[archievillain]

This is something that gets forgotten all the time: the common man could go watch a Shakespeare play for a penny and sip on ale between one dirty joke and the other.

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

[rsynnott]

To be honest, I suspect that someone reading Pride and Prejudice _after_ reading a bunch of ao3 stuff is going to suffer from https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunn... to an extent; part of why was significant was just in establishing a bunch of tropes which have now been absolutely _done to death_.

[archievillain]

I've made sure to reference "historical significance" when referencing P&P and the Cabinet for this exact reason. I think every classic undergoes some amount of 'rot', but I've also found a lot of classic to be perfectly enjoyable if you allow them some slack.

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.

[rsynnott]

> but I would guess Jane Austen still writes a better broody man than most of them...

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.)