- Sep 2016
-
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
-
"Some writing is what you call 'writerly', you fill in the gaps and participate, and some is 'readerly', and you're entertained. We tend to see 'readerly' more in genre fiction like adventure, romance and thrillers, where the author dictates your experience as a reader. Literary [writerly] fiction lets you go into a new environment and you have to find your own way," Kidd said.
Tying this in with the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, what would the novel be classified as? Clearly, it is a science-fiction genre piece, identifying it as more of a readerly work. On the flip side, it can be classified as more of a writerly work, since it is clear after reading it that you have to think about its context. So is the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep a piece of pulp fiction or literary fiction, and does that make it a readerly or writerly piece?
-
pulp fiction
I understand that literary fiction is more writerly while pulp fiction is more readerly... But is it really that clean cut between the two? Is it possible for a work considered pulp fiction to have at least some qualities of a writerly work, or is the classification of fiction works a binary system?
-