RARA-AVIS: Re: RARA-AVIS Digest V2 #507

michael david sharp (msharp@umich.edu)
Sat, 17 Oct 1998 09:57:39 -0400 (EDT) Well, Flaubert was a genius and RLS was a hack ... and yet I love and
teach crime fiction. I have never liked JCO's writing, and never
understood what Raymond Carver (whose work I love) saw in it. Still, this
piling on JCO is a little odd. Whatever she says about Chandler (who is by
far and away the most impt. crime fiction writer in Amer. history ...
IMHO), she clearly knows and respects the hardboiled genre. Perhaps she
was trying to separate herself from the "riff-raff" when she identified
herself as a "novelist" -- or perhaps she was recognizing that the market
itself makes such distinctions, and that to try to pass herself off as a
"crime fiction" writer would be disingenuous. In any case, I've heard
about enough concerning Ms. Oates.

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