There was an article called "Great Literature? Depends
Whodunit" in the
_NY Times_ Sunday. The writer, Charles McGrath, discussed the
problem of
"thrillers" selling more than "literary novels." McGrath did
not agree with the widely-held idea that "genre writing .. is
a form of slumming," but seems a bit unfocused on why this
distinction is made. Was it the 19th century "penny
dreadful"? "The growth of pulp magazines?" McGrath allows
that only a few authors like Hammett and Chandler transcended
the "crude and formulaic" pulp stories. He goes on: mystery
writers complain that reviewers "ghettoize genre writers and
prevent its practitioners from being taken seriously." [The
Times Book Review does this itself; with its mystery column.]
But McGrath says "highbrow authors are sometimes complicit in
frequently adopting pseudonyms when they want to dabble in
crime writing." [I thought this was their agents' or
publishers' idea]. The writers realize that formula (McGrath
seems to believe this term is synonymous with "genre") is an
easy, quick read and also "reassuring in a way that some
other writers are not."
McGrath concludes that one can be just as good a writer of
genre as of high lit. Well, if one is Henry James, anyway.
But the article seems to reveal a lot of confusion about
genre, and to accept the distinction between "literature" and
"thriller" even when it half-heartedly tries to reject or
modify it. I wonder what others think of it.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 04 Feb 2008 EST