37. Off the top of my head:

    Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine.

    Russell Banks. Cloudplitter is a fascinating read, but Continental Drift and Affliction are more typical of his work.

    Nuruddin Farah. Particularly his trilogy Maps, Gifts, Secrets.

    Dalva by Jim Harrison

    The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard

    Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy

    Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

  38. I really enjoyed Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears; so much so that I’ve kept it for years after reading it. Next up these days: (more) Murakami and Georges Perec.

  39. These lists of great and beloved books are enjoyable, but I also like when the comment veer more towards, “Hmm, do you think Noah would like this sweater?”

  40. And I agree, Noah would never wear Goon Squad — probably return it, possibly re-gift it. Me too.

  41. I don’t understand your concept of literary fiction. Haven’t there always been self-consciously serious writers? Why does A Confederacy of Dunces fall into that category, and why doesn’t Hemingway?

  42. Noah, Mark McGurl’s _The Program Era_ and Chad Harbach’s _MFA vs. NYC_ (developed from his essay of the same name) often treat literary fiction like a genre, even if they don’t always specifically position it as one.

  43. I’ll second/third Foucault’s Pendulum, but I’m not fully sure I get the definition. Nabokov seems self-consciously serious at least some of the time but then undercuts it with parody and just all around craziness. What about Abe? Try Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another, or for something self-consiously incoherent (also self-consciously serious, but mostly incoherent) The Box Man. Does Donoso (The Obscene Bird of Night) count or is he too crazy as well?

    For Sci-fi: well, Dick is great. There’s also Riddley Walker (Russel Hoban) and John Crowley (Great Work of Time) for a sort of literary fiction/sci-fi confluence. Also Thomas Disch’s 334 and The M.D. (the latter of which is pretty icky).

  44. Jack, all genres are fairly porous. I don’t think lit fic really coalesced as a genre until the last 30-45 years, when serious fiction and the academy merged. Before that there wasn’t specific institutional/marketing nexus, I’d say.

    But again, I wish someone had written a more definitive account of the lit fic genre. Lit fic is really reluctant to think of itself as a genre, is perhaps why that hasn’t happened.

  47. Well, I always thought that publications like The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker were in charge of deciding which books are serious literature and which are shitty bestsellers. But they’ve been doing that for more than 45 years, haven’t they? Tom Wolfe, annoying little shit that he is, wrote an profile of The New Yorker around 1960 that said the magazine was in “the quality lit biz.” And didn’t The Partisan Review have the same function in the 30s through the 50s? I didn’t know that academia had anything to do with it.

  48. I think that, for many, the label “literary fiction” applies to the tradition that emerged from the long cultural triumph of Flaubertian realism — the focalizing self, the telling detail, the well-turned description that brings both together. This is, for example, the idol of lit-fic that David Shields takes a small whack at in his “Reality Hunger.” But it doesn’t encompass all forms of literariness or seriousness: it would not include Markson and Barthelme, but is strongly embodied by McEwen and Franzen.

  49. Well, the trick is that the way most (or at least many) lit fic authors make their money is through employment at a university. That’s (relatively) new, I think.

  50. I’m unsure on the dates, but I suspect that maybe Noah is talking about the rise of creative writing MFA programs and such.

  51. Barthelme is totally lit fic, though. He was a central figure when I was taking creative writing classes way back when.

    Again, this is why someone needs to write a book.

  52. I’d presume too that there’s a good bit of link with the rise of genre fiction as a specific marketing category with a self-conscious and aggressive fandom. Lit fic is defined in opposition to that in a lot of ways.

  53. There’s a book about the rise of the Booker Prize and its effects that probably is kind of what you’re looking for. Can’t recall the name or the author though.

  54. It sounds almost pompous to praise Alan Hollinghurst at this point, but he is my favorite living author. Reading The Swimming Pool Library as a teen was illuminating to me in a way that I don’t think any other book has been–of course a lot of that was due to me coming to terms with being gay and enjoying a book that was so unabashedly candid about gay sex (Hollinghurst said he wrote it both as a spit in the face to the Thatcher regime, and the fact that at the time, understandably, most gay narratives were AIDS focused.) Of course when he did blatantly finally write about both of those issues, in the sublime The Line of Beauty, he finally won the Booker (and I believe at least one headline said “Gay sex wins Booker.”)

  55. The last decent American post-war(ish) novelists were … Stanley Elkins, Stanley Crawford, Charles Portis, Samuel Delaney … and I have to confess that Cordwainer Smith and PKD were quite unique despite weak writing styles.

    And Terry Southern, why not? Only one good novel but perfectly written and conceived.

    Too many novelists are getting too much education about all the wrong things and becoming frightful bores. As far as literature goes, the proper study of man is man, not writing.

  56. Noah, what have you read by Cormac McCarthy? Blood Meridian has Faulknerian passages but as his career went on his prose became more sparse. I think the Border Trilogy is much better with it’s descriptions of nature that are as stark and beautiful as it’s violence is ugly.

    That said, I haven’t been able to get into Faulkner.

    I think Italo Calvino and Gabriel Garcia Marquez belong in the conversation unless the magical qualities of their writing push them too close to “genre.” I’d add Eco’s “Name of the Rose” but that also draws upon the mystery genre.

  57. I don’t think genre elements mean a work isn’t literary fiction necessarily. I quite liked Name of the Rose I think…I like some Calvino and Marquez, though it’s a little dicey.

    I read Blood Meridian and Suttree way, way back when…I guess I could try the Border Trilogy at some point….

  61. Late, but count me as another vote for Diaz and Bolaño. I also read Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book recently and liked it a lot. Not spec lit but full of unlikely coincidences, thematic parallelism, passages of uncertain reality, stuff like that. And is set in a world where a columnist can be a legendary, messiah-like figure.

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