Literary and Commercial

There's been a massive debate about the difference between literary and commercial fiction. (Which I think stems from the general problem of defining your genre, but that's me.)

I liked what Nathan Bransford had to say on the subject: What Makes Literary Fiction Literary? - "In commercial fiction the plot tends to happen above the surface and in literary fiction the plot tends to happen beneath the surface." He goes on to explain what he means, so please read his thoughts on the subject. (You'll have to scroll past a couple paragraphs of Oscar stuff, but it's worth the time.)

Also, Kristin Nelson has some interesting insights in yesterday's post: Defining Literary.

(Keep in mind, these are not the only articles or posts I've seen on the subject, just the most recent and the ones that made the most sense to me.)

In her post, Ms. Nelson starts off saying: "Nothing dooms a query faster than mislabeling the genre of your work." Sound advice. When I started submitting Spectacle for representation, I was calling it 'mainstream' and just 'literary'. I was clueless about genre, and the rejections made that perfectly clear. (Especially when you consider I was sending it to agents who don't touch thrillers - except maybe when they're reading for pleasure.)

So, I've settle on 'literary thriller'. One person on an internet forum, who'd only read the blurb in my query letter, said she didn't think my work was literary, but since she hadn't read the work itself, I blew her off. Reading both Mr. Bransford's and Ms. Nelson's blogs, I'm happy I did. My writing fits their criteria. Good enough for me.

But even before I read their thoughts on the subject I was leaning toward literary because my work has a literary bent. You see, to me, literary work is defined by the ideas encapsulated in the words. IMO, if you're thinking about the philosophy behind your work, and you're weaving ideas into your story, then you're writing a literary work. Additionally, literary work is shown by the way the story is written. If you look at those works labeled as literary (and I'm not talking about the more recent 'literary' works, but those books that are literary classics), and compare them to the works one thinks of as commercial, you'll see a difference in the way the stories are written - how the author creates the story and it unfolds before you.

Mind you, I'm a neophyte in the writing world, but it seems pretty rational to me. So, until an agent or a publisher smacks me upside the head and tells me that my work is in no way literary, I'm sticking to my guns.

What do you think the difference is?