I’d really love some professors to analyze a furry solarpunk story I wrote and dig through the symbolism like Virginia Woolf wrote it.
It would be interesting to see if a random internet dog’s scribblings can provide just as much content for discussion. From what other people have told me, it does.
A long time ago someone on a forum described a new lit fic book as a “TOBADNY” — a “trendy overhyped book about dysfunctional New Yorkers.” I LOLed and then realized this was totally the case and that this was a popular lit fic trope.
I'd say literary fiction is a genre that focuses on the craft of writing, usually through either poetic prose or deep character study. There are bonus points if the topic or style is challenging, so you get tropes that lead in this direction: deep studies of complicated often problematic characters (Lolita), deep studies of society (Pride and Prejudice), unusual plot structures (Cloud Atlas), experimental prose style (Ulysses), etc. These are literary tropes because they're challenging to write -- in terms of the craft of writing itself. The most literary of literary fiction is "writer's writing" in the sense that some experimental jazz is "musician's music."
And of course you can have deliberate genre crossovers. Literary sci-fi has been popular lately, like Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go or the already mentioned Cloud Atlas.
Pride and Prejudice, perhaps the most romance novel to ever romance novel in the history of romance novels, is described as literary fiction (and so presumably not genre fiction) by the author. I think history--and hundreds of entries on fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org where teenagers gush about their own dark-haired and standoffish but secretly gentle imaginary men--has shown that the reason she's remembered is the substance, not the subject of her writing, as well as the historical significance in her being a pioneer, of course.
I recently watched The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. A historically and artistically important movie, and then you go check the Wikipedia page and the producer described it to the effect "Yeah from the script it looked like some quick slop which would turn a buck."[1]
I think starting out with the idea of making a "literary" work and creating a genre out of "literary fiction" inherently doesn't work. I think the avenues for greatness are either making something experimental that breaks new ground, or something more conventional but that, in exchange, shows you complete mastery of that well-known material. But you can't be great just by appropriating the superficial qualities you identify in past works you yourself consider to be great, because again, it was the substance and not the mere subject that made those work great.
[1] 'Pommer later said: "They saw in the script an 'experiment'. I saw a relatively cheap film".' Citation [36] on Wikipedia
And, not to insult fanfiction writers (I've been known to partake), but I would guess Jane Austen still writes a better broody man than most of them... although probably not all of them. That's a secondary consequence of simply having more people partaking in art to begin with: the more millions of artists you have, that many more one-in-a-million geniuses you're bound to find.
Whatever about that, she remains absolutely unbeaten in writing awful vicars.
(I assume this wasn't her intention, but the vicar is by far the most memorable character, for me.)
There are already debates as to whether Lord of the Rings is "literary" when it checks all the boxes.