Blog Post 6

Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction

                That’s the big question, isn’t it? Is genre fiction less worthy than literary fiction?

                My answer? No way Jose!

                Sure, genre fiction is less artsy and crafty, I’ll give you that. But let’s consider the reason why a reader would read in the first place; if it’s to just simply entertain themselves, then genre fiction is the way to go. But if a reader is searching for a challenge or something to read that will help them grow as thinkers, then, by all means, read literary fiction! It all depends on the person for one to say which is better for their time.

                Now that’s great and all, but what of the controversy over the type of literature in school curriculum? Well, as a student myself, I highly believe in Readicide. Those “classic” books we are forced to read are great books, I’m not denying that, and they do tend to contain crafts that can aid our brains to think in a deeper and more analytical level, but they’re boring. There, I said it. It’s not they don’t contain an interesting plot, the heart-wrenching story of a girl and her husband’s dead ex-wife becomes quite a suspenseful tale in Rebecca, but judging from the way the author wrote the book, she obviously didn’t consider reader’s entertainment. I feel like she lost sight of the entertaining aspect of the plot, and settled on the “artsy fartsy” aspect of it. That’s the problem with literary fiction, it fails to hold the reader’s attention, and when those readers are teenagers who have to also further analyze the book then, well…

                Forcing this literary fiction on kids in school does not do them much good. As a student, I know that most people just Sparknote the whole book rather than force themselves through that arduous torture. I believe if we went with Gallagher’s idea of a 50/50 policy, half the books we read are genre fiction and the other half literary fiction, then that would help bring back the interest of students.  They would see that reading can actually be fun, and would be motivated to try and read the higher difficulty literary fiction novels.

                An idea to enforce this 50/50 policy is to take a genre fiction book and a literary fiction book with the same themes and have students read the genre fiction book first to identify the theme, and then apply it to the more difficult literary book. For example, the theme of forbidden romance is present in Twilight (a genre fiction book) and Romeo and Juliet (a literary fiction work), so students would read Twilight first and then compare its morals/themes with Romeo and Juliet’s.

                So in conclusion, literary fiction and genre fiction are great, but we have got to remember when the best time for each is! Goodbye until next time!