The Elegant Variation: A TAXONOMY OF LIT

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February 20, 2008

A TAXONOMY OF LIT

The Independent's recent article christening yet another genre - Hic Lit (drinking memoirs) - got us thinking about what's left and what's to come, and we decided to get out ahead of as many remaining "lits" as possible:

Brick Lit - Back-breaking tomes. (See Infinite Jest, Rising Up and Rising Down.)

Schtick Lit - Footnotes, characters named for colors, and other look-at-me machinations. (See Special Topics in Calamity Physics and, again, Infinite Jest.)

Mick Lit - The literature of Ireland. (See Banville, John and Ruland, Jim.)

Slick Lit - Polite, correct fiction, polished to a high sheen. (See Bridge of Sighs.)

Hick Lit - The fiction of Richard Ford (See A Multitude of Sins)

Lick Lit - Sapphic fiction. (See Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.)

Nick Lit - Books stolen from other books. (See How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life)

Prick Lit - Novels written by (Insert the Angry Young Literary Man of your choice.) Also novels with unpleasant protagonists. (See Lolita and the fiction of Richard Ford.)

Sick Lit - Novels calculated to shock or revolt. (See Fight Club)

Thick Lit - Tales of the weight-challenged. (See She's Come Undone.)

Vick Lit - Novels of animal cruelty. (See Julius Winsome.)

Quick Lit - Novels turned out with alarming frequency. (See His Illegal Self, and Oates, Joyce Carol.)

Please feel free to add your own "lit" selections in the comments box below. Best suggestion will win something, probably a book to be determined.

Posted at 12:01 AM in Hors catégorie | Permalink

Comments

Flick Lit - Novels require you to turn the book around or over to follow/continue the story (See Revolutions)

Posted by: Laurie | February 20, 2008 at 01:12 AM

9/11 Lit: see Safran Foer, Updike, McInerney, DeLillo.

Posted by: Annarita | February 20, 2008 at 02:43 AM

[sic] Lit - The literature of intentional misspellings, missing punctuation, and broken-down grammar (See Only Revolutions, Blood Meridian).

Click Lit - Novels built entirely on one "a-ha" moment (Syn. - Detective Fiction)

Clique Lit - Novels published by the friends of last year's best-selling novelists.

Posted by: david m | February 20, 2008 at 04:08 AM

Tick lit: Wilderness works (Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, Krakauer's Into the Wild, Theroux's Mosquito Coast

Tic lit: Novels featuring characters with Tourette Syndrome: Motherless Brooklyn, Icy Sparks, The Baroque Cycle

Posted by: Elizabeth McCullough | February 20, 2008 at 04:55 AM

Dick Lit: Detective novels that feature investigation of sex crimes :)

Posted by: Nigel Beale | February 20, 2008 at 05:40 AM

stitch lit: any memoir that refers to doctors or emergency workers

slit lit: suicidal memoirs

bit lit: vampire books

mitt lit: baseball books

ditch lit: books about dumping a significant other

ick lit: any celebrity memoir or Donald Trump book

Posted by: james kidd | February 20, 2008 at 06:32 AM

Bic Lit: novels written in longhand (e.g. Updike and Rowling)

Frick Lit: novels about painters and/or artists (e.g. Girl with a Pearl Earring, Lust for Life, Moon and Sixpence)

Posted by: Jeff | February 20, 2008 at 06:33 AM

Wik Lit, books actually or apparently written by a committee (see anything that's come out of a creative writing workshop).

Posted by: Goober | February 20, 2008 at 06:46 AM

Funny you mention this, because I've been waiting for the right time to unfurl "douche lit" -- which seems to be in abundant supply these days.

Posted by: ed | February 20, 2008 at 07:30 AM

McLit (definition obvious)

Posted by: Steven Augustine | February 20, 2008 at 07:49 AM

Grit Lit: See novels of Larry Brown (1951-2004). His characters have "grit" which helps them survive.

Posted by: abbooks | February 20, 2008 at 08:19 AM

Twit lit: featuring characters in a constant state of befuddlement (anything by Wodehouse)

Posted by: Katie | February 20, 2008 at 08:28 AM

Legitlit: Something actually written by the person whose name is on the cover, detailing experiences that are genuinely his/hers.

Posted by: Andrew | February 20, 2008 at 08:48 AM

Sorry, Laurie, but I'm going to arm wrestle you:

Flick Lit: Novels optimized for film adaptation (Jurassic Park, No Country for Old Men).

Posted by: Antoine Wilson | February 20, 2008 at 09:07 AM

Crick Lit: Southern "rafting" novels (Huck Finn, Deliverance)

Bic Lit (disambiguation): Books about book-burning (Fahrenheit 451, 1984) or burnt books (Satanic Verses, Harry Potter)

Posted by: Brett B | February 20, 2008 at 10:29 AM

WELL now, we know which authors you don't like.

Posted by: Patrick Stephenson | February 20, 2008 at 10:59 AM

Hardly! Love Banville, Russo, Lolita. Taxonomy casts a wide net ...

Posted by: TEV | February 20, 2008 at 12:19 PM

Electric Lit: Literature that's published online, often Fanfic.

Posted by: Richard J. Anderson | February 20, 2008 at 12:29 PM

Is Infinite Jest a look-at-me book?

Posted by: jh | February 20, 2008 at 01:42 PM

Kick Lit-- addiction recovery memoirs; on the surface inspiring tales of hope, but really concerned w/ establishing author's (often exaggerated) partying credentials. (e.g., James Frey, Alison Weaver, hair-metal guitarists)

Pick Lit-- subgenre of chick lit; young-woman-in-big-city-working-glamorous-job-looking-for-love-in-all-the-wrong-places; has darndest time "picking" the right man. (e.g., Plum Sykes, Lauren Weisberger, Katherine Taylor)

Wick Lit-- concerned with, ahem, tales of 'rekindled' romance.

Trick Lit-- plot contains one or more significant misdirectional elements; genetic cousin of more commonplace mystery tome. (e.g., Anthony Powell's "What's Become of Waring; Whitney Terrell's "The Huntsman")

Glick Lit-- for devotees of the Martin Short character.

--and, finally, a bone for the indie kids:

Jick Lit --nerdtacular paeans to the Stephen Malkmus (Pavement) band, the Jicks.

Posted by: Peter Sutherland | February 20, 2008 at 01:55 PM

Tick-Lit: Outdoorsy novels, Jack London etc.

Posted by: JBM | February 20, 2008 at 01:56 PM

Please remove the ethnic slur "Mick"--I notice you very conscientiously avoided "spick." Respect the Irish as well and don't repeat a term that is used to degrade them.

Posted by: CKH | February 20, 2008 at 02:04 PM

Oh comeon ... Sarvas is talking about both his favorite novelist and a personal friend. The whole list is obviously tongue in cheek, and the reference here can only be read as affectionate.

Posted by: A Happy Mick | February 20, 2008 at 02:53 PM

If "Mick" is such a slur why do thousands of Irishmen and women name their children "Mick" each year? Maybe they were drunk...

Posted by: Jim | February 20, 2008 at 02:56 PM

This entire post is beneath the usual quality of this site. Sure, people who developed the slur *used* a common Irish name perjoratively--same with "Paddy." The Irish didn't stop using the names just because others tried to twist them for their own uses. I'm just pointing out that not everyone sees this term as affectionate or humorous. Sure, to use it can be a controversial inside joke, the way African-Americans sometimes call each other by words others clearly cannot use. Anyway, I don't like it.

Posted by: CKH | February 20, 2008 at 03:47 PM

As a Mick following this exchange from Ireland - or 'The Auld Sod' as we call it - I'd just like to say that we do not take offence easily. Knowing when to take offence is a skill hard-learnt on this island and in lamentably short supply all over.

Posted by: Andrew | February 20, 2008 at 04:06 PM

Icke Lit: Conspiracy theories about 11 foot reptiles ruling the world.

Posted by: Alasdair | February 20, 2008 at 07:13 PM

Though I'm a red-haired, freckled person full of Irish blood, I'm not the least bit offended by "Mick." Just for the record. So, CKH, please calm down.

Posted by: Patrick Stephenson | February 20, 2008 at 07:18 PM

I think everyone who reads this site is very fond of Mark (whether they know him personally or not) and knows any possible insensitivity was completely unconscious and unintentional. But that's my point. Mick is a word that's losing it's punch, but perhaps not quickly enough. It belongs in the ash heap of history with a number of other terms we no longer use. Sorry to be a dog with a bone, but I really can't give up on this one.

Posted by: CKH | February 20, 2008 at 07:56 PM

"any possible insensitivity was completely unconscious and unintentional"

Or completely nonexistent. Move on.

Posted by: Drop the Bone | February 20, 2008 at 08:06 PM

Click lit – tales of computer capers, computer geeks, and web wanderings

Trick lit – books that seem to be one genre, but are really a million other little things

Risk lit – works that risk losing readers from page one with bizarre devices and plot lines. Having never read any of these past page two, no examples are available

Trip lit – Eating, loving and praying one's way around the globe and onto the shelf

Knit lit - books about the redeeming, healing properties of needlework

Posted by: Lisa R | February 20, 2008 at 08:08 PM

Shit Kick Lit - Cowboy memoirs

Posted by: Brady Westwater | February 20, 2008 at 10:30 PM

Twix Lit- memoirs about candy bars. Rulers on wrappers, measuring strictly optional.

Schlitz Lit- Like Hick Lit, but specific to the Upper Midwest.

Nicht Lit- German-language nihilist fiction.

And anyone can call me a Kraut if they like.

Posted by: tom | February 21, 2008 at 03:08 PM

Good to know you love Russo. Was worried there for a second. Nice post (and as a more-than-50% Irishman, no offense taken at all).

Big applause for all of david m.'s contributions, especially (sic) lit. Brilliant.

Posted by: JMW | February 23, 2008 at 08:02 AM

Non-stick Lit: Shiny-coated novels purchased at the airport newsstand, only to be left behind on the plane and forgotten for evermore.

Posted by: Sheila Ryan | March 04, 2008 at 06:52 PM

Dadalit: literature that deals in excretion funneling devices.

Posted by: Huysmans | March 06, 2008 at 08:44 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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HARRY, REVISED - Get all the details here.

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TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen

This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it.
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

With rave reviews from James Wood, Michiko Kakutani and Dwight Garner, it might not seem like we need to tell you to drop everything and go read Netherland, but we are telling you, and here's why: The way book coverage works these days, everyone talks about the same book for about two or three weeks, and then they move on and the book is more or less forgotten. Whereas a berth here in the Recommended sidebar keeps noteworthy titles in view for a good, long time, which is the sort of sustained attention this marvelous novel deserves. A Gatsby-like meditation on exclusion and otherness, it's an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion is a radiant beacon illuminating one of our essential questions, the question of belonging. Our strongest possible recommendation.
Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

"History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages which separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent. Read the entire review here
Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee

Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

David Leavitt's magnificent new novel tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematical autodidact and prodigy who had been working as a clerk in Madras, and who would turn out to be one of the great mathematical minds of the century. Ramanujan reluctantly joined Hardy in England - a move that would ultimately prove to his detriment - and the men set to work on proving the Riemann Hypothesis, one of mathematics' great unsolved problems. The Indian Clerk, an epic and elegant work which spans continents and decades, encompasses a World War, and boasts a cast of characters that includes Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lytton Strachey. Leavitt renders the complex mathematics in a manner that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually, and writes with crystalline elegance. The metaphor of the prime number – divisible only by one and itself – is beautifully apt for this tale of these two isolated geniuses. Leavitt's control of this dense, sprawling material is impressive – astonishing, at times – and yet despite its scope, he keeps us focused on his great themes of unknowability and identity. The Indian Clerk might be set in the past but it doesn't resemble most so-called "historical fiction." Rather, it's an ageless meditation on the quests for knowledge and for the self – and how frequently the two are intertwined – that is, finally, as timeless as the music of the primes. (View our full week of coverage here.)
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

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The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier
*Now in Paperback*

What would you do if the woman who’d left you high and dry ten years ago called out of the blue to invite you to a party without any further explanation? If you’re French, you’d probably spend a lot of time pondering the Deeper Significance Of It All, which is exactly what Grégoire Bouillier does for the 120 hilarious pages of The Mystery Guest. This slim, witty memoir follows Bouillier through the party from hell, and is a case study in Gallic self-abasement. Before it’s all done, you’ll set fire to any turtleneck hanging in your closet and think twice before buying an expensive Bordeaux as a gift. But fear not – just when it seems that all is, indeed, random and pointless and there is no Deeper Significance, salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf, and the tale ends on a note of unforced optimism. Parfait.
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When George Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott was published in 1864, it received rapturous notices, and reviewers were quick to point out that the long-standing friendship between Prescott and Ticknor made the latter an ideal Boswell. Sheila Heti has pulled this obscure leaf from the literary archives and fashioned a mordantly funny anti-history; a pungent and hilarious study of bitterness and promise unfulfilled. As a fretful Ticknor navigates his way through the rain-soaked streets of Boston to Prescott's house ("But I am not a late man. I hate to be late."), he recalls his decidedly one-sided lifelong friendship with his great subject. Unlike the real-life Ticknor, this one is an embittered also-ran, full of plans and intentions never realized, always alive to the fashionable whispers behind his back. Heti seamlessly inhabits Ticknor's fussy 19th-century diction with a feat of virtuoso ventriloquism that puts one in mind of The Remains of the Day. Heti's Ticknor would be insufferable if he weren't so funny, and in the end, the black humor brings a leavening poignancy to this brief tale. But don't let the size fool you — this 109-page first novel is small but scarcely slight; it is as dense and textured as a truffle.
The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers by Vendela Vida

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you and yes, we are recommending a Believer product. Twenty-three interviews (a third presented for the first time) pairing the likes of Zadie Smith with Ian McEwan, Jonathan Lethem with Paul Auster, Edward P. Jones and ZZ Packer, and Adam Thirwell with Tom Stoppard make this collection a must-read. Lifted out of the context of some of the magazine's worst twee excesses, the interviews stand admirably on their own as largely thoughtful dialogues on craft. A handful of interviewers seem more interested in themselves than in their subjects but in the main this collection will prove irresistible to writers of any stripe - struggling or established - and to readers seeking a window into the creative process.
The Sea by John Banville

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Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger

We've been fans of Booker Prize winner John Berger for ages, and we're delighted to have received an early copy of his latest work, Here is Where We Meet. In this lovely, elliptical, melancholy "fictional memoir," Berger traverses European cities from Libson to Geneva to Islington, conversing with shades from his past – He encounters his dead mother on a Lisbon tram, a beloved mentor in a Krakow market. Along the way, we're treated to marvelous and occasionally heart-rending glimpses of an extraordinary life, a lyrical elegy to the 20th century from a man who - in his eighth decade - remains committed to his political beliefs and almost childlike in his openness to people, places and experiences. There's no conventional narrative here, and those seeking plot are advised to look elsewhere. But Here is Where We Meet offers a wise, moving and poetic look at the life of an artist traversing the European century from a novelist whose talent remains undimmed in his twilight years.
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.

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SECOND LOOK

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
The Rider by Tim Krabbe

Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 20, 2008

A TAXONOMY OF LIT

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 20, 2008

A TAXONOMY OF LIT

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism