Re: RARA-AVIS: Sturgeon's "Cellmate"

From: jacquesdebierue ( jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com)
Date: 11 Jun 2008


--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Jeff Vorzimmer" <jvorzimmer@...> wrote:
>
> > PS. Sturgeon's law: what a bunch of crud. If 90 % percent of
everything
> > was
> > crap, we wouldn't have this list or then there's thousands of cruddy
> > hardboiled and noir novels being published each year.
>
> There are. Maybe not pure crap, but mediocre at best.

Not so true in hardboiled and noir. In my experience, these two genres tend to attract better writers than the mystery field at large. In fact, we seem to be in the middle of a changing of the guard, and the new names are doing outstanding work (see "novissimi" thread). I have no doubt that the literary quality of hardboiled and noir is improving.

It may be ironic given that people read less and less, but then the quality of television scripts has improved enormously just when the public for television is shrinking. Go figure.

There is a theme for discussion here. Maybe we should explore it a bit. Have we gone from popular audience for hardboiled and noir to a more selective and more demanding type of reader?

Best,

mrt



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