A friend recently asked me what I meant by, "Literary merit."
I thought long and hard before I answered, because my ideas
about that have changed over the years and they can often be
changed by a single book reminding me of how good they
are.
I think that literary merit means different things to
different people.
For me: is it clear? does it tell a story? do I feel knocked
dead by the writing? A recent example in my reading is
Cormack McCarthy's "The Road." Others might snarl at the
book's sentence fragments and weird punctuation, but it is
perfectly clear, made me feel the presence and emotion of the
characters and kept me turning pages. Even when nothing was
happening, I had a great fear that something terrible was
about to happen. When a book keeps me reading and I am in awe
of the writing without being unduly distracted by it,
"That's" Literary Merit.
I recently read my first James Lee Burke in years: Yep, he
qualifies has having literary merit. (Still opinion of
course.)
I like James Joyce--other than "Finnegan's
Wake."
It took me some time to get into Faulkner, but after I did:
Wow! "This (author) sounds like an idiot," I kept thinking of
Benji. A moment later, I realized that the opening pages of
"The Sound and the Fury" were being narrated by a man who is
severely retarded.
The best of the mystery "literary merit" guys, all time, is
Chandler.
Some believe that flowery, convoluted, or ultra
description
"is" literary merit. If you have to stop reading to admire
it--Nah.
With me, a piece doesn't have literary merit unless it gives
me a sense of people and place and a desire to continue the
story, without constantly distracting me with the
prose.
A mystery writer often praised here and elsewhere for
literary merit is Ross Macdonald. For me, his figures of
speech are so convoluted that I had to stop and think about
them to the point where I started to ignore them. Then I
decided after three books to pass on reading him again. I
tried recently and hated the time I spent with the
book.
There are many genre readers and writers who look down their
noses at anything that get's tagged as having literary merit.
The most sarcastic description, I suppose, is, "It's 50,000
beautiful words that say nothing." I don't remember who said
that, but it's a paraphrase of someone else, not orginal with
me.
As a reader, I prefer story. I read Robert B. Parker, Stuart
Woods, and the late Sidney Shelton and prefer them over those
who write supposed literary masterpieces like Jonathan
Frazen; but certainly not over James Lee Burke or Lawrence
Block.)
OK, I went on and on.
All of that is opinion. But I have an even stronger opinion:
nothing is true literature (note the change from literary to
literature) unless it's still being read 50 years after the
author is dead. By that definition, Agatha Christie is
literature, no matter what I think of her
"literary merit."
Jack Bludis
http://www.jackbludis.com
Shamus nominee for *Shadow of the Dahlia* Try "Blondes,
Blondes, Blondes" at http://www.ThrillingDetective.com
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