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Cool, John! Good advice, good article, good blog.  Go, go, go!

Now, with $42K of IgG each month  (240 grams !), and constant swimming, I've stabilize my CIDP (somewhat) and with luck I can concentrate on writing again. Three years of deterioration of mind and body; now I fight hard to climb back to the place I left off. 

You're an inspiration to us all here. And, soon, I expect to see a movie deal coming your way.

Speaking of media, HAPPY VALLY, a Netflix production, is a work that I recommend highly in the M&C genre.

~max

Thank you Charles, you've enlightened me and I've enjoyed reading your definitions of LF. Yes, the written excellence and acceptance of ideas of a generation can be the measure of good LF. However, that they are passed on, generation after generation, gives these ideas profound, sometimes lasting and perhaps international repute and reverence. However, I do have very conflicting thoughts about Ayn Rand as a meaningful author. I think of her as Bill O'Reilly in drag. And, towards end of her life, she lived on Social Security provided by the government, the government that she thought was the shark character in the movie JAWS.

I would support the idea that Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath, etc.) will always be held up as an example of LF for passaging generations, because, he drilled-down to the root of human suffering and the human condition. The world is every man's oyster and Steinbeck opened up the oyster for the struggling to see no pearls exist for every man and the everyman. He was a marine biologist and oysters were his reality, his truth. And, I believe this particular book was greeted as a LF of merit and awarded, by those knowledgeable of such things, with a Nobel Prize. However, they did award Obama that prize somewhat prematurely with the hope that he would eventually equal the status awarded to long-lasting LF, etc. Even matured bodies of humans make mistakes, but we shall see if his legacy holds up after Hilleary is elected.

One year I did nothing but ride my Harley-Davidson motorcycle, work in a convenience store in a turbulent Negro neighborhood and read the classics. Not the classics of antiquity, but the Nobel Prize winners that I could fathom, get caught me up in their prose/beauty and that appealed to me.  Alas, it was not an organized dive in to the humanities that LF often personifies.

Again, my favorite was a short volume of profound simplicity called HUNGER by Knut Hamsun. That a character who wanted to write down every thing about the world, to capture his reality of a small town's myopic generation; and yet in his utter poverty ate his pencils and notes out of gnawing hunger (consuming the tools of his self-imposed and somewhat mystical worldview), always struck me as the metaphor for the depths that a LASTING literary fiction could and should impart on a reader.

Simple and of a generation, and yet for all generations is the book every schooled person is required to read (and many say "YUCK" to it), and that is, THE HEART of DARKNESS. Luckily, I was allowed into a master's level class at UofH taught by a Scottish professor on holiday here in Maui to dig into this book (and many other classics). Of course, it is the classic example of the generational; of the whitish man's inhumanity to every color of man, and yet Conrad himself was caught-up in the shortsighted generational attitudes and convention of the time; so the book is not a crystal-clear distillation of the universal themes of greed and hate and exploitation, etc. However, I was so impressed by the root structural ideas that I spent several months trying to convert the story into a science fiction of the distant future, not too unlike the pseudo-documentary, DISTRICT 9.

So...My concept of the LF novel is the peeling away of a generational onion, of a stratified society’ evils, and sometime its purported best qualities to expose a universal truth. I reckon that human beings everywhere are capable of finite possibilities,understandings and actions, and at the end of the day, and to me, there is a quantifiable essence to humanity that an artist can touch upon once, be burned to the core of their being/thinking by this cosmic touch into the human condition (and beyond), and then, with imagination, inspiration and lots of perspiration, toss an art form out to a gnawing and hungry world who will then say, "Holy Shit, YES! That is what it is all about! This author made everything appear so simple!" It is then branded a generational LF. And yes, your idea of 'generational' has caught my thinking.

I did read bits and pieces of your novel, R&R, found the prose and especially snippets of dialog interesting, and, you'll probably hate this, somewhat like dialog from, THE SUN ALSO RISES, by Ernest. The dialog and exposition that I read was direct, simple, and yet I realized it possessed strong forward thrust of character and purpose.

I am consumed by an illness that limits my mental processes, my time (in many time frames), however your R&R novel intrigues me and if I can I will find the time to dig in.

Well put, K. I like what you're saying and I'm in agreement. Main street, like a main forum is where the goods are, the alleyways are for genre shops.... Yes, the economy functions best when an entire community is interacting in a democratic broad scope of ideas and innovation.

Can you rewrite this so this ignoramus can understand what you are saying? 

Keep it simple is my definition of literary fiction that can impart the most knowledge or profundities for the most people, have the most profound effect in the long run and for the most good. Although, even I like a monster of indulgence like, Under the Volcano, 'I, Claudius' or the novels of Robertson Davies.

Simple with a profound message: Of Mice & Men

Simple with a profound political message: Animal Farm

Simple with an edge: Slaughter House Five

Simple with comedy: The Wilt Series by Tom Sharpe ( a writer everyone else seems to enjoy)

Complex, meandering and for an audience dealing in their own specialties of self: Anything by Donald Barth, E.L. Doctorow (The March), Richard Yates, John Updike, Ayn Rand, Henry James, F.S.Fitzgerald, Cormac McCarthy and Jonathan Franzen (all), etc, etc, etc...

Thanks

All my neighbors are millionaires and they're all creepy in their own ways. I usually base my novels on my neighbors, good or bad.

This fellow lived about 10 mansions away from me, but now lives in a federal prison. Ego as big as a black hole. Still insists he's innocent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noshir_Gowadia

But the creepiest neighbor ANYONE could ever have is Fred and Rose West. Luckily, one committed suicide  and the other is locked up and will die in an English prison.

Submit this idea to SolN for a contest.

As to religion & politics in a writing site's forum as header sub topics-

RELIGION EXAMPLE:

Hugh of Saint Victor (c. 1096 – 1141): Influential mystic and philosopher who embraced science as a tool for approaching God. He was master of the monastic school of Saint Victor. His work presents knowledge of reality as redemptive of fallen man; and technology as source of physical relief and able to help reunite man with divine wisdom. "Learn everything," he urged; "later you will see that nothing is superfluous.

And then any discussion about John Milton's 'Paradise Lost' could yield vast perspectives to all writing, no matter what genre. And then there is Voltaire, what would the world of politics and writing be without him and Candide? And what about Mary Wollstonecraft and her politics? Without her Frankenstein might not have come into being and non-being(lol). These were angry people at the root and through political, fiction and essay writing they changed the world.

The end product of all written communication is to inform and institute change. Otherwise, we are all just fiddling on our solitary violins to hear our selves play. I like to hear angry, but intelligent voices that help me understand the world dynamic from many aspects.

Love, family, money, religion (religion is now the Internet) and politics, to me, is what written communication is all about. If I can see these topic in one place, without time-consuming searching, I feel that I am then getting my money's worth.

Without a single sit down coffee house, a place to present ideas en mass, on one page so to speak, the improvisational music of Bach would have suffered, Voltaire might never have gone to jail and Shakespeare would probably not have met his male lover and the Sonnets would not exist.

And of course, a conscious choice is made to view a sub-topic in a forum about religion & politics. We did have a sub-topic about these subjects in the old forum and after it was initiated the subjects and the hot-heads cooled down and became more focused and interesting.

We all should be angry considering that in America we are all living with a banking bubble that is like walking a razor's towards a very unpredictable future. (Devious me, had to sneak in a political imbroglio that perhaps only Janet Yellen can fix. Or perhaps we should burn her at the metaphorical stake if she capitulates furthers to the agendas of big money banking ?)

However, by mentioning big banking then perhaps some aspiring writer will see that an Economic Fiction or Science Fiction can be cranked out using the present dire financial instability of America to instigate the necessary change to stimulate personal responsibility, personal savings , i.e.,  to create a more stable economy in the future.  To get the fires of thought and action burning, say to 451 degrees Fahrenheit.

Just sayin' and just blathering on... But in this thread we have created a topic that interests many members, a forum on one page, and that is what I think a single community forum could and should be.... Damn it! LOL

I think a single COMMUNITY FORUM would work best.

Links to GROUP FORUMS could be on this page or there could be most recent posts to these forums, but these should be at the bottom of page.

The way the home page is set up now is fine, but it should show the COMMUNITY FORUM posts first. As it is now I only see forum posts if I am a member of that group

As to to a moderator: A vote system is easy to code and with 5 negative votes, then the posters is kaput.

And there is the &#151, which in a way is a flashback in computer Unicode language, also called an m-dash. However, for this text function to work the computer string language must be translatable, using an agreed upon Unicode for all operating systems. Obviously Nany Kress, the author of the flashback piece, has an operating system out of the past or perhaps too far into the future. With the m-dash, Nancy is attempting to create a bit of chronological disassociation to another idea; in a sense a flash back or flash forward to another place, time, event or idea.

Anyway, the article reminds me of the time when I was ten years old and I encountered my first &#151....

Hey Mike, just having a bit of nerd fun, and thank you; a good, educational read.

-max

Tank and more tanks. Goodreads, the seeds of success to you!

Harley Davidson, a ButlerDroid, is a main character who appears in chapter 2. After their android sexual upgrades in Maui (chapter 4),  Harley and Prunella fall in love, while dancing to the music of DukeDroid and his Hit Any Key Orchestra.

Computer nerd? How about, Captain Williard Thor Waverly? He's the captain/sysadmin of a Musk-Zeppelin that sails between Hawaii, the pacific garbage patch and LA Dome.

According to Tom Oldman, the chapters seems to get better the further you read in. Yeah, Williard is something else, lol.