Great Commercial, Genre, Plot-Driven Fiction vs. Great Literary, Thematic, Character-Driven Fiction: It is considered literary if it looks harder to do.

If I could write a great commercial novel or a great literary novel, I would be doing that now instead of writing this blog. But I can’t do either. I’m writing this blog to find out how it’s done. And finding out, for me, is fun.

What I’ve found so far is that most novelists have multiple personality. Do literary novelists have more complex multiple personality systems than genre novelists? Did Henry James have a more complex system than J. R. R. Tolkien? I don’t think so.

Do literary novelists treat more important issues, and have greater insight, than commercial novelists? That seems unlikely, since most literary novels are not initially conceived as a way to deal with important issues, and most literary novelists are not philosophers.

Novels are considered literary if they look harder to do. Marcel Proust is considered more literary than Agatha Christie, because it looks easier to write what Christie wrote. But, for Proust, writing what Christie wrote would have been impossibly difficult.

Neither great commercial novelists nor great literary novelists mechanically construct their characters. Nor do they control their characters like puppets. Their characters come to them, not from them (subjectively speaking). Their characters, and various narrative voices, are co-authors (subjectively speaking). If their characters and narrators—alternate personalities—prefer genre formats or literary formats, that’s not the novelist’s (regular self’s) choice alone.

I admire great novelists, both commercial and literary, because very few people with multiple personality (and hardly anyone without multiple personality) can write great novels of any kind.