Comments on: Thoughts on Short Fiction

By: Trent

Trent — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:46:56 +0000

Broccoli and cauliflower are two of my least favorite veggies on the planet.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:25:25 +0000

You don’t like Broccoli?!?

By: Trent

Trent — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:14:13 +0000

Mmmmm… I’m not signing off on it. I grant that the emotional moment is in the front seat a lot of the time for “literary” but I don’t think that’s a defining characteristic.

But of course anytime I try to pin down what I consider literary then there are more exceptions than exclusions, so it’s not like I have a better answer.

By: John League

John League — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:20:24 +0000

Andrew Wheeler has an interesting perspective on the difference between "genre" and "literary" at his blog: There's a nearly infallible way of telling a literary story from a genre story: the genre story is required to have an ending that wraps up at least part of the plot, while the literary story merely needs to have an emotional moment at which to stop. Like any such broad statement, it will have notable exceptions, but it resonates with my experience.