Is it possible to write a literary fantasy book?

[Incanus]

Woah, I had no idea Conan was that old. Cool!

The Phoenix on the Sword (the first published Conan story) was written in 1929, I believe, and published in 1932.

The Weird Tales magazine was started in the early 1920's, and was considered 'pulp' at the time.

I'm something of a fan of the 'golden age' of fantasy.

 

[Jackarandajam]

The Phoenix on the Sword (the first published Conan story) was written in 1929, I believe, and published in 1932.

The Weird Tales magazine was started in the early 1920's, and was considered 'pulp' at the time.

I'm something of a fan of the 'golden age' of fantasy.

I've been picking occasionally through a complete collection of Solomon Kane, but for some reason had mentally stuck the stories much later in the century.
I now have to mentally recalibrate myself to a world where Conan and Kane existed prior to Tolkien. Mind officially blown.

 

[Jackarandajam]

My sense is probably no. In part because of prejudice against fantasy as a genre. In part because the market for such a novel would be very niche - fantasy has a following that I would guess has a small overlap with the following of literary fiction.

So I've been rolling this around in my head for a while:

To be carefully even-handed, I think one of the big differences is that successful Literary Fiction most often specifically addresses current hot political and cultural issues. Not necessarily as a gimmick, but to really roll the question around and look at it from all angles, different perspectives, places, time periods, with metaphors, etc.

With trad Fantasy, that is a bit of a no-no. Not that a lot of writers don't do it anyway, but most published fantasy seems to steer pretty clear of direct allegory to current events, whereas literary fiction purposefully dives directly into it. It seems that readers feel a bit cheated when their fantasy book turns out to be an elaborate allegory, whereas in literary fiction that's exactly what readers know they're getting themselves into.

In my opinion, in order to create a good literary fantasy, it would have to be a fairly short single novel that hyperfixates on an at least culturally warm "people problem" topic, and primarily uses a simple to understand fantasy backdrop to illustrate different ways of viewing the issue.

Currently reading "waiting on the barbarians" by J.M. Coetzee, a Nobel prize for literature winner. It's about colonialization really, but the backdrop of "the empire" and "the barbarians" could easily be turned into a fantasy setting without losing the point.

So basically, to write Literary Fantasy, it seems you would need to be more interested in exploring a current cultural topic than actually writing Fantasy. You could dabble in making the backdrop come alive, but the whole book would need to take a bunch of different loose strings that artfully lead the reader to one point of current cultural interest.

EDIT: In my PERSONAL opinion, a literary work is one that is written by an author who loves the sentence, the story, and the questions of humanity, and is passionate and skilled at presenting all as artfully as possible. I prefer this definition, but went with what I understand to be the more commonly accepted, or at least currently accurate, definition above.

 

[Incanus]

I've been picking occasionally through a complete collection of Solomon Kane, but for some reason had mentally stuck the stories much later in the century.
I now have to mentally recalibrate myself to a world where Conan and Kane existed prior to Tolkien. Mind officially blown.

If you have an interest in old school sword and sorcery, you should definitely check out the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber. Yes, they are dated and the characters are more or less 'cads'. But I think the writing is much stronger than R.E. Howard's.

Needless to say, it is the antithesis of 'literary'.

 

[Jackarandajam]

If you have an interest in old school sword and sorcery, you should definitely check out the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber. Yes, they are dated and the characters are more or less 'cads'. But I think the writing is much stronger than R.E. Howard's.

Needless to say, it is the antithesis of 'literary'.

I like it all, Howard to Prudhomme, Seuss to Keats, as long as they can tell a story I'm in.

The grey mouser sounds very familiar, I'll check it out.

 

[The Dark One]

I’ll give you some examples of ‘literary fantasy’ that I’ve read, and I’ll tell you why I think they could easily fit into this category;

Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro
Once Upon a River - Diane Setterfield
Piranesi -Susanna Clarke
The Bear and the Nightingale - Katherine Arden
The Binding - Brigit Collins


Essentially all of these books have been traditionally published and could also be described as neither solely belonging in either general fiction or fantasy, but have the ability to cross genres or defy genres altogether - but all contain fantasy elements to a greater of lesser extent. You might have people who don’t usually go for fantasy read them.

All have also been bestsellers and have done the major marketing rounds.

I agree with this (and also with Incanus and Jac...jam) but boy I hated The Buried Giant. (See my GR review Adrian Deans's review of The Buried Giant )

To take Jac...jam's point a little further, I'd suggest that all literature (regardless of how good or bad - on any scale) is by definition literary. It can't help but be because all literature is inevitably a product of the milieu within which it was generated. Any work of literature can be deconstructed to detect reflections of both the writer and his/her real world and its issues although sometimes these won't make much sense until later (cf Tolkien who insisted there were no "messages" or hidden meanings in TLOTR).

To be more specific about the word literary and what it seems to mean in the biz... Jac...jam pretty much nailed it. But do literary writers always set out to be literary? I can tell you hand on heart that all my books are literary fiction but I have never set out to portray or satirise any particular issue. It just happens. Usually I become aware of what I'm up to about three quarters of the way through the draft - and that helps me craft the end. And then in the editing phases I might throw in a few brush strokes to enhance the deconstructability.

But my books are always rollicking adventures also and such don't usually get labelled literary. So if my crazy adventures full of humour and sex can be literary... why can't fantasy?

 

[Finchbearer]

This is one definition the internet throws up. I pretty much agree with it. Tolkien’s work breaks all the rules here. You have a scholar who had the urge to write genre fantasy, and it ended up becoming both literary and genre fiction.