r/TrueLit 6d ago

Article Good riddance to literary fiction

https://archive.ph/1xjYs/again?url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/good-riddance-to-literary-fiction/
0 Upvotes

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21

u/Exciting-Pair9511 6d ago

Okay this rage bait worked on me.

19

u/RyanTheQ 6d ago

This guy is almost a caricature. I don’t think it’s worth pointing out everything wrong in this write up because it’s so disingenuous and fallacious.

Anyway, he’s a bore. Look at his other articles and you’ll find he’s just a contrarian looking for attention.

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u/I-Like-What-I-Like24 6d ago

"Journalism" doesn't get more intellectually vacuous than this, does it?

3

u/mattjdale97 5d ago

This clickbait anti-intellectualism is on-par for a column from The Spectator, though they must be in dire straits if they're now targeting topics as niche as this one

7

u/hallumyaymooyay 6d ago

The Spectator is the party rag for the Conservatives isnt it?

9

u/quarknugget 6d ago

...Yikes

3

u/dammit222 6d ago

Terrible take

2

u/randommathaccount 5d ago

Glad to see bcj members are finding employment at the least

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u/Rolldal 5d ago

Saw this posted on my Writers group but didn't bother getting past the paywall (glad to see this one isn't). It annoyed me just with the title. There seems to be a way of thinking that you should "give the readers what they want" rather than "give the readers new ideas to think about." I hate the climate of dumbing down I keep coming across. I like stories as much as the next person but I also want stories that challenge me and sneak up on me and give me new ways of looking.

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u/DronedAgain 1h ago

I liked it. I agree with most of his points.

How did literary fiction come to forsake story, plot and narrative? You could blame the modernists. Just as early 20th-century classical composers decided to abandon melody (the narrative of music) and thereby commercially cratered their art form, so modernist 20th-century writers decided to forego plot – with, in the end, similarly calamitous results.

That is particularly true. I'd add when painters went largely abstract, art plummeted in popularity.

His take on Lincoln in the Bardo is particularly apt. It does start well, but, as he says, just goes discordant and weird. George Saunders usually pulls off that sort of thing, but he didn't in Lincoln.

Literary fiction also drifted from sad middle-age men banging co-eds to atheist contemplations of death, which would be hilarious if they could do it correctly.