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

Robert E. Skinner (rskinner@mail.xula.edu)
Mon, 19 Oct 1998 08:56:50 -0500 > A novelist is anyone who writes novels - the word only has one
> meaning. Publishers certainly make a distinction between genre fiction and non-genre fiction (but every novel that is about something ultimately can be fit into some genre or, more rarely, can define a genre).>

I think this is a lot of the trouble for us who write crime fiction.
Publishers seem to need a hook to hang something on, and if it seems
neither fish nor fowl, they often do nothing. I'm thinking in
particular of a fine novel James Colbert wrote several years ago called
"No Special Hurry." It was the finest thing he wrote in his
all-too-brief career, but his publisher didn't recognize it as a 'crime
novel' but didn't think they could market him as a 'mainstream' author.
The marketing for the novel was zero to the bone and it went nowhere.
Also heard Dan Woodrell say not long ago that he invented the subtitle
"A Country Noir" to describe his more recent books to Henry Holt. He's
being marketed fairly well and is in the high point of his career right
now. Are his last two books crime novels? There's a lot of love and
death at work, and the characters have a kind of proletarian/tough
guy/loser bent to them, but they're certainly not mysteries (neither
were any of his other books).

-- 
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Robert E. Skinner, Director
Xavier University of Louisiana Library
7325 Palmetto Street
New Orleans, LA 70125
(504) 483-7303 (voice)
(504) 485-7917 (FAX)
e-mail: rskinner@mail.xula.edu
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