Fiction, Writing, and Majors

[Kael]

I am becoming increasingly certain that I do not want to major in English, though that is what I am currently doing. My reasons are a bit convoluted, but this semester has reinforced it so far. For my fiction writing class we are allowed to do only one of the three pieces for the semester as genre fiction, as opposed to literary fiction. I did not think that would be so bothersome when I signed up for the class or I wouldn't have done so. It seems that I find literary fiction boring as hell to write.

That's not to say I don't enjoy reading it occasionally, and some of the writing by other students in the class has been surprisingly good and enjoyable. When I write fiction, though, I find that almost every idea I have that I actually like would place the piece solidly in the verboten 'genre fiction' category. To add to my frustration I have fallen behind on my deadlines because I was under the weather over the weekend, so now I get to sit down and churn out some stinky pile of literary garbage that I won't want to attach my name to and turn that in, then start work on the next one because the first draft is due next week.

Meanwhile in the larger scope of things I once again begin the quest for a major, with little to no idea where to head. I have an interest in something more science-y, such as physics, but my math has fallen dreadfully behind in part due to my focus on English, so there will have to be some serious catch-up time spent.

Isn't college fun? That's what I heard, anyway...

[Qingdai]

I had fun, but I also viewed it as a time to figure out what I did and did not want to do for the rest of my life.
Then I was wrong, and carried on.
It's a bit more stressful when you have a family to support, while dithering around.

Being able to read and write coherently is never a disability in any job.

There are such things as teaching and science writing, for example.

[erimir]

Genre fiction meaning... romance, horror, fantasy or sci-fi? Or what?

[Kael]

The guidelines we are using for this class fall pretty close to what wiki has for genre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre_fiction) vs literary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_fiction) fiction. The main distinguishing criteria for the sake of this class is basically 'could it really happen in our world?'

Obviously a pretty broad basis and open to a great deal of dispute or interpretation, but it's turning out to be quite a problem for me, as I like at least a hint of the truly unreal or fantastic in my reading, which means that's what comes to mind when I try to write.

[Nullifidian]

That seems like a pretty bizarre guideline. It would rule out magic realism as literary fiction, as well as tons of acknowledged literature (like Gulliver's Travels or The Odyssey), and it would include most detective fiction and romance novels.

Maybe you should take a lead from China Miéville (http://www.omnivoracious.com/2009/06/neither-a-contract-nor-a-promise-five-movements-to-watch-out-for.html) and tell your instructor that "literary fiction is a marketing category".

[Kael]

Sorry, I should add that the instructor did emphasize some of the things mentioned on the wiki page as well, mainly a focus on character development as opposed to plot.

I don't know that I agree with her guidelines, personally, since my first piece was about as focused on character as you can get while still having a plot, and it was classified as genre fiction because it took place in a dystopian future. In the end, though, I'll probably have to suck it up and at least pretend to try to use her guidelines. I only need to write two more pieces anyway and I've just finished one, which came out better than I feared.

[Sock Puppet]

How many creative writing classes will you actually be taking for your major? I ask because when I was an undergrad (late Pleistocene), creative writing classes were few, far between, and always considered outliers of the English program. I also considered changing majors, but that was mainly because the focus of the program was about 90-95% on lit-crit, which I became heartily sick of about halfway through. By the time I realized my real interest was in English language (and met a younger student who was designing an individual major around same :envy: ), I was too heavily invested in the major to switch without extending graduation by a year or more.

Anyway, my point is, make sure you're switching for the right reasons. I doubt you'll be writing much fiction in subsequent classes, genre or no.

[LadyShea]

Are you in college to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to earn a living, or just to learn?

[Demimonde]

Creative Writing classes are notorious for being only tangentially useful to actual writers. The only benefit I see in them at all is in the workshop process by which you can get some actual critical feedback from a literate audience. I am feeling gyped because my class this term, which I was oh so excited about, billed itself as a workshop. In actuality we are only getting three days of that in the entire semester. :fury:

We too have a "literary" requirement with an onus on genre. Which is really lame, but sadly expected. Especially when one considers that it makes up so little of the actual marketplace. However, it is more easily taught, and fits more convienently into the whole academic atmosphere that it is IMO a path of least resistance for uninspired instructors. Well that's a little harsh. Let's just say that most are academics who were endoctrinated to at least a graduate level in the literary status quo, and also happen to be writers. There are exceptions to this. I will be going back to take creative writing with a proffesor at my community college who writes award winning genre fiction and has no such pretensions. There are also far better books written by outsiders that guide a young author into the real world of publishing, than by academics.

All that being said, 90% of your English degree requirements will not be about creative writing. They will be in criticism and analysis, which I happen to love. I think that overall, being able to understand the critical audience makes one a better writer. Being able to disect texts can give a better understanding of the craft and brings conventions to your conciousness. These conventions in writing can be a road map to how to write better. They can also be a viewed as a hegemony to be rebelled against. I will say that as a writer, I come from entirely different perspective from most English majors. This can be both fun and frustrating as hell, either way it is illuminating. Considering that so few books make it into the literate public's eye, it is interesting to see how they are treated by the superlitarate public, the English majors. Interesting in the sense that at times it is encouraging and at othertimes utterly depressing.

Literary criticism doesn't have to be an intellectual circle jerk, nor mental masturbation. Many of the best critical writers and thinkers were creative writers. I'm thinking of African American crit, in specific Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison. Even Langston Hughes contributed to what would become African American Literary theory. These writers contributed to academia and in a sense taught the establishment how to read their works. I am anticipating a reaction against the "literary" tradition of writing in the coming years and a new wave of critics to help explain how genre fiction should be read, and shed some of the facile notions that put them into a pulp category. Unhomliness indeed.

I think that the genre fiction writers are in the process of breaking out of the categories which they have previously been placed. This can only be done through the academic system. Heinlin, I think it was, described his work as "social fiction" as opposed to science fiction, and Ursula LeGuin has spun that into a new concept of "social science fiction," that still needs a hell of a lot of refinement. But it is a step in the right direction.

Nutshell, if you want to be a writer it doesn't matter what your degree is in. Many of the greats never studied writing, but created their own personal creative work bringing in other diciplines and perspectives. If you are interested in spending many years reading and writing about the work of others, from Beowulf to Milton to Vonnegut to Angelou, with an eye toward interpreting your work and the work of other writers that you relate to for the establishment, then an English Major is for you.

Really, anything new in academia is generated from outsiders not just damning the man but waltzing in and showing them what they are too blind to see, redifining what the status quo should be and proving it to them in their own terms. If that tickles you, jump in. If that isn't part of your passion, you will be miserable and your time would be better spent elsewhere.

Sorry if this is a little convoluted, I only have a few minutes before I'm due back in class.

ETA: Damn that's a lot of typos, but sadly I don't have time to fix them. Oh well... back to the coal mines.

[Kael]

Are you in college to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to earn a living, or just to learn?
I have the lofty and perhaps foolish hope of combining the two. As far as a career goes I'm leaning toward teaching. My primary goal is to find something that will pay my bills and that I would enjoy doing, at least part of the time.

[LadyShea]

Good for you for not being bitter and cyncial yet, like me. I hope you are one of the the few who enjoys whatever it is they make a living at.

[Sock Puppet]

I managed to find a career that applies what I learned as an English major without becoming a teacher. I'm a contract analyst. Which probably sounds horribly boring, but I sort of like it. Then again, I'm an extremely sick, sick man.

[BDS]

All that being said, 90% of your English degree requirements will not be about creative writing. They will be in criticism and analysis, which I happen to love. I think that overall, being able to understand the critical audience makes one a better writer. Being able to disect texts can give a better understanding of the craft and brings conventions to your conciousness. These conventions in writing can be a road map to how to write better. .

I don't think we need to separate "writing" and "criticism". Criticism is a perfectly valid literary form -- whether it's social criticism, literary criticism, or some other variety of criticism. To the extent that "literature" has come to suggest fiction, drama and poetry, I think that English departments and Comparative Literature departments ignore other forms of literature: biography, history, mythology, and (of course) criticism.

Especially for high school students and undergraduates, this seems like a mistake. Students are expected to WRITE critiques -- but they seldom READ them. Reading novels and plays and poetry my help someone learn how to write novels and plays and poetry -- but in order to write critiques, shouldn't the person read critiques?

(I'll add that I haven't taken a literature course in years, and things may have changed, but that's my recollection.)

[Demimonde]

You have not heard of New Historicism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Historicism) I take it? Things have changed a great deal since you were in classes. We do read criticism in literature classes, Sidney's Defense of Poesy springs to mind which we read recently. Contemporary criticism is read constantly to compare method and theory along with primary text.

And yes, there is a separation between creative writing and critical writing which was my point above. Practice vs Theory, comes to mind. The distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction was being discussed above. Check the links Kael provided to see where they have been compartmentalized from each other.

As for the types of writing you see ignored, well they are not. Biography aka life narrative is simply HUGE right now, I am taking a class devoted to that at the moment. Everything is narrative these days and worthy of study. I attended a lecture recently which discussed databases as narrative, by virtue of what they contain and omit and the authorial context of them. We did textual analysis of cookbooks in my woman and food class.

[erimir]

So, does genre fiction have a bad reputation in these classes because of all the crap spewed out every year in those genres, or because they think that even what are considered the best examples of, say, science fiction simply aren't as "worthy" as "literary fiction"?

I mean, would these teachers consider 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and The Handmaiden's Tale to be not as important, interesting or skillful because they are all science fiction?

[Demimonde]

The whole literary fiction vs genre fiction debate is very similar to the literary vs comercial fiction debate which is very similar to the literary vs mainstream fiction debate, which is really a big normative discussion about what we should consider highbrow and what is the lowly pulp.

In all of the above academics classify "literary" as character driven, as opposed to plot/action driven. The notion of personal transformation is the key to this, and all other fiction is rubbish* if it lacks this quality. This the main point which they cram down our throats as writers.

Texts which deal with dystopian societies have merit and we analyze them all the time in classes. They aren't character driven at all. Yet we aren't supposed to write them, if you listen to most creative writing professors. It is rather funny that we admire such texts, we read and apreciate them. Hell a great deal of literary theory deals with putting the author/narrator/character/text/audience into the social context. And yet, we as writers are told to focus only on the individual when writing in such classes. "Social" Fiction is lost. It is really foolish, and has more to do with the group think of the professors than anything else.

I have only met one exception, who I described above. She taught about the divide in my Comp II class, and noted that there are many virtues to both types, and a nice balance of the two is the ideal.

And it isn't just the Science writers either. Fantasy, Romance, Horror, Thriller, Suspense, ChickLit, pretty much any comercially known group is piriah. A writer must jump very high for the sins of plot and action to be ignored. They are of course considered exceptions.

*I admit this is a bit of an over statement, but not by much.

[fragment]

I think that the genre fiction writers are in the process of breaking out of the categories which they have previously been placed. This can only be done through the academic system.
Isn't genre placement also to do with the way publishers like to operate, in that they have established marketing strategies and are much more likely to pick up new work that fits into genre categories?

[BDS]

You have not heard of New Historicism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Historicism) I take it? Things have changed a great deal since you were in classes. We do read criticism in literature classes, Sidney's Defense of Poesy springs to mind which we read recently. Contemporary criticism is read constantly to compare method and theory along with primary text.

And yes, there is a separation between creative writing and critical writing which was my point above. Practice vs Theory, comes to mind. The distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction was being discussed above. Check the links Kael provided to see where they have been compartmentalized from each other.

As for the types of writing you see ignored, well they are not. Biography aka life narrative is simply HUGE right now, I am taking a class devoted to that at the moment. Everything is narrative these days and worthy of study. I attended a lecture recently which discussed databases as narrative, by virtue of what they contain and omit and the authorial context of them. We did textual analysis of cookbooks in my woman and food class.

Thanks. I'm Glad to hear it. Apparently, the academics in charge agree with me (or, more likely, my description of English departments 30 years ago was incorrect). I always assumed (without firsthand knowledge) that the farther one went in the study of English or Comparative Literature, the more one read critiques and academic analyses. Maybe my initial post was influenced more by High School English than by College English. My son was in high school fairly recently, and he still read mostly novels, plays and poems. I love novels plays and poems -- but high school English programs seem designed to do two things: teach kids how to read and appreciate literature; and teach kids how to write. Novels, plays, and poems are great for the former, but since the kids are expected to write critical essays, it seems to me they should read more of them in order to improve their writing.

[BDS]

The whole literary fiction vs genre fiction debate is very similar to the literary vs comercial fiction debate which is very similar to the literary vs mainstream fiction debate, which is really a big normative discussion about what we should consider highbrow and what is the lowly pulp.

In all of the above academics classify "literary" as character driven, as opposed to plot/action driven. The notion of personal transformation is the key to this, and all other fiction is rubbish* if it lacks this quality. This the main point which they cram down our throats as writers.

.

Interesting. I read an essay by C.S. Lewis once in which he argued that the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow fiction (and, by extension, between "literary" and 'genre" fiction) is a false one. He argued that there are better novels and worse ones -- and that the distinction in quality may well involve the extent to which the novel involves and excites us on many different levels, and over an extended period of time, instead of in a more superficial manner. Except he said it better, and I can't remember his entire argument. I've tried to look it up on the web, but I can't find it -- I remember reading it in some library book of Lewis's essays.

[Angakuk]

C. S. Lewis' Ransom Trilogy is great example of an author exploring different genres in the context of one extended novel. Out Of The Silent Planet is hard science fiction a'la Jules Verne. Perelandra is pure fantasy fiction in the style of George MacDonald. I am not sure how the third volume, That Hideous Strength, ought to be classfied. It mostly brings to mind the novels of Charles Williams with just a hint of H.P. Lovecraft.

Anyway, my point, I think, was that Lewis, as a writer of fiction, was interested in exploring the possibilities offered by different styles and genres.

[LadyShea]

Well Kael, write according to the guidelines to get through class, but maintain the correct belief that good fiction is good, even if it's genre fiction.

I just don't get how one can say Ray Bradbury is not literature.

[Alex]

Interesting. I read an essay by C.S. Lewis once in which he argued that the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow fiction (and, by extension, between "literary" and 'genre" fiction) is a false one. He argued that there are better novels and worse ones -- and that the distinction in quality may well involve the extent to which the novel involves and excites us on many different levels, and over an extended period of time, instead of in a more superficial manner. Except he said it better, and I can't remember his entire argument. I've tried to look it up on the web, but I can't find it -- I remember reading it in some library book of Lewis's essays.

Is this (http://www.amazon.com/Experiment-Criticism-Canto-C-Lewis/dp/0521422817/) the essay by C.S. Lewis that you had in mind?

[Kael]

Well Kael, write according to the guidelines to get through class, but maintain the correct belief that good fiction is good, even if it's genre fiction.

I just don't get how one can say Ray Bradbury is not literature.
Funny you should mention that. We have a little side assignment to read one of his short stories and talk about what aspects would classify it as genre and what would classify it as literary...

[LadyShea]

Some of his writing* approaches poetry in my opinion...and character development...he goes deep! There is a bit in Something Wicked where the father is describing his wife and womanhood in general that brings tears to my eyes.

*I dunno the technical terms so it may his phrasing or prose or something

[BDS]

Is this (http://www.amazon.com/Experiment-Criticism-Canto-C-Lewis/dp/0521422817/) the essay by C.S. Lewis that you had in mind?

No. I actually own that book, and it's not the same essay. If I get a chance I'll look for it in the library over the weekend, and report back with a reference (if I can find it).

[Kael]

So after a class discussion on genre vs literary fiction I don't feel quite as annoyed by the guidelines. For this class a big part of the instructor's distinguishing criteria centers on publishing, i.e. what sort of magazine a particular piece would most likely be published in. So even if one views the distinction as one that only exists in the heads of the publishers it's still one that we are keeping in mind for this class, it seems.

Still, I'm going talk to someone about what I'm doing with my major. I'm probably going to take mostly math and science classes next semester and see how I like that in comparison.

[Demimonde]

Well Kael, write according to the guidelines to get through class, but maintain the correct belief that good fiction is good, even if it's genre fiction.

:yeahthat: That is what I am having to do. My fiction short story has been tough to write. I'm doing it, but I can't say I'm enjoying it. We aren't forbidden to write in genre in my class, that can be the setting for the peice, but it must have all the characteristics of "literary" fiction. Which in the space allowed us is really difficult to balance.

It's funny though, we have a gentleman in the class who is working on a science fiction piece regardless. In conection to the social/lndividual his piece is a nice comentary on the divide. His character is faced with a court ordered digital companion which is supposed to socialize him. Which is an easy set up, and once established he can play with the character's responses and create a comentary of social qualities on a personalized level. Bada Bing!

Another guy is writing a fantasy piece, which is giving him fits. If he takes time to establish the alternate world and the rules of the magic etc, he takes away from the time he has to develop the characters. So he is banging his head against the wall.

Mine is a contemporary narative, but I am playing with some magical realism elements. I'm not certain yet whether they will come out in the wash though.

I just don't get how one can say Ray Bradbury is not literature.

Oh they agree that it is literature. Just not "literary" literature as they currently are defining it. Which is such a massive contradiction in terms that one would think that the established schools of LANGUAGE ARTS would be able to catch it.

For CS Lewis lovers, I highly recommend Till We Have Faces which is loosely based on the mythology of Cupid and Psyche, from the perspective of one of the doubtful sisters.

[BDS]

For CS Lewis lovers, I highly recommend Till We Have Faces which is loosely based on the mythology of Cupid and Psyche, from the perspective of one of the doubtful sisters.

Thanks. I've read most of his books, but not that one. I'll look for it in the library when I look for the essay I mentioned. If I find it, maybe I'll start a thread about it.

[Demimonde]

Kael, you should take the time to explore your options. I will say that I changed my major twice over the years. This last one, from Political Science to English was brutal. It wrecks havoc on your transcript. And at least those are both liberal arts. Switching from arts to sciences is even worse. So take your time tasting before you make any decisions.

[fragment]

Yeah. I had two years of an arts degree I didn't want to finish, only some of which is creditable to the science major I'm now studying.

[BDS]

For CS Lewis lovers, I highly recommend Till We Have Faces which is loosely based on the mythology of Cupid and Psyche, from the perspective of one of the doubtful sisters.

I read this over the weekend. Very good. If I were teaching a creative writing course, one of my assignments would be: "Take a famous myth and write a story based on it."

I didn't find the Lewis essay on "high art" vs "low art". If I ever do, I'll let people know.