And yes, damn it! Agatha Christie does deserve her due in so many ways.

I think writing is a lot like painting in a way. There are a lot of painters who can competently render a representational scene. But the conscious and careful use of language adds a expressionism to the scene that tells the story AND layers a world of nuance on top of it. However, I have read a lot of literary fiction that is nothing but nuanced language with no plot, unbelievable characters and so poorly constructed that ‘escapism’ was never going to be an option unless you close the fucking book. hehe.

I thoroughly agree with you that ‘literary fiction’ is a genre like any other genre, with its own conventions and tropes. And, for me, a particularly stagnant and uninteresting one in its present form. Moreover, older texts which are now considered ‘literary fiction’ are classified as such for such inconsistent and ill-conceived reasons that I simply dismiss most of them.

What Le Guin poses, at the end of the post, is the question of how we determine quality. And for me, this is easier to assess. I require any novel to offer me good characterization, a reasonably complex, interesting plot, dialogue that rings true, and enough descriptive passages to allow for reader-immersion and the suspension of my disbelief. On that basis, there is a lot of sub-standard genre fiction of every type out there, but there is equally a towering pile of literary fiction. By the same yardstick, there is a great deal of fiction in almost every genre that can be included, from detective fiction to fantasy and romance.

I will admit to being partial to writing where language is used consciously and with care. So some literary fiction does squeak in there, but not all of it by any means. The poetic use of language in fiction doesn’t, in my mind, let the writer off from producing a good story with complex and tangible characters. And god knows, there’s a lot of literary fiction that doesn’t even get close to bothering with that.

I wondered whether by ‘literature’ you mean ‘literary fiction’? The two are quite distinct in my mind, and would change the ideas you’ve expressed here. Ursula LeGuin talked about putting all fiction under the banner of ‘literature’, but the levelling I prefer is to acknowledge that literary fiction is just as much a genre as romance or crime – with its own markers, traditions, tropes etc. With that distinction made, I think most erotica isn’t literary fiction – which is NOT saying it has any less value, is less intellectually rigorous, etc., only that it belongs to a different literary tradition.

Or did you mean something else by ‘literature’? What do you consider makes a book ‘literature’ as you’ve used the term here, and is it distinct from genre (incl. literary fiction)?

So many questions I do find this topic very interesting.

You ask the question of novelists: “why can’t they say what they mean”? My answer to you is why is what THEY mean so important? The text is now yours, and you as the reader have the ability to read it as meaning whatever it means to you. You are ascribing to the writer more power, I think, than they deserve. Obviously, if you think Lady Chatterley’s Lover is about a flock of ducks, then you haven’t read it very thoroughly, but also, if it is only about the masculinity of the working class and the effeteness of the aristocracy, then what is the point in reading it today – since those issues are, for the most part, far in the past? It would only still have relevance to us now, if we could find something else in it.

You talk about ‘bonkfest’ novels being a series of shags. And, if they are really poorly written, it might be that this is all they are. But I think, if they are well written, the series of shags themselves become an interesting question of ‘why’ to me. Why all these shags, what’s the shagger getting out of it beyond a series of orgasms, since we all know what shagging is like, and don’t really need enlightenment on it. Usually, though not always, I find that the serial shags begin to paint a portrait of the character and where all these shags are getting them. And perhaps not where they want to go really, or perhaps they’re unhappily shagging their way through life in avoidance of something, or shagging their way towards someone they haven’t found yet.

As to the badly written stuff, which you describe, my question becomes: why hasn’t this writer simply made a porn movie. If the novel is nothing more than visual pornography in written form, then why use words where pictures will do far better?

I think culturally, at least here in the US of A, that isn’t exactly true…and I think it’s a huge part of the problem. It’s difficult to get readers interested in the kind of thought-provoking erotic literature you’re talking about here when American culture still has this giggling, adolescent, sort of surface-style reaction to anything sexual.

Don’t get me wrong; I absolutely agree that we should be well past the novelty of sex and be able to approach sexual narratives within the contexts of broader realities. I’m just not sure the culture is ready for it.