What's up with literary fiction's hatred of happy endings?

Real life ain't about happy endin's

>>8762306
it's cuz life don't got a happy ending, kid

There is "literary fiction" (whatever that means) with happy endings.

>>8762306
Happy endings are hard to write without seeming like your cheaping out.

File: Welcome to lit.jpg (49KB, 486x473px) Image search: [Google]

49KB, 486x473px

>>8762312
>(whatever that means)

>>8762340
Nah, I've been here for quite some time now, it's just that I never understood how can someone throw around such a trite classification as "literary fiction" without a second thought.

>>8762312

Name one and I'll tell you why it's genre fiction, not literature.

>>8762348
happy endings are like wizards, if the book has one, it ain't lit

>>8762312
"Literary" is serious fiction that avoids ridiculous tropes of escaptist capitalist pulp trash produced only for entertainment.

>>8762348
Goethe's Faust.

>>8762348
Gargantua and Pantagruel

>>8762352
Surprisingly, literary fiction is a marketing tag to sell "serious fiction" to pseuds.

>>8762354

>Falling for the heaven meme

I

>>8762348
The Odyssey

>>8762362
yeah, i was gonna say, you think the laws of capitalism don't apply just cuz the book is boring as shit? they still have to get you to buy it somehow

>>8762348
Genre fiction is literature. Whether it is well-written or "good", or badly-written or "bad", is a different matter.

>>8762348
The Holy Bible by God et al.

>>8762365
Bittersweet ending. He's home now, but we know he doesn't get to stay.

>>8762306
Just like plebs, "refined" audiences labor under the illusion that cynicism is deep and intellectual.

>>8762348
The Divine Comedy

>>8762352
>>8762362
#REKT

>>8762351
this

>>8762307
Life ain't about endin's period

>>8762383
But that has a very happy ending.

>>8762348
My diary, desu

>>8762306
There is actually a whole segment of literary fiction that is like our generations new epoch. New Sincerity or whatever they call it. David Eggars stuff and some other authors kind of embrace this looking at things positively crap.

>>8764466
How do you know that'll have a happy ending? :^)

>>8762362
Fair point, but nevertheless.

>>8764992

nevertheless what?

>>8765668
You're not wrong, but there still needs to be a distinction, between commercial fiction and that that at least attempts to actually achieve something. Pseuds will say anything tagged "literary" is doubtlessly good, but anyone who actually reads and is well-read can distinguish, at least within the literary pool, what is trash and what is worth reading.

>>8762306
Happy endings can be done well, but it takes a lot of work to make them feel right and not come off as treacly. There are books I've read that had an unhappy ending, but they could have worked better if the author had had the skill to turn them into a bittersweet kind of happy ending. From that perspective, doing an unhappy ending is easy for an author of lit-fic: an unhappy ending is easier to make solemn and weighty, the writer doesn't risk being seen as a cop-out, and they don't have to sweat hard to write a happy ending that actually sticks the landing.

>>8765710
>there still needs to be a distinction
>needs

Why?

>>8766025
See
>>8762352
To avoid ridiculous tropes of escaptist capitalist pulp trash produced only for entertainment.

We're going in circles.