Walk into any bookshop and you’ll encounter the division immediately. Literary fiction shelved separately from crime, science fiction, fantasy, and romance. The physical arrangement reflects a cultural hierarchy: literary fiction as serious art, genre fiction as commercial entertainment.

This distinction is largely nonsense. It obscures more than it reveals and prevents good reading by creating false boundaries. Here’s why we need to move past it.

What the Distinction Supposedly Means

Literary fiction is allegedly about character, style, and theme. It prioritizes language and psychological depth over plot. It aims for artistic achievement rather than commercial appeal.

Genre fiction is allegedly about plot and entertainment. It follows formula and convention. It aims to satisfy readers rather than challenge them.

These characterizations are reductive and often wrong. Plenty of literary fiction is plot-driven. Plenty of genre fiction demonstrates extraordinary craft and psychological depth.

How We Got Here

The literary/genre split emerged from 20th century cultural hierarchies that valued certain kinds of writing and reading over others. Modernist emphasis on formal experimentation and psychological interiority created template for “serious” fiction.

Genre fiction, with its roots in pulp publishing and mass market paperbacks, got associated with working-class readers and commercial rather than artistic motivation. This class dimension still shapes how the categories are perceived.

The distinction also has gendered aspects. Genres associated with women (romance, for example) receive less respect than genres with more gender-balanced or male-dominated readerships.

The Problems with Categories

Many excellent books resist easy categorization. Is Margaret Atwood’s speculative fiction literary or genre? Is literary fiction with a murder plot crime fiction or literary fiction? These questions reveal how inadequate the categories are.

The boundaries are also policed inconsistently. Science fiction by literary authors gets shelved with literary fiction. Genre writers who win major literary prizes sometimes get recategorized as literary rather than genre.

This suggests the categories aren’t really about the books themselves but about cultural prestige and marketing.

What Good Genre Fiction Does

The best genre fiction demonstrates technical mastery and emotional sophistication while working within generic conventions. This requires enormous skill.

Genre writers can’t hide behind obscurity or difficulty. Their work has to be readable and engaging while still achieving literary quality. That’s harder, not easier, than writing literary fiction that can be challenging and opaque.

Genre fiction also does cultural work that literary fiction sometimes avoids. Science fiction explores technology and future possibility. Crime fiction examines justice and social order. Fantasy fiction creates spaces for exploring power and morality.

What Literary Fiction Misses

Literary fiction’s emphasis on interiority and style sometimes comes at expense of storytelling. Novels that are beautifully written but dramatically inert bore readers regardless of their artistic merit.

Literary fiction can also be insular, writing primarily for other literary fiction readers and assuming knowledge of literary traditions. This creates barriers for readers who want substance but don’t have literature degrees.

The prestige associated with literary fiction can encourage pretension and empty difficulty, writing that seems profound but says nothing, styled in ways that confuse opacity with depth.

The Best Books Cross Categories

Many of the most significant novels of recent decades resist literary/genre categorization. They use genre conventions while deploying literary craft. They’re plot-driven and character-focused, entertaining and challenging.

Australian examples include work by Alexis Wright, whose novels blend realism and mythology in ways that defy simple categorization. Tim Winton writes literary fiction with thriller pacing. Jane Harper writes crime fiction with literary ambition.

These books demonstrate that the categories limit rather than enable understanding. They’re marketing tools, not meaningful literary distinctions.

Reading Without Boundaries

What if you just read books that interest you regardless of category? What if you judged individual books on their merits rather than preconceptions about literary versus genre?

You’d probably read more widely and enjoy it more. You’d discover excellent books you otherwise would have dismissed because they were shelved in the wrong section.

You’d also develop more sophisticated critical sense. Recognizing that literary quality appears across categories makes you better at identifying it rather than relying on categorical shortcuts.

The Snobbery Problem

Literary/genre distinction enables and encourages snobbery. People claim not to read genre fiction as badge of serious reading identity. This is intellectually lazy.

It also misses extraordinary work. Dismissing entire genres means missing books that would enrich your reading life simply because you’ve decided categories matter more than individual books.

Reverse snobbery exists too. Some genre readers dismiss literary fiction as pretentious and unreadable. This is equally limiting.

What Matters Instead

Judge books individually. Ask whether they’re well-written, whether they do what they’re trying to do effectively, whether they offer something valuable to readers.

Good books exist across every category. Bad books do too. The category tells you almost nothing about quality.

Also consider what you’re in the mood for. Sometimes you want plot-driven entertainment. Sometimes you want psychological depth and stylistic brilliance. Sometimes you want both. Reading across categories gives you options.

For Writers

If you’re writing, resist pressure to choose between literary and genre. Write the book that interests you with the tools that serve it best.

Use genre conventions if they’re useful. Deploy literary technique if it enriches the work. Don’t constrain yourself based on where the book will eventually be shelved.

The best books emerge from writers following their vision rather than conforming to categorical expectations. Trust the work over the categories.

Moving Forward

The publishing industry won’t abandon literary/genre distinctions anytime soon. They’re too embedded in how books are marketed and sold.

But readers can ignore them. We can browse across sections, follow writers regardless of category, and build reading lives that prioritize quality over categorical purity.

We can also push back against snobbery in both directions. Call out literary fiction readers who dismiss genre. Question genre readers who refuse to engage with literary fiction. Insist on judging books individually.

What You Should Read

Read what interests you. Follow recommendations from people whose taste you trust. Sample widely across categories and styles.

Don’t let categories limit your reading or make you feel inadequate for liking books that aren’t “serious” enough or for bouncing off books that are supposedly important.

The point of reading is engagement, discovery, and pleasure, intellectual and emotional. However you find that, whatever categories are involved, is valid reading.

The literary/genre distinction creates artificial hierarchies that serve marketing departments and enable snobbery. It doesn’t serve readers or books. Ignore it. Read widely. Judge individually. Your reading life will be richer for it.