Because thinking is a useful and necessary thing

Let's try to define literary fiction: a literary novel is one that allows the reader to participate . Non-literary or genre fiction is usually written in a traditional way, so in a detective novel, a thriller, or a romance, there are characters that the reader can immediately recognize, and there are plot developments that create specific expectations. The author then has to do nothing more than shatter the reader's expectations (the murderer is not the doctor, but the little old lady you don't even think of) or confirm the reader's expectations (don't worry, the boy will definitely be with the girl). Literary fiction, on the other hand, is less traditional. In these novels, the characters are more complex and layered, it is difficult to follow the previous model, and the plot often has many surprises. Reading such works is a demanding reading experience. The reader is like riding an uncomfortable train and not knowing where this train will go.

For an author, writing a literary work is a bold gamble that carries the risk of failure. A novel written in the traditional novel model can be a very readable work even if the writing is poor and the characters are as thin as a layer of plastic wrap. In fact, many novels that are not innovative in art can sell very well for a simple reason: they are very readable. On the other hand, a literary novel that is not well written has little to offer, because it usually makes the biggest mistake a book can make: it is boring and lacks credibility.

.......................This book is worth the effort. Why? Because the reader is forced to think while reading. This leads to the second definition of literary fiction: it is fiction that makes the reader think . This actually continues the first definition of literary fiction. If a reader has room to participate, it means that the reader is thinking. This also contains the strength of literary fiction. Why risk failure to write it? Because thinking is a useful and necessary thing.

Excerpted from What Stephen Harper Is Reading, by Yann Martel, Yilin Press, 2014

Before reading this passage, it was very difficult for me to explain what an "independent film" is. I still remember when I was in college, I participated in a debate about love. In the end, I could only quote Sanmao's words, "Love cannot be expressed, and once it is expressed, it is wrong." Now I think it is quite Zen. Just like love, if you want to understand what love is, you can only fall in love. As for what an "independent film" is, you can only watch an independent film, for example, all the films on CathayPlay can be said to be independent films.

But the definition of what is a literary novel by Yann Martel, the author of Life of Pi, suddenly made me realize it. You can replace the "literary novel" in the above quote with "independent film". Let's watch independent films, "because thinking is a useful and necessary thing"