Lit Fic

Lit Fic - short for "Literary Fiction" - is a nebulous, broad term which emerged during the 1960s. Though it is usually contrasted with Genre Fiction ("Speculative Fiction", Mystery Fiction, Romance Novel, and so on), there's more to it than "any non-genre fiction"; in some respects, it is a genre unto itself, characterized by an aspiration to literary merit and a greater focus on style, psychological depth and character - as opposed to the focus on plot and narrative typical of genre fiction.

From this you might infer that this is typically not the kind of work that provides one's daily fix of vampire-hunting, magically-transforming, banana-bending, mecha-piloting, super-powered, time-travelling teenagers beating the odds. Rather, a piece of Lit Fic is much likelier to be about everyday people doing everyday things, dealing with everyday problems and eventually coming to realizations or personal transformations. A family struggles with cancer. A man struggles with death. A couple struggles with alcoholism. A child struggles to become an adult. A touch of Magical Realism might be allowed, but never to the point where it becomes the focus of the story.

In some sense, this induces an instinctive aversion to this genre in some readers' eyes; There is very little Escapism or Wish Fulfillment in Lit Fic, and if one believes that the point of fiction is escapism and speculation, they will likely see the genre as a glorified contradiction in terms. There is, of course, a flip side to the above: Lit Fic, more than any other genre, invests itself in real-life situations and real-life people. This is, generally, a good investment; in the end, even in the wackiest and most speculative adventures, the touch of real life - characters and their believable faults and struggles - is what ties everything together, carries the Willing Suspension of Disbelief and keeps the Eight Deadly Words at bay. No one wants to read a story which goes "PEWPEW — Lasers! — PEWPEWPEW!" for pages on end. So one might say, at their very base level, genre and Lit Fic are Not So Different, they just emphasize different aspects of storytelling.

Ostensibly for this reason, Lit fic is generally considered the mainstream of fiction, regardless of marketshare. The genre really only began to appear towards the end of the 19th century, when the corresponding genre fictions began to crystallize.

Archetypal authors in English include:


 * Thomas Hardy (British, 1870s-90s)
 * Henry James (American expat to Britain, 1870s-1910s)
 * D. H. Lawrence (British, 1910s-20s)
 * James Joyce (Irish, 1910s-30s)
 * Ernest Hemingway (American, 1920s-40s)
 * John Steinbeck (American, 1930s)
 * F Scott Fitzgerald (American, 1920s)
 * William Faulkner (American 1920s-1960s)
 * Virginia Woolf (British, 1920s)
 * John Updike (American, 1960s-2000s)
 * Norman Mailer (American, 1960s-2000s)
 * Thomas Pynchon (American, 1960s-2000s)
 * Joyce Carol Oates (American, ditto)
 * Don DeLillo (American, 1970s-2010s)
 * Toni Morrison (American, ditto)
 * Ian Mc Ewan (British, 1970s-2010s)
 * David Foster Wallace (American, 1980s-2000s) (While not half as famous as the above, it's a more than fair bet that future literary critics will mark him as the Lit Fic writer of Generation X.)
 * Michael Chabon (American, 2000s)
 * Dave Eggers (American, 2000s) the "other" famous Gen-X writer
 * Jennifer Egan (American, 2000s)
 * Jonathan Franzen (American, 2000s)

Examples of Lit Fic with pages on this wiki include:


 * About a Boy
 * Absalom Absalom
 * After Dark
 * After the Quake
 * All Quiet On the Western Front
 * All the Kings Men
 * The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
 * American Psycho
 * Animal Farm
 * As I Lay Dying
 * A Thousand Splendid Suns
 * Atonement
 * A Town Like Alice
 * At Swim-Two-Birds
 * The Autumn of the Patriarch
 * The Awakening
 * The Bad Girl
 * The Basic Eight
 * Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress
 * Barriers of a Broken Soul
 * Baudolino
 * The Beach
 * The Beat Generation
 * Beau Geste
 * The Bell Jar
 * Bless the Beasts And Children
 * Blood Meridian
 * The Bluest Eye
 * The Bone People
 * The Book of Negroes
 * The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To
 * Brave New World
 * Breakfast At Tiffany's
 * Breakfast of Champions
 * Brideshead Revisited
 * The Brief History of the Dead
 * The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
 * Brighton Rock
 * The Broom of the System
 * The Butterfly Revolution
 * Burnt Shadows
 * Cannery Row
 * Catch-22
 * The Catcher in The Rye
 * Cats Cradle
 * Children of Dust
 * The Choir
 * Choke
 * The Cider House Rules
 * A Clockwork Orange
 * Cloud Atlas
 * Colas Breugnon
 * Cold Mountain
 * The Collector
 * The Color Purple
 * The Cone Gatherers
 * A Confederacy of Dunces
 * The Confidence Man
 * The Confusions of Young Torless
 * The Corrections
 * Cosmicomics
 * Crash
 * Cry the Beloved Country
 * The Crimson Petal and The White
 * The Crying of Lot 49
 * Daddy Long Legs
 * A Dance to The Music of Time
 * The Devil to Pay In The Backlands
 * Distant Star
 * Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood
 * Doctor Zhivago
 * Dubliners
 * East of Eden
 * Effi Briest
 * Elmer Gantry
 * Empire of the Sun
 * The Enchantress of Florence
 * The End of the Affair
 * The English Patient
 * Ethan Frome
 * Everything Flows
 * Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
 * Factotum
 * Fahrenheit 451
 * A Farewell to Arms
 * Fellow Travelers
 * Fifth Business
 * Fight Club
 * Finnegans Wake
 * The First Circle
 * For Whom the Bell Tolls
 * Foucaults Pendulum
 * Franny and Zooey
 * Freedom
 * The French Lieutenants Woman
 * Funny Boy
 * Gadsby
 * The Gift of the Magi
 * Glamorama
 * Go Ask Alice
 * The Go Between
 * The God of Small Things
 * The Good Earth
 * The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ
 * The Grapes of Wrath
 * Gravitys Rainbow
 * The Great Gatsby
 * The Handmaids Tale
 * Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World
 * The Harp in The South
 * A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
 * Hemingway's Six Word Story
 * High Fidelity
 * Hobsons Island
 * Home
 * Hopscotch
 * The Hotel New Hampshire
 * The Hours
 * House of Leaves
 * House of Sand and Fog
 * The House of the Spirits
 * House Rules
 * How Green Was My Valley
 * I Capture the Castle
 * If on a winter's night a traveler
 * Illuminatus
 * Ilustrado
 * In Dubious Battle
 * Infinite Jest
 * Inherent Vice
 * Invisible Man
 * Invisible Monsters
 * Jackdaws
 * Johnny Got His Gun
 * The Joy Luck Club
 * Kafka On the Shore
 * The Kite Runner
 * Lady Chatterleys Lover
 * The Last Hurrah
 * Less Than Zero
 * Life of Pi
 * A Light in August
 * Lolita
 * Lord of the Flies
 * Lost Horizon
 * The Lottery
 * The Lovely Bones
 * Madame Bovary
 * The Makioka Sisters
 * Maurice
 * Max Havelaar
 * McTeague
 * The Medusa Frequency
 * Memoirs of a Geisha
 * The Metamorphosis
 * Middlesex
 * Midnight's Children
 * Miriam
 * Moment in Peking
 * Mommie Dearest
 * Mother Night
 * My Name Is Red
 * The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
 * Naked Lunch
 * The Name of the Rose
 * The Necklace
 * Never Let Me Go
 * The New York Trilogy
 * The Night Circus
 * Nineteen Eighty-Four
 * Norwegian Wood
 * Of Mice and Men
 * The Old Man and The Sea
 * One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich
 * On Heroes and Tombs
 * On the Road
 * One Hundred Years of Solitude
 * Only Revolutions
 * Orlando a Biography
 * The Painter From Shanghai
 * Pale Fire
 * The Pale King
 * Papillon
 * A Passage to India
 * The Pearl
 * Pedro Paramo
 * Perfume
 * The Perks of Being a Wallflower
 * The Plague
 * Pnin
 * The Poisonwood Bible
 * Portnoys Complaint
 * A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man
 * The Power and The Glory
 * The Prague Cemetery
 * A Prayer for Owen Meany
 * The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
 * The Quiet American
 * The Red Night Trilogy
 * The Red Pony
 * The Remains of the Day
 * Requiem for A Dream
 * The Return of the Native
 * Revolutionary Road
 * The Road
 * The Rules of Attraction
 * The Savage Detectives
 * The Secret History
 * Seize the Day
 * A Separate Peace
 * Sexing the Cherry
 * Slaughterhouse Five
 * Small Island
 * The Sound and The Fury
 * Sputnik Sweetheart
 * Strong Motion
 * Sword of Honour
 * The Sun Also Rises
 * Tender Is the Night
 * Their Eyes Were Watching God
 * Then We Came to The End
 * Things Fall Apart
 * The Third Policeman
 * The Thirteenth Tale
 * The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet
 * The Tiger's Wife
 * The Time of the Hero
 * The Tin Drum
 * To Kill a Mockingbird
 * Tristia of the Deep Blue Sea
 * Tropic of Cancer
 * The Tunnel
 * Ulysses
 * Under the Volcano
 * The Wasp Factory
 * We
 * We Have Always Lived in The Castle
 * Whale Rider
 * What Dreams May Come
 * White Fang
 * White Noise
 * White Oleander
 * White Teeth
 * A Wild Sheep Chase
 * The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
 * Wise Blood