Also, a lot of female written fiction is the much despised "genre" fiction. Frankly, "literary" is becoming shorthand for an overwritten novel, that would be sneered at if it didn't appeal to the prejudice of an upper-middle class female.
Also, a lot of female written fiction is the much despised "genre" fiction. Frankly, "literary" is becoming shorthand for an overwritten novel, that would be sneered at if it didn't appeal to the prejudice of an upper-middle class female.
It's an interesting question whether male writing tends to transition from genre to literary. E.g., Hammett, Chandler, and Cain were considered genre writers in their own time but over the generations have risen to being American classics, in part due to film directors like Huston, Altman, and the Coen Bros. returning to them.
Male literary lions whose early work had recognizable antecedents in genre fiction include: Defoe, Dickens, Collins, Melville, Hawthorne, London, Conrad, Greene (thrillers) Waugh (boarding school stories), Hugo, Balzac. Gay males like James, Proust and Forster seem to have focused more on social character dramas from the beginning. There are a few classics by females using genre tropes like тАЬFrankensteinтАЭ (gothic romance/early sci-fi) and тАЬSilas MarnerтАЭ (romance/fairy tale).
Ellroy, Pelecanos, Lehane, (perhaps even Rankin, Coben, Connelly and Child) are all "current" transcendent genre fiction writers who have moved into movie and tv. I say current as it is being kindly to describe them as middle aged, yet they were all first published to success in their twenties and thirties.
I'd love to know who and where the writers in their twenties to fifties are. It strikes me that the change must have been well underway before anyone noticed for these guys well into their fifties and beyond to be the last cohort.
At the same time, I happily read Blyton and Crompton before London and Hawthorne and Christie and Conan Doyle before Chandler, while Highsmith is up there with Cain and the MacDonalds (Ross and John D) so I am not adverse to female literary lionesses by any means
No, Orwell was a political writer and wrote both books as political allegories. Orwell's greatest fear was the whole world becoming a Soviet style police state but with different camps. Yes, they are a part of the literary canon, were almost immediately revered as great books.
I think my point is that these works both transcended their respective genres. Animal farm is a fairy story that uses the farm animals suffering as allegory for the early Soviet collectivizations at least that was my reading of it, 1984 uses a sci-fi setting (the hi-tech future) to write about the totalitarianism that was going in the present (1948 when he wrote it), there were aspects not just of Soviet government propaganda but also the wartime British government propaganda that influenced his novel 1984. I believe Orwell did not live to see his books become a great financial success either and it was not until the 1950s with a bbc movie that 1984 began to become popular.
Also, a lot of female written fiction is the much despised "genre" fiction. Frankly, "literary" is becoming shorthand for an overwritten novel, that would be sneered at if it didn't appeal to the prejudice of an upper-middle class female.
It's an interesting question whether male writing tends to transition from genre to literary. E.g., Hammett, Chandler, and Cain were considered genre writers in their own time but over the generations have risen to being American classics, in part due to film directors like Huston, Altman, and the Coen Bros. returning to them.
DickensтАЩ literary career started out when he was hired to write captions to a series of sporting cartoons. It became тАЬThe Pickwick PapersтАЭ.
Poe & Conan Doyle certainly took gumshoe stories to amazing heights.
Male literary lions whose early work had recognizable antecedents in genre fiction include: Defoe, Dickens, Collins, Melville, Hawthorne, London, Conrad, Greene (thrillers) Waugh (boarding school stories), Hugo, Balzac. Gay males like James, Proust and Forster seem to have focused more on social character dramas from the beginning. There are a few classics by females using genre tropes like тАЬFrankensteinтАЭ (gothic romance/early sci-fi) and тАЬSilas MarnerтАЭ (romance/fairy tale).
Ellroy, Pelecanos, Lehane, (perhaps even Rankin, Coben, Connelly and Child) are all "current" transcendent genre fiction writers who have moved into movie and tv. I say current as it is being kindly to describe them as middle aged, yet they were all first published to success in their twenties and thirties.
I'd love to know who and where the writers in their twenties to fifties are. It strikes me that the change must have been well underway before anyone noticed for these guys well into their fifties and beyond to be the last cohort.
At the same time, I happily read Blyton and Crompton before London and Hawthorne and Christie and Conan Doyle before Chandler, while Highsmith is up there with Cain and the MacDonalds (Ross and John D) so I am not adverse to female literary lionesses by any means
1984 and animal farm were genre novels to begin with (science fiction and fantasy) and now considered part of the literary canon (I think?)
No, Orwell was a political writer and wrote both books as political allegories. Orwell's greatest fear was the whole world becoming a Soviet style police state but with different camps. Yes, they are a part of the literary canon, were almost immediately revered as great books.
I think my point is that these works both transcended their respective genres. Animal farm is a fairy story that uses the farm animals suffering as allegory for the early Soviet collectivizations at least that was my reading of it, 1984 uses a sci-fi setting (the hi-tech future) to write about the totalitarianism that was going in the present (1948 when he wrote it), there were aspects not just of Soviet government propaganda but also the wartime British government propaganda that influenced his novel 1984. I believe Orwell did not live to see his books become a great financial success either and it was not until the 1950s with a bbc movie that 1984 began to become popular.