For me, hardboiled fiction is a bit like jazz. It has a small
but
devoted audience that values quality, but the big sales are
mostly in
the crossover variety.
I've never met a jazz fan who doesn't have pride in his
refined taste
(no offense, Mario, I can be as bad or worse about punk or
post-punk),
who isn't a bit of an elitist about his/her taste. And I
would lay odds
that many (most?) of us on this list feel much the same way
about
hardboiled fiction. We would probably be a bit disappointed
if our
faves were hugely popular and famous, if everybody read them.
Sure,
it's a huge problem that publishers don't publish more of our
genre,
that great books, even entire series (as we found when
looking for the
Matt Helm books) have gone out of print. But I'd hazard a
guess that
for many of us, that amazing find in a used bookstore, yard
sale or flea
market is almost as big a thrill as reading the book
itself.
Now as any good cultural studies believer knows, taste has a
large
correlation with various socio-economic indicators. Or, as
Tad Allagash
said in Bright Lights Big City, "Taste, after all, is a
matter of
taste." Still, I'm enough of an elitist, or bohemian, or
whatever, to
be happy that my taste is apart (and in my secret heart, this
cultural
relativist must admit to himself, above) from those of the
teeming
masses.
Mark
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