Jess wrote:
"I'll repeat myself. The average fan of crime thrillers has
never heard of Ulysses and James Joyce. To expect the average
fan of crime thrillers to be more literate than the average
reader is both unrealistic and unfair."
My quibble was not with his saying crime fans did not know
Ulysses
(although I think the average reader, crime fan or not, has
at least heard of it, even if they have never attempted to
read it, as an alleged
"great book," and people of a certain age would remember it
for its notoriety and its alleged obscenity), but with the
assumption that crime fans had no interest in, cannot even
handle complexity, whether Joyce's or Ellroy's.
I got the distinct feeling that he was claiming that Ellroy
had not just left crime fiction behind, but narrow-minded
crime fiction readers as well, that Ellroy was finally
reaching the literary audience he deserved. True or not, and
whether or not it applies to the reading audience as a whole,
the Ulysses comment was clearly meant as a put-down of
pedestrain readers who have little interest in anything but
whodunnit.
"He has repeatedly stated, in interviews and essays, that he
only reads crime fiction, and nothing else."
Of course, he has a more inclusive definition of crime
fiction than the reviewer's, including True Confessions and
Libra.
"Again, he's not talking about what the novel is, but how it
is regarded--"categorized.""
However, he tacitly endorses that separation by spending most
of the review separateing Tabloid and 6,000 from his earlier
"crime" novels, how Ellroy has fulfilled his promise of more
depth, more complexity, etc. He never says bookstores were
wrong for changing the shelving. Nor does he say that
Ellroy's earlier books should join them there.
Mark
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