Which leaves open the question of when the sales on GM books
started to slacken, and when GM stopped paying royalties on
every printed item rather than each sold, like most
publishers. I while back in this thread, I quoted a passage
from HIGHSMITH by Meaker wherein with the acceptance of one
novel and the agreement to print another, Meaker is in one
sentence from Knox Berger $8K richer (in 1960 dollars),
something that Highsmith could only envy with her harcover
publishers.
Mike, the subtext is important in the citation of Boucher's
NYT (and presumably "Holmes's" NY HERALD-TRIBUNE) column
reviewing both Meaker's pbs and Highsmith's hcs, among
others...that White/Boucher/Holmes was unusual in his
egalitarianism. Wonder if his column was relatively exempted
from pressure to review books from advertising publishers, or
if Fawcett ever went in for an ad.
As for publishing class distinctions...well, even today
ignoramuses can't keep the definition of "pulp fiction"
straight, and while it's now acceptable slumming material,
the nature of the packaging (all the GM seminudes, etc.)
ensured the ignorant could feel comfortable in maintaining
their sneer. Leaving aside all those who (including some
quoted in HIGHSMITH) who were (and remain) desperate to
segregate PH's writing from crime fiction because it was
good. CF has not yet been freed of the same sort of blockhead
who, in Kingsley Amis and/or Robert Conquest's couplet about
science-fiction disparagers, will maintain this perfect
distinction:
"'SF's no good,' they bellow till we're deaf./'And if it's
good, then it's not SF!'". Of course, this has been
commercially institutionalized in bookselling, as with the
newish Borders signs distinguishing "Popular Fiction" from
"Literature," and other such amphigory.
TM
Mike--I didn't get very far with SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW, the
novel in translation in English, but I didn't try very hard,
since it seemed the kind of thing the blockheads mentioned
above clutch to their breasts as clearly superior to the kind
of tawdry trash Anglophone cf writers churn out, but I did
see the movie, with the protagonist's ancestry now made
improbable at best by the choice of lead actress, and the
protag's ability to walk over several hundred miles of arctic
icecap without once putting up the hood on her parka (would
muss her hair, doncha know), and the ridiculous
science-fictional developements in the last third of the
film...I cannot recommend it, sorry to disagree so
strenuously, but it Annoyed me. A lot.
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