What's Wrong with Literary Fiction
It isn't that literary fiction is bad. I would never argue with the Great Minds who hand out Pulitzer Prizes and such. It's just that books that are termed "literary" aren't always what I'm in the mood for. Here's why. Too often, nothing happens. The author is so busy telling the character's thoughts and describing the sunlight on the pines that he/she forgets to put in, um, what shall we call them? Events that lead somewhere. When I got to the end of Papertowns , for example, I thought..."So what?" Sometimes something happens, but it's bad. And then it gets worse. I read The Gold Finch . I read All the Light We Cannot See . I even read Anna Karenina. Things happened. Things got worse. And then it was over. The characters are so messed up that I can't find anyone to like. Holden Caulfield. Raskolnikov. Anything I've read by Elmore Leonard. The author seems to have a feeling of god-like superiority to the characters: ...