I read this a while back at http://www.sfwa.org/writing/genre2.htm and it raises an interesting problem.
... So-called "literary" novels (I really really hate that term, because it implies that anything not made according to that model is not "literary," i.e., not art and not worthy of the attention paid to art, but we're stuck with the phrase until something better comes along) . . .

So, what should we call these literary novels? Should they be mainstream (aah, but that would imply that most people are buying these, and they're selling at a greater rate than other genres, which I don't think is entirely true)?
Any other ideas?

How about the "Obsequious Crap Specifically Designed For the Elitist Literati to Feel Superior to Every One Else" genre?

XD OCSDFELFSEOE!

Speaking of which, I just read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, and I was not impressed by the editing job he did. He threw in an Oedipus-complex-style dream and a near seduction in the middle after he had written the rest of the story, just to make a point about Siddartha's state of mind at that point, and didn't edit them in gracefully at all (for if he had, I, the reader, wouldn't have caught him at it). But of course, he still won a Nobel Prize for the philosophical value of his work. >.<