I posted on Yahoo Answers the question “How would you differentiate literary fiction from genre fiction?” and got a singular answer from a demimonde00:

“Ooo tough one! They do blend together sometimes, and should more often. Generally, something can be identified as ‘genre’, and then everything else falls under the ‘literary’ category.

Generally genre fiction is concerned with certain subjects or settings and approaches its plot in a certain way. But these days the genres are getting fuzzier, and I think that’s a good thing.”

Though she didn’t specify what “that’s a good thing,” I’m not quite sure that I agree with the “everything else” category being called “literary fiction.” Kurt Vonnegut is clearly sci-fi, but he’s got some crazy ideas going on in his work which could be called literary. Can authors start out in a genre, but as their work becomes hailed as “classic” (or, as I saw on the cover of someone’s self-published tripe, “a towering literary achievement”) could they migrate over to literary with their formerly genre’d work in tow? Perhaps this is the “good thing” demimondeoo was talking about.

Is “literary” like love: do we know it when we see it?