Published Paper Details:

When it comes to the discussion of fiction, the first thing that strikes us is that whether the discussion is on the genre fiction or the literary fiction. This paper aims to focus on both the genre fiction and literary fiction. The intention of the paper is to highlight the debate that generally goes on between the genre/ popular fiction and literary/ serious fiction. The paper tries to focus on how the world of literature is divided between the genre fiction and the literary fiction. There is a group that believes literary fiction to be the real fiction thereby discarding genre fiction as a part of literature. Whereas there are people who are generally found devouring on the genre fiction most of the time, they find the literary fiction to be flat and lifeless. It is because of this distinction in the thoughts between the two groups, there is a tug of war between the genre fiction and the literary fiction. It is this debate that the paper tries to focus on. Further, the paper tries to define what fiction is all about and at the same time tries an attempt to explicate genre fiction and the literary fiction. The purpose of the paper is to show whether there is actually any difference between the genre fiction and literary fiction or it is just a prejudiced notion in the mind of the literary critics. The paper aims at showing the discrimination done between both the fictions. There is always a competition found between both the fictions in which one is always considered as superior whereas the other is always considered inferior; one is always highly positioned whereas the other is always at low- ranking. The intention of both the fictions may be same- to be read, acknowledged and appreciated by the readers, but the readers on the other hand, always distinguish between the two, thereby accepting one and rejecting the other. This is what the paper tries to show here. There are many great writers, many great literary critics who have shared their views on the literary fiction and the genre fiction, and the paper tries to take their help in order to justify the points that have already been mentioned here. The paper has taken the help of Arthur Krystal�s Easy Writers Guilty Pleasures Without Guilt; Lev Grossman�s Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction is Disruptive Technology; W.H. Auden�s The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the detective story by an old addict; Edmund Wilson�s Why Do People Read Detective Stories; Leslie A. Fielder�s Towards a Definition of Popular Literature; and the paper has also taken the help from different websites where the articles based on the debate between genre fiction and literary fiction are found.