re: Is IF art?


23 Oct 1995 10:25:34 -0700

I think there's been some confusion caused by my use of the phrase
"literary fiction" and my notion of "literary IF."

I'm going to explain at some length what I meant by "literary IF," for
those of you who are interested. It may seem rather off-topic, but I
I think that we need a common langauge if we're going to talk about
whether IF can be more than entertainment. I think a phrase like "real
"real art" is so charged that it's difficult to use. I thought
that "literary IF" would be a good, vague term for IF that is, in some
way, more than just an entertaining game. But, evidently, the word
"literary" is too charged, as well.

So, before I go on to explain what I meant by "literary IF," I'd like to
make a suggestion. I think that we should use a heretofore meaningless
word--say, "floobix"--to mean "IF that, in some way, is more than mere
entertainment." We can therefore argue about what constitutes floobix,
how you know it when you see it, and even if floobix can exist, all
without having to get bogged down in arguments caused by the long and
painful history of phrases like "real art".

So, I withdraw the phrase "literary fiction." But if you're curious to
know what I meant by it, here's the explanation:

In the fiction biz, "literary fiction" is a common label for a very
wide genre of story or novel. It's a little harder to describe than most
genres. One way would be to say that it's all work that doesn't fit into
any other genre--if it's not suspense, mystery, SF, romance, etc, it's
"literary fiction." In fact, you'll sometimes hear people lump all the
other genres together under the name "genre fiction--" as if the mystery
novel were a genre, but the literary novel were somehow above genre.

Note that "literary" does not imply a value
judgement. Just as there's brilliant mysteries and lousy mysteries, so
you'll find brilliant literary fiction and lousy literary fiction.

Now, you might hear somebody say that literary fiction is fiction whose
authors have "serious" or "artistic" intent. To some degree, I think this
is an unfair value judgement, because it implies that writers of
other genres don't have artistic intents.

Still, I think that those labels--"serious," "artistic"-- are
useful, because writers of other genres are more likely to include
entertainment as one of their main goal, while writers of literary
fiction generally have purposes that are regarded as more artistic.

Some examples of "literary fiction" writers: John Barth, John Updike, Ann
Beattie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joseph Heller, Ernest Hemingway, and
just about anybody you're likely to study in a high school literature class.

I'm telling you all this because, when I referred to "literary
IF," I was drawing an analogy with this genre, not making a statement about how
analogous IF is to traditional fiction. And strange as it may seem, I
was drawing an analogy with a definition of literary fiction that I
don't quite agree with-- by literary IF, I just meant IF
whose author had intents that would be recognized as serious or artistic.

Because I'm using the word "literary" to suggest an analogy, and not to
make a statement about the use of text, I could just as easily refer to
"literary" films. After Hours, I could argue, is a "literary" film,
because the primary intents of its creators seem to be artistic.