Comments on Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent: What Makes Literary Fiction Literary?

I dip in and read your blog from time to time and ...

2010-01-31T21:07:34.103-08:00

I dip in and read your blog from time to time and it is always interesting. Today I burst out laughing when I got to your aside about The House of Sand and Fog.

Without regret I also admit that I didn't even watch the awards show although I am given to understand that Celine Dion is now akin to a space station and we can go see her in 3D.

Look forward to reading more.

This explanation is thought-provoking. There's ano...

2010-01-05T22:15:39.411-08:00

This explanation is thought-provoking. There's another sort of book I've seen, though - one that uses the action-orientation and prose style of genre fiction but attempts to make the kinds of "deeper" statements about life that might be expected in "literary" books. (This approach usually does not work for my taste!)

Mr. Bransford My name is SPC LEIFI and I am in th...

2009-11-28T13:07:02.559-08:00

Mr. Bransford

My name is SPC LEIFI and I am in the U.S. Army and am currently training in the DC area. On June 16, 2008 while I was deployed in Iraq, a good friend Maril Delly sent me a link with your blog for no reason that I could think of, however, I saved your information.

I am published artist with Editions Limited in Santa Rosa, CA, and create vintage jazz posters for them that they sell worldwide to all the major retailers. I also have my own art publishing company that produces WW2 type posters for the families of fallen service members from the the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns.
http://freedomsonme.com/
I am currently writing several books and I have some questions about your services.
One book in particular is a novel regarding a soldier suffering from PTSD. I have taken all my military experiences and the experiences of families that I have worked with to create this book.

I don't have an online work for the art I do for my publisher, however you can do a google search on my name and some websites will come up.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Just want to say thank you to all contributors! Th...

2009-10-22T09:17:38.285-07:00

Just want to say thank you to all contributors! This blog has helped me learn.

I've just joined a "literary" book club and - being a selective and eclectic reader of whatever's on offer - had the same question: when is a good novel a "literary" novel? Google pointed me here.

I was relieved to read that there is no distinct and generally agreed boundary between "literature" and "genre" although I recognize the basic characteristics of both. Personally, I try to avoid black and white categorisation.

Now I'm going to google "Why do some novels stand the test of time" ;)

Mike
(Netherlands)

Thanks for your blog. Very funny and useful. (Mus...

2009-09-11T11:48:10.630-07:00

Thanks for your blog. Very funny and useful. (Must make your agency very popular with writers.)

Toby. (named after the English beer)

Nathan, I think your explanation is an accurate o...

2009-07-01T13:20:06.907-07:00

Nathan,

I think your explanation is an accurate one. I have been trying to explain this very comment to several people recently, and they are having a hard time grasping it. You explain it much better than I have been.

To Anonymous who said... "Nathan: I recently submi...

2009-06-13T07:15:21.039-07:00

To Anonymous who said...
"Nathan: I recently submitted my work to a writer's competition back east & I listed the genre as "commercial literary fiction" (the hybrid). I came to this decision because of the 'eureka' that came from your description, i.e. more straightforward prose, accessible, but with a deeper emotional complexity.

One of the judges (a well-known agent) commented, "If you can't figure out what your novel is, then I won't take the time to read it. And it's not my job to tell you what the genre is." He dismissed my submission w/o a page read. Nice. All that work for naught."
An agent at a writer's conference I attended said the opening line of your pitch letter is the most important sentence. If you can make a connection in the agent's mind with something familiar to him, it gives him, or her, a better reason to read your manuscript."
So, Anonymous,next time maybe you could describe your work as "in the same genre as Elmore Leonard, Cormac McCarthy, since Nathan has pointed out that these two writers also cross the commerial/literary line. Good luck!

It's all opinion. It's commercial and popular if m...

2009-06-12T06:12:40.101-07:00

It's all opinion. It's commercial and popular if most people with the price of a book in their pocket buy it.
It's literary fiction if only a few people with the price of a book in their pocket buy it.

Sorry about that, anon. It just goes to show how s...

2009-05-01T09:53:34.193-07:00

Sorry about that, anon. It just goes to show how squishy genre labels are. I can't imagine rejecting someone just because I disagreed with how they categorized their book, but I guess some agents do.

Nathan: I recently submitted my work to a writer's...

2009-04-30T22:58:59.203-07:00

Nathan: I recently submitted my work to a writer's competition back east & I listed the genre as "commercial literary fiction" (the hybrid). I came to this decision because of the 'eureka' that came from your description, i.e. more straightforward prose, accessible, but with a deeper emotional complexity.

One of the judges (a well-known agent) commented, "If you can't figure out what your novel is, then I won't take the time to read it. And it's not my job to tell you what the genre is." He dismissed my submission w/o a page read. Nice. All that work for naught.

Now I'm hesitant in using the hybrid genre in a query letter. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

In other words, it takes the ideas of literature a...

2009-04-25T07:35:32.690-07:00

In other words, it takes the ideas of literature and develops them. You could not write a serious book about politics without mentioning Marxism, whether your conception of Marxism is positive or negative. You could not write about geo-politics or foreign affairs without treating in some way, the existence of nuclear weapons. The literary novel is about literature and works with the ideas that have developed in literature up to the present day.

I am not smart enough to understand what all those ideas are. I get, to some degree, Romanticism, Realism and Post-modernism, but in a great literary novel, there is so much more of the past and contemporary thinking about how stories, plots, characters etc are develpoed that I don't understand. The point is, in a great literary novel, this stuff is there. If, in the future, I have the time and inclination to understand the ideas contained in a great literary novel, they are there to be plumbed.

Several people have touched upon what I think of a...

2009-04-25T07:20:15.921-07:00

Several people have touched upon what I think of as "literary" fiction. I think it is a novel that pushes the envelope or pushes against the conventional definitions. It also takes ideas from the past and develops this "state of the art" idea.

One way to think of it is to use architecture as an example. An architect designing 6 or 7 room cape cods that are going up as part of a real estate development versus an architect that is designing homes that are unique. These unique homes take into consideration new ideas in living, new ideas in design and new ideas in enginerering and materials.

Dear Nathan,But what about the language? What abou...

2009-01-26T16:59:18.501-08:00

Dear Nathan,

But what about the language? What about the quality of the language in commercial plot-driven fiction versus literary fiction? Wouldn't you say there are more/different tools used in literary fiction? For example, the author may actually know what a simile is for, etc. You might not come across that in a commercial piece.

Also, what defines commercial fiction for me is the back-cover blurb. It starts out "character X is a high school sophomore who is normal in every way except one..." then goes on to the first "doorway" - "but when character X meets a demon slayer from Y, things go horribly wrong, etc." Then, the last paragraph goes something like: "together they must race against time to stop the xx clock from ticking so that the world's ice cream supply is safe..." and so on.

Isn't that A-B-C plot the whole basis of commercial fiction these days?

And if you don't happen to write that way, does that throw you into literary fiction? If it's character-driven in other words?

BTW Yes, The Ground Beneath Her Feet was not Salman Rushdie's best effort. Try Midnight's Children.

P.S. For some reason I cannot stand Ian Rankin's writing all that much. What is it? Too many hanging modifiers?

Sigh...

Literary Fiction can also be thought of as somethi...

2008-12-11T21:31:39.787-08:00

Literary Fiction can also be thought of as something that tends to push against the boarders of any one definition. A type of writing that is characterized by two important traits: 1) that it is difficult to talk about what it's doing until it's finished, and 2) that when it's finished the conversation surrounding it can change and evolve over time and subsequent reads.

The power of language can be thought of as the guiding force of these works. In a famous quote Don DeLillo says that he writes word by word into the void. That frightening process, burrowing forward without knowing where your language might lead or if your efforts will result in something that works, charges the work with a special tension, I think, that is hard to find in a piece of fiction that rests safely within the bounds of its genre.

wow. good point, Mr. Bransford. yes, literaty fict...

2008-10-02T21:26:14.482-07:00

wow. good point, Mr. Bransford. yes, literaty fiction needs DO need a plot to keep the story going.

one example I can think of right now is "The Kite Runner." We're in the mind of the lead protagonist, we explore his feelings and memories of the past, but the story progresses as he goes back to Afghanistan and rescue his nephew. It's totally character-driven, but has a real nice plot to keep the story going.

"Catcher in the Rye" on the other hand, really didn't have an exact plot, to be honest. It was happening over a series of days as Caulfield headed home after being expelled from school and staying at a sleazy motel in NYC....I kept waiting for something big to happen, but it never came. The novel was really more about his emotions and never had anything to drive the story forward.

I dunno.

We were just discussion this on an authors' loop t...

2008-05-29T15:20:31.381-07:00

We were just discussion this on an authors' loop to which I belong.
I said:
The only difference between Literary and genre writing is about 100-500 years.

BTW, great post! I'm going to bookmark you.
Barbara

Just noticed the word 'art' is missing. Maybe the...

2007-07-13T05:36:32.877-07:00

Just noticed the word 'art' is missing.

Maybe the question shouldn't be 'is it literary?' but 'is it 'art?'

A little harder to answer, but maybe a little easier too.

Nathan said: “Now consider literary fiction. In li...

2007-03-06T19:23:28.755-08:00

Nathan said: “Now consider literary fiction. In literary fiction the plot usually happens beneath the surface, in the minds and hearts of the characters. Things may happen on the surface, but what is really important are the thoughts, desires, and motivations of the characters as well as the underlying social and cultural threads that act upon them. The plot may be buried to such a degree (like GILEAD) that if you have to describe the book in a short sentence it seems plotless …”

Indeed, fiction with a “literary” bent, must have a strong inner world. The outer world may be flying around or dead still, but the inner world better be transforming for the literary label to apply.

Suggested exercise underscoring the point and showing it’s importance to writers trying to pitch literary fiction:

Write an agent query letter paragraph summarizing the key issues main characters grapple with and the outcomes/resolutions on those issues for works of one/more of the following authors:

- Joyce
- Dostoyevsky
- Fowles
- Kafka
- Mann
- Durrell
- Lawerence (DH)
- Malraux
- Gide
- McCarthy
- Proulx
- Ondaatje
- Morrison

Have fun. You may wind up wondering how any of these authors got published.

I feel eminently unqualified to comment on this......

2007-02-28T04:07:20.837-08:00

I feel eminently unqualified to comment on this......which has never stopped me before.
I get very confused about the different genre and subgenre in fiction. At one point, I was so frustrated with the whole thing that I took the cretin's point of view and said "I don't know Literature but I know what I like."
The idea that "Literary Fiction" is required reading is interesting to me.
I remember getting into an argument with my English teacher about what was "Literature". He insisted that Frank Herbert's "Dune" was popular sci fi and therefore, ergo, towit NOT literature.
I told him that I'd rather read Frank Herbert's religious metaphor than James Joyce's ramblings. Being a smart a**, I reminded him that Shakespeare was considered "Popular" in his day. I asked him if it was the writing that made Literature or time?
I got an "A" in that class. We never did agree.
Yes, I was a pretentious little twit. I'm all humble now that I've lost my mind, gotten older and read "Reader's Digest".

I've always considered literary authors to have br...

2007-02-27T16:57:39.749-08:00

I've always considered literary authors to have brilliant style of writing - always enough to hold you even if you don't like the story itself - you still want to read on.

I think there is another side to this, at least fr...

2007-02-27T14:57:38.398-08:00

I think there is another side to this, at least from this novice fiction writer's perspective (moi). Until I started writing, I never gave much thought to the categories and read all sorts of different books, as much for the cover art as anything else! I'll confess, I even troll the remainder warehouses and pick randomly for exposure to things I might not pay full price for. Variety is the spice of life, so they say.

What became my dilemma was trying to peg the 'genre', or non-genre, of my first book. I just had a story to tell. It is now in a file. There are people (my friends now), place, and interactions amongst them all. Frankly, I don't care much what label it gets. I'd just like someone to consider it a story worth reading and publish it. So when I sub it, I just say it's mainstream and trust that some deconstructionist will eventually tell me what label it requires.

Nathan,I think, like the others, that you nailed i...

2007-02-27T14:40:07.141-08:00

Nathan,

I think, like the others, that you nailed it. I've heard a lot of nonsense about literary fiction - some it quite mean (as if it's snobbery to assert that one's writing fits into that category) - but your definition should be in the encyclopedia!
I tried to get away with calling my manuscript "literary sci fi" in my query letters, and got no comment one way or another. When I said in a blog that I wrote a piece of "literary fiction that happens to be set in the future," wow, did I get shot down! They said I wrote sci fi and if it was well written and developed, then it was GOOD sci fi.
I may know better now - or maybe I need another re-write???

Strangely, I was musing on this the other day. Whe...

2007-02-27T12:27:31.002-08:00

Strangely, I was musing on this the other day. When the term literary fiction is used I can't help but think of middle-class navel gazing, thirty-something self-pitying angst, chin-stroking, self-satisfied, pretentious old tosh.

BUT ... I know I'm as incorrect in that generalisation as those who would never deign to read something as low-brow as Stephen King.

At the same time, I'm not a fan of genre fiction, either. I think I need elements of both. Literary genre, if you like. James Ellroy's American Tabloid, for instance, or Arthur C. Clarke's 2001.

That's why there's so little out there I like. The last book I really enjoyed in both a visceral and cerebral way was Sarah Langan's The Keeper.

On Salman Rushdie - the only novel I've read is The Satanic Verses, several years ago. I was enthralled as I read it, but when I finished I couldn't decide whether I thought it was a brilliant work of genius or pretentious twaddle. I still can't make up my mind on that one!

Hello Nathan:Ah, the poor soul who asked that ques...

2007-02-27T08:23:55.536-08:00

Hello Nathan:

Ah, the poor soul who asked that question at the writer's conference...

A few years ago, I asked the same question to a panel of editors (of university presses no less). After eyes rolled and throats cleared, one of the gentlemen stood and spoke.

I didn't understand a word he said. I expect other frightened writers didn't either. I nodded and retreated back into my commercial fiction corner. I was an outcast.

Nevertheless, I learned a valuable lesson. Poetic souls dwell in literary fiction. I am not a poet, nor will I ever be. And there's nothing wrong with that (as Jerry Seinfeld would say).

Simple prose for intricate plots are magic in my world.

Thanks for your blog. You're terrific.

This is an existing distinction in the traditiona...

2007-02-27T08:11:08.571-08:00

This is an existing distinction in the traditional critical vocabulary, except that the terminology is "novel" vs. "romance." A novel is character-based; a romance in the critical sense is plot-based. This doesn't mean that novels have no plot (Defoe is critically presumed to have invented the English novel and nobody has ever accused him of that) or that romance has cardboard characters. The Lord of the Rings is a heroic romance with strong characters and Jane Eyre is a novel with a strong plot. It's the same distinction you make here with an established terminology.

I don't even have an English major and I know this from randomly reading litcrit about books I like. It just goes to show that knowledgeable people can labor to reinvent the wheel while the lucky person is already tooling along on her bike.

The bottom line is - categories are not real things. The book is real; the category is a convenient concept for discussing and cataloging things. The moment you forget this, you start the pointless subjective hairsplitting and wind up saying things like: "Elmore Leonard is literary fiction because I like him and I'm too highbrow to read commercial fiction." (You know who you are.)