According to Dan Sinykin, the answer is fiction that privileges art over entertainment. [ The Nation 10/10/23 ]
Sinykin, a professor of literature at Emory University, opines that literary fiction "might have died...as a meaningful category in publishing and bookselling." Hope not.
Perhaps the fate of my debut novel, "A Perfect Woman", currently in manuscript form, will be a test case for his opinion, although, while literary in intent, it's also entertaining. Who gets to draw this line?
"Marriage: A state or condition of community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two." Ambrose Bierce
We thank him for his service and regret that he vanished into Mexico without a trace, denying the world an opportunity for follow-up questions.
The above definition seems to inject a strong dose of negativity into a timeless activity ... yet the dose also encapsulates a healthy germ of positivity. It's all in how you look at it.
Now comes Rebecca Traister, writer-at-large for New York Magazine, addressing a suitably large topic in "The Return of the Marriage Plot" (9/22/23).
One is gobsmacked by the photo that illustrates this marriage advisory. Oh, to be a spider on the wall during the discussion that ended in the selection of that image.
One wonders if the fated couple in "The Jewish Bride" would have been a better post-postmodern editorial choice. Meanwhile, watch out young lovers, don't become victims of a plot.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Jane Austen
It is one of the most famous first lines in world literature. But can it survive scrutiny under the lenses of philosophy, psychology, semantics or statistical probability?
Not really...however, as a specimen of wry humor, as an inspired example of stage setting, it has few equals.
"I am accustoming myself to the idea of regarding every sexual act as a process in which four persons are involved. We shall have a lot to discuss about that." Sigmund Freud
The above quotation is an epigraph for a novel written by a man and named after its leading female character. [ Justine ]
Could Freud be wrong? Might every sexual act be a process in which eight persons are involved?