everything, literary fiction is a marketing category not a real genre https://twitter.com/catapultstory/status/1327763699579305984

fantasy, scifi, horror, romance—all the actual genres have shared expectations and points of similarity (along with revolutionary reimaginings). literary fiction just has snobbery, its purpose is to sell readers their own self-satisfaction back to them

to add more fuel to the , “literary fiction” was forced into existence to cope with the problem of realism—what is “realism”? how do you unpack cultural assumptions about the nature of reality? you can’t, so you create the catchall term “literary fiction” & hope nobody notices

and now all “well-written” fiction of any genre has been swept under the “literary fiction” umbrella to assure anxious class-conscious readers that they are indeed reading sanctioned, appropriate, respectable Literature, not trash for the plebs

Ursula Le Guin wrote science fiction and fantasy, not “literary fiction.” she was also one of the best prose stylists of the 20th century. “literary fiction” does not meaningfully exist.

this of course does not stop some books from being better-written than other books, or different genres/styles from having different expectations! it just means that the feathered page edges and abstract graphic design covers are marketing tools that are selling you something