In the circles I travel, a lot was made in the past year about supposed genre slumming done by some high profile “literary” authors. Some of the biggest examples were Thomas Pynchon’s publishing of the PI. novel Inherent Vice and Denis Johnson’s crime book Nobody Move, (originally published as a serial in Playboy – how pulpy is that?) Some people also took offense to remarks made by John Banville about the amount of care he puts into his “literary” novels and the mystery titles he can (comparatively) crank out under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.
Oh, feelings were hurt folks.
Nobody likes to have their passions treated flippantly, especially by someone whose work brings them pleasure, but whether you’re Michael Jordan playing minor league baseball, William Faulkner writing for the talkies or Emeril Lagasse starring in a sitcom, too much attention is often paid to the novelty of the thing and the work never gets a chance to succeed or fail on its own merit.
And never mind the readers, what of the potentially embittered craftsmen and women who toil daily and honestly in said discipline for love or money? It’s a tricky thing and I completely embrace the use of a pseudonym for such endeavors, but I have to plead guilty as well to being caught up in the context too often.
And so I wonder sometimes if what we need is a literary Pepsi-challenge of sorts. Let the critics read books without knowing who the author is or which preconceived notion to filter it through. Let them state simply what they enjoyed or didn’t and why. And for goodness sake, without the filters of selection in place, let them abandon the books early as long as they record what page they gave up on.
I’d like to read that review – “couldn’t pass page 15. Didn’t care.”
I’d like to think the cream would rise, the chaff would blow away and I wouldn’t mix any more metaphors, but… but… but… Utopia is always a dangerous proposition.
Time may be the most accurate judge. Thanks to dedicated readers and passionate publishers, those worthy titles that don’t get a fair shake their first time around can get a second life as a reprint. Charles Ardai over at Hard Case Crime has made a great run of his publishing house, mixing original titles with reprints and forgotten gems from the masters, (Lawrence Block Cornell Woolrich , even Arthur Conan Doyle – maybe not forgotten, but repackaged – it’s amazing what a cover image can do for better or worse). And David Thompson's Busted Flush Press has been picking up steam on the reprint front with Reed Farrell Coleman's Mo Prager series, Ace Atkins early Nick Travers titles and announced Daniel Woodrell reissues. The newest kid on the block is Jon Bassoff’s New Pulp Press who published last year’s underground sensation The The Disassembled Man by Nate Flexer and began to play the reprint game as well with the first of more planned reissues from Gil Brewer and just last week Lynn Kostoff’s 1991 debut A Choice of Nightmares .
So, whether you fall in with the lit-set, slumming only when it's respectable, (or perhaps you are inclined to quit taking Pynchon, Johnson or Kate Atkinson seriously when they write a genre title?), or you're a committed mystery reader happy, (or resentful?) when the rest of the world concedes that your tastes are not all rot, the questions is:
can you read these books objectively?
