Writer David Shields recently spoke at RiverRun Books in Portsmouth, NH, asking whether literature is really a relevant way to tell stories anymore. While the Internet offers us so many new ways to tell stories, by the looks of this list the novel is alive and well.
- Chick lit: Fiction that focuses on young, hip women
- Lad lit: Fiction that focuses on young, hip men
- Kmart realism: Fiction that focuses on “spare, terse style that features struggling, working-class characters in sterile, bleak environments”
- Poop fiction: Children’s fiction that uses a lot of bathroom humor and off-color jokes
- Misery lit: “A memoir or novel that focuses on extreme personal trauma and abuse”
- Issue literature: Fiction whose theme is based on a social, cultural, or political issue
- Fratire: Fiction that focuses on selfish young men who engage in lots of drinking, sex, and other fraternity-type behavior
- Tart noir: Mystery fiction whose protagonist is a tough, sexy, independent woman
- Hysterical realism: Literature of ”exceptional length, frenetic action, offbeat characters, and long digressions on topics secondary to the story”
You can get the Vocab Builder every weekday by following me on Twitter.
Latest Tweets
I was going to say you left out my favorite—schtick lit: writer sets out on unusual project, planning to write about it—but I notice you mention specifically novels, and schtick lit is nonfiction.
[...] Grant argues that new commercial categories of literature, which include poop fiction, chick lit, K-mart realism, and tart noir resemble the kind of fracturing that already occurred in the music world. Here’s the blog entry that got him started. [...]
[...] week, A Way With Words mentioned my blog post on new types of literature. Thanks to Grant and Martha for finding interest in my blog and mentioning it. If you haven’t [...]