SINCE WHEN IS "LITERARY" A GENRE?

Listen up, mainstream writers: You don't get to call yourself "literary" just because your book sold fewer copies than it has pages. (Can anyone tell I'm just back from a literary festival?)  If it's not a fan con, which, so far as I know, are events held ONLY for genres, at every single literary event, some mainstream writer on his first or second book--usually twenty or fifty--will be sure to tout himself as a literary artist. (Hmm. The pronoun may not be accidental, although I've occasionally seen women do it.)

It's always wince-worthy. Gentlemen, please! "Literary" means "having literary merit", and what makes you think you get to say that in polite society when you'd never mention how hot you are? (Though I think we're just supposed to know that if you're literary, you're hot). But still, you wouldn't say it! That would be embarrassing. Well, so's the other thing. You have to earn it, you can't just claim it by virtue of not being genre, which, it goes without saying, you consider something akin to icky stuff that gets on your windshield.

Having an MFA or teaching at an academic institution doesn't qualify you. Neither does having a publisher  so small it can't even pay advances. You know how many truly awful writers meet those criteria? Of course you do. You probably spend half your time being snarky about them.

But if you're such a person, you may be thinking I'm incredibly stupid, there's  a definition of "literary" that involves style and not merit, and that's all you mean. True, there is.  But who says you meet those criteria? "Literary" is neither a genre open to anyone nor a party you can crash. You actually have to be invited.  To repeat: You don't get to say it about yourself any more than you get to announce how great your rear end looks in a tight pair of jeans. But not to worry. Aunt Julie is hereby setting out a set of criteria under which you may call yourself or your novel "literary," even though it would be altogether tacky and a lot better to let someone else say it:

8. You have been favorably reviewed on Page One of the New York Times Book Review.
7. Or at least by Michiko Kakutani.
6. You have had a short story published in the Paris Review or The New Yorker.
5. Your novel was brought out by Grove, New Directions, or some other once-cutting-edge, now-venerable press that's made a reputation discovering literary stars.
4. Sonny Mehta is your editor. But be careful here. You could paint yourself into a corner. Mr. Mehta has been known to edit genre authors and we know what you think about THEM.
3. Your novel has blurbs from both Philip Roth AND Jonathan (Oprah-is-for-peons) Franzen.
2. You have been nominated for a Pen/Faulkner, National Book Award, or National Book Critics Circle Award.
1. You have won a Pulitzer,

Novelists not meeting these criteria yet bragging on themselves in public will henceforth be sentenced to wear a scarlet "P." For pretentious. And "poseur."