William,
Re your comment below:
"Separate? Perhaps not. Distinct? Without question. The above
statement seems to rely on a credible-by- association
argument that is a tad falacious. It says that The Maltese
Falcon is a good book, it's a good genre book and it's a good
genre book because all the books in the genre are good and if
someone would only read all the books in the genre, one would
realize that."
That isn't even close to what I said. Of course they're
distinct. They're distinct because of their excellence.
But they are NOT excellent IN SPITE of their being genre
fiction, nor does their excllence put them outside of the
genre, both of which conclusions are the inescapable
inference of the phrase "transcends the genre."
I never said they were excellent BECAUSE they were genre
fiction. I said, or at least I meant, that excellence was not
a function of whether or a piece of fiction was part of a a
genre, and that, if a genre piece does achieve excellence, it
is not because it has somehow overcome the supposedly
inherent handicaps of its genre.
JIM DOHERTY
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