Mark Sullivan wrote:
> Okay, I'm not too proud to cop to being a dedicated
genre reader. And I
> don't think my experience is appreciably different
from that of the
> "average genre reader," even if I do have a few
initials after my name.
> Private eye novels are my default reading. I find
great comfort in the
> conventions. I don't particularly want to be
challenged.
I think there's a difference, though, between having
preferences and flatly refusing to read anything that isn't
in your genre.
An old Playboy article comes to mind. The author described
how to make party tapes of music, and said that there were
four basic types of party tape makers. One of these four (the
author said) had, at some point in their life, discovered The
Truth in music, and so for the rest of their life would only
listen to, for example,
"mid-period Uriah Heep."
A lot of people I deal with have found, in various ways, The
Truth in cyberpunk or surrealist fiction of biographies and
just don't want to expand their horizons.
> Which quote do I find insulting to readers of crime
fiction? Actually,
> it's the same one you quote:
>
> "Fans of crime thrillers would have complained that
"American Tabloid"
> was [nearly as] impenetrable [as "Ulysses" -- that
is, if fans of crime
> thrillers had known what "Ulysses" is."]
>
> Forget the Ulysses comparison (drop out everything
in the brackets) and
> you are still left with the claim that crime fiction
readers found
> Tabloid impenetrable. Where is the evidence of this?
It was a
> bestseller. Is it farfetched to believe that many of
the buyers,
> particularly the early buyers, were fans from his
earlier books?
>
> And it found a big enough audience that 6,000 was
assured an even larger
> press run. How has it been selling? Can't it be
assumed that a certain
> number (probably a large number) of those sales are
from readers of
> Tabloid, many of them crime fiction readers? Would
any of them move on
> to the second in the series if they could not
penetrate the first?
I'm not sure I see the problem. The book is impenetrable. I
don't think that's a bad thing. It's a product of Ellroy's
style and plotting. But I don't think being impenetrable, and
I don't believe Barra is saying this, is the same as being
unintelligble.
jess
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 13 Jun 2001 EDT