[ SECRET POST #3403 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3403 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.
[Yu Yu Hakusho]


__________________________________________________



10.


__________________________________________________



11.
[Silmarillion]


__________________________________________________



12. [tb]



__________________________________________________



13.
[Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt]


__________________________________________________



14.


__________________________________________________



15.
[Paul Giamatti]


__________________________________________________



16.


__________________________________________________



17.


__________________________________________________



18.


__________________________________________________



19.


__________________________________________________



20.


__________________________________________________



21.



__________________________________________________



22.



__________________________________________________



23.













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 023 secrets from Secret Submission Post #486.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

22. http://i.imgur.com/SmWPluF.png

[blitzwing]

Yeah, there's a lot of crap in the lit genre.

[sarillia]

I hear this generalization of lit-fic all the time but I'm not sure I've ever read a book that matches the description even though I've read a fair bit of the genre. Are the people who say this even trying to find books in the genre that aren't like this?

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Are you looking for something that is like this or isn't? If you're looking for "is," The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is pretty dire. If you're looking for "isn't," Open City parodies some aspects of the genre with an intentionally self-centered and oblivious main character who's confronted with the fact that he's a terrible person. In Persuasion Nation has some good and some bad.

Re: OP

[sarillia]

I'm not looking for these. I consider it a good thing that I haven't run into them, even though it confuses me that everyone else seems to find nothing but books like these.

Open City sounds fun though. Thanks.

[(Anonymous)]

this. but then I'm good at weeding out the ones which would probably turn into this. they feel like a sub genre at best.

[(Anonymous)]

His name is Percival, what do you expect?

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds like a shitty book. There's plenty of shitty books. I'm just uncomfortable when people say that, because this is a shitty book, therefore all books that don't have dystopias or magic or vampires are pretentious. Or equivalent logic.

[ninety6tears]

Same.

[(Anonymous)]

What exactly is litfic? I'm assuming that breaks down to literature fiction, which means... nothing to me.

[(Anonymous)]

Literary fiction.

Delineating what precisely that means is very hard, like any other genre, but basically stuff that's... meant to be taken seriously and written by people with English degrees and all that kind of thing.

[(Anonymous)]

That seems like a terrible way to define a genre. But then again, I try not to take anything I read seriously. Even serious books.

[(Anonymous)]

IMO social definitions like that are actually usually the best way to define genres. Because genres don't actually follow hard and fast rules. They're conceptual categories we use to organize our experience with books, and they're communities we build around books, and they're ways we market books, more than they are categories intrinsic to books.

[(Anonymous)]

It's fiction you find in the general fiction section because it isn't genre, unless it has classic status or is David Mitchell. So, easily or arbitrarily defined depending on the critical context or how much marketing clout the author has.

[(Anonymous)]

and what I mean by "unless" is that genre works like Frankenstein or magic realism sometimes get a place in the literary category, not the other way around.

[sarillia]

I tend to look at literary fiction as works where things like theme and language use are considered at least as important as plot and character by the author and sometimes more important.

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't read this particular book but a lot of litfic over three or four languages, and I have encountered a few books that pissed me off, but generally, even if I disagree with the major morals of a novel, I usually find that the one thing that divides litfic from popular fiction is te fact that it subverts itself and its own morals.
By the way, what you criticize concerning class/race issues is one of the central issues in what used to be called third world literature. It's simply a fact that you can only contribute to the field if you are already privileged in a way, though for many writers there has still been a personal history of alienation, discrimination, poverty, and if not personal, then it at least has been a major theme in their upbringing because it was a reality for their parents.
Like, people criticize Salman Rushdie for not being Indian enough, but what is that, anyway? Is Naipaul allowed to write about poor plantation workers even though his father was a journalist?
A black college professor may not face the same problems as a kid in the Ghetto but he will have had a mother or grandmother who was a second class human. He will have grown up in a world of casual racism. So even if he is in a privileged position, racism will have shaped his life, so making it a theme in a novel like this is the appropriate mode of writing. ignoring it would be dishonest and probably result in people attacking him for downplaying his own black heritage.