Does it not sell well? Iain Banks famously said that people always assumed his science ficton books were the moneymakers that subsidized his mainstream books, but that it was the other way around — literary fiction was where the real money was.

I've only read a little bit of M. John Harrison, so I may be off the mark, but I wonder if the divisiveness could be because it's marketed as SF, but it doesn't fit into the genre, similarly to Michel Faber, Gene Wolfe, or Vladimir Sorokin.

Good point about Banks. Was amazed that MJH got this exposure--I believe Climbers which is more literary fiction outsold the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy, and was reissued with the prestige preface etc. WRT the divisiveness (and I'm his number one fan) some of this is surely because he does go out of his way to be divisive. The nice 81 year old man wins the Booker Prize story is nice but the whole point of Viriconium was that fans of the previous instalment were stabbed in the back, and the overall recognition that people and events aren't internally or externally consistent is normally pushed to the point of provocation.

SF doesn't sell that well either. But I think it's not generally helpful to compare the genres as a whole with best sellers. The top literary fiction - and certainly winners of prestigious prizes - does sell well - and I'd assume that the very top significantly outsells SF for the same reason the very top non-fiction sells crazy amounts: Most people don't read much, and what little they read (or at least buy) is seriously concentrated things the mainstream deems culturally significant.

But I get the impression that the genres that sell well overall does so in large part because of binge readers that reads broadly. A client of mine runs a small press - I help them with tech stuff; small enough that they can "see" in the stats how often people buy an entire 20+ volume set of everything a given author has published at the same time. That doesn't happen in literary fiction, not least because few writers in literary fiction write enough significant books for it to happen.

Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly is 'literary fiction' and how is it different from fictional literature?

In general, literary fiction has a certain artistic prestige associated with it. Sometimes that is because it focuses more on character than on plot, and at other times because it plays with the novel form in some kind of exciting or challenging way. This is as opposed to genre fiction, which might be more of a comfort plot-driven read.

Overall I don't really subscribe to this binary between literary and genre fiction -- I think there's a fair bit of speculative fiction that is serious character-driven art, such as the works of Ursula Le Guin. I'd also recommend Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (made into a movie by the Wachowski sisters) as a lovely work of form-bending fiction that's hard to classify as one to the exclusion of the other.

In genre fiction, plot is usually most important, closely followed by setting, with characterization less important (stock characters are acceptable), and prose merely functional. Some genres swap the importance of plot and setting, e.g. fantasy follows the influence of Tolkien and highly values setting.

In literary fiction, the order of importance is reversed. Prose quality is paramount, closely followed by characterization, with setting existing only to serve the characters, and plot hardly relevant at all.

This on the surface makes for boring works, but prose quality actually has the highest skill ceiling of all, both for writers and readers. "Quality" in this sense means "skillfully using words in the manner of literary fiction", which is difficult to detect if you don't read it, but it's a real thing. As appealing as it to assume it's all a big scam, the best literary fiction writers really are better, and the readers can tell, just like you can detect AI slop at the other end of the scale. I imagine if you put enough effort in it's even possible to enjoy reading Finnegans Wake (the final boss of literary fiction).

Plot/setting/character have real life as a reference, making them easier to master.

> This on the surface makes for boring works

Do you mean some people find litfic boring? Otherwise, I’m not sure what you mean. E.g. there’s plenty of litfic with exciting, fascinating, and/or gripping plots. M. John Harrison, Doris Lessing, E.L. Doctorow are a few of my favorites in that vein.

Of course someone who finds the nature of the prose itself boring might consider the works as a whole boring. But that’s like saying someone who only sees in black and white finds artworks to be monochrome - it’s a tautology.

The term is slightly controversial but usually refers to works that emphasize prose over plot and the interior feelings of the characters over setting or action. More often than not the writing is in some way intentionally difficult, the paragon here being James Joyce. Critics say this is pretentious but fans enjoy being challenged by the writing. If you read something by Harrison expecting Heinlein you'll find rich emotions, a confusing plot, but unlike mainstream literary fiction the setting will have sci-fi elements (or fantasy or both). The range of these works is wide: Harrison definitely, Ballard. Most people would include Dick. Vonnegut said he was re-categorized after writing Slaughterhouse Five even though his writing didn't change at all.

Mr d'arcy vs Reacher

[delayed]