<<Well, Flaubert was a genius and RLS was a hack ...
and yet I love and
teach crime fiction. I have never liked JCO's writing, and
never
understood what Raymond Carver (whose work I love) saw in
it.>>
This is not the place to pursue a Flaubert vs. Stevenson
polemic --
which is ultimately a polemic opposing the "novel of action"
to the
"psychological novel"-- though I stick to my guns. Ray Carver
was a
generous man, especially to young writers...
<<Still, this piling on JCO is a little odd. Whatever
she says about
Chandler (who is by far and away the most impt. crime fiction
writer in
Amer. history ... IMHO), she clearly knows and respects the
hardboiled
genre.>>
This is not clear at all - in fact, the opposite seems
transparently
true.
<<Perhaps she was trying to separate herself from the
"riff-raff" when
she identified herself as a "novelist" -- or perhaps she was
recognizing
that the market itself makes such distinctions, and that to
try to pass
herself off as a "crime fiction" writer would be
disingenuous. In any
case, I've heard about enough concerning Ms.
Oates.>>
A novelist is anyone who writes novels - the word only has
one meaning.
Publishers certainly make a distinction between genre fiction
and
non-genre fiction (but every novel that is about something
ultimately
can be fit into some genre or, more rarely, can define a
genre). Oates
has written in the horror genre.
Regards, and it's nice to hear from you. What's the Fall
course going to
be?
Regards,
MT
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