What's up with literary fiction's hatred of happy endings?

What's up with literary fiction's hatred of happy endings?

Real life ain't about happy endin's

it's cuz life don't got a happy ending, kid

There is "literary fiction" (whatever that means) with happy endings.

Happy endings are hard to write without seeming like your cheaping out.

>(whatever that means)

Nah, I've been here for quite some time now, it's just that I never understood how can someone throw around such a trite classification as "literary fiction" without a second thought.

Name one and I'll tell you why it's genre fiction, not literature.

happy endings are like wizards, if the book has one, it ain't lit

"Literary" is serious fiction that avoids ridiculous tropes of escaptist capitalist pulp trash produced only for entertainment.

Goethe's Faust.

Gargantua and Pantagruel

Surprisingly, literary fiction is a marketing tag to sell "serious fiction" to pseuds.

>Falling for the heaven meme

I

The Odyssey

yeah, i was gonna say, you think the laws of capitalism don't apply just cuz the book is boring as shit? they still have to get you to buy it somehow

Genre fiction is literature. Whether it is well-written or "good", or badly-written or "bad", is a different matter.

The Holy Bible by God et al.

Bittersweet ending. He's home now, but we know he doesn't get to stay.

Just like plebs, "refined" audiences labor under the illusion that cynicism is deep and intellectual.

The Divine Comedy

#REKT

this

Life ain't about endin's period

But that has a very happy ending.

My diary, desu

There is actually a whole segment of literary fiction that is like our generations new epoch. New Sincerity or whatever they call it. David Eggars stuff and some other authors kind of embrace this looking at things positively crap.

How do you know that'll have a happy ending? :^)

Fair point, but nevertheless.

nevertheless what?

You're not wrong, but there still needs to be a distinction, between commercial fiction and that that at least attempts to actually achieve something. Pseuds will say anything tagged "literary" is doubtlessly good, but anyone who actually reads and is well-read can distinguish, at least within the literary pool, what is trash and what is worth reading.

Happy endings can be done well, but it takes a lot of work to make them feel right and not come off as treacly. There are books I've read that had an unhappy ending, but they could have worked better if the author had had the skill to turn them into a bittersweet kind of happy ending. From that perspective, doing an unhappy ending is easy for an author of lit-fic: an unhappy ending is easier to make solemn and weighty, the writer doesn't risk being seen as a cop-out, and they don't have to sweat hard to write a happy ending that actually sticks the landing.

>there still needs to be a distinction
>needs

Why?

See
To avoid ridiculous tropes of escaptist capitalist pulp trash produced only for entertainment.

We're going in circles.