What is Literary Fiction?

This post and its series have been consolidated into and superseded by:

https://www.writingforums.org/entry/literary-fiction-a-consolidated-practical-view.66349/

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What is literary fiction? It's a perennial question with as many answers as there are people who presume to answer it. But in the book trade, all of the practical answers distill to a single thing.
Literary contemporary fiction is defined in contrast to popular, mass-market fiction. It is fiction that does not cater to the conventions, expectations, or values of popular fiction or its many genres. It's written outside those conventions and is recognizable already by that characteristic alone. The distinction really is that simple, and need not be defined with reference to artistic pretension, holier-than-thou attitudes, or anything of the sort.

There's an entire body of received wisdom on "How we write [popular] fiction" — and literary writing selectively ignores much, most, or conceivably in certain cases all of it. In contrast, there's no single value system or set of conventions or received wisdom that applies to literary fiction across the board, or nearly across the board, but it does all have in common that it's guided by lights or principles other than the conventions, expectations, values, templates, and received wisdom that guide successful writers of popular fiction. If it conformed entirely to those, it would quite simply be popular fiction.

In upcoming posts, I'll share some ruminations on secondary differences between literary and popular fiction, and on what the differences imply for appreciation and constructive formative critique.

Meanwhile, lest anyone jump to unfounded conclusions, I should say from the outset that although my writing leans to the literary side, I do read and enjoy popular fiction as well — much as I listen to both some popular music and some "classical," though I perform only the latter. Popular and "art" music have different value systems, suit different moods, and require different skills and sensibilities to perform them at advanced-to-virtuoso levels. I relate to the musical forms differently, but I relate to both.

Writing is not that different. I relate to (and read) both literary and popular fiction, though in different ways. Each gives room for advanced-to-virtuoso writing, though such writing looks different and is defined differently in each. I find I'm able to give constructive formative critique to many instances of writing on either side of the popular / literary distinction, but certainly not to all instances even on "my" side. Yet in my critique suggestions, I'm always mindful of the divergent expectations and values.

There are many and differing perspectives on what constitutes "good" storytelling — many more than received wisdom might be taken to imply.