Kerry,
I only used the word literature, not literary, wheras you
overlap the two. I think of literary as a set of stylistic
devices that have come to signal literature. But style alone
does not literature make. In addition, those devices change
with time. One era's literary devices can become another
era's set of cliches.
Big L Literature, on the other hand, is as much distinguished
by a set of concerns as the language used to dramatize them.
I'm with you that Big L Literature is simply another genre,
with its own conventions and expectations (looks at the human
condition, character's life must change, etc.), which is one
reason I added the somewhat mocking "Big L." For instance, we
all know the (apocryphal or true? the only place I've read it
is in jacket copy) story that Cain's Postman inspired Camus's
Stranger. These two books clearly have different purposes.
One may or may not be better than the other, and we may not
agree which is better if one is, but they are
different.
And, in our culture, most, even without reading them, would
say Camus's was better than Cain's, that Camus had
transcended his lowly inspiration. Literature is perceived by
most as higher than crime fiction or science fiction, etc.
It's the canon, what's taught in universities. Sure, genre
fiction has now been taught for a few decades, too, but as
electives, or in Popular Culture or American Studies
programs, where it is engaged more on a sociological than an
aesthetic basis. Bringing it full circle, there are clearly
class presumptions in what we see as real vs. trash
literature. Taste is as much a socio-demographic construct as
an aesthetic one.
Mark
ps -- in his recent What Good Are the Arts?, John Carey does
a great job of tearing apart the commonly held belief that
consumers get more from high art than from low art, or other,
non-artistic pursuits, for that matter.
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