Mark, thanks for your comments. You'll be surprised to hear
that I do appreciate primitive rock'n'roll, though rock (in
all its forms) is for me a distant second to jazz, the blues
and classical music (Western and Indian). In all these forms,
being a "pretty good" musician doesn't even get you in the
door, and perhaps I'm wrong in applying the criterion of "at
least a very good musician" to a different phenomenon like
rock and pop. If I play The Beatles after, say, Ravi Shankar
or Ali Akbar Khan, or Coleman Hawkins, the effect is one of
ridiculousness. I'm either spoiled or spoilt, or just out of
it.
I don't feel any 'slumming down" when I read Goodis,
Thompson, Prather or Lionel White (technically very
strong,
I don't know what Westlake is talking about...). I
consider them serious and highly skilled writers. I'm sure
that, if England had had a Prather, the English would be
proud of him. The US has been hard on humorists.
Just the other day we were talking about Theodore Sturgeon
and, coincidentally, I bought and read his novel _The
Dreaming Jewels_ (1950, reprinted by Carroll & Graf).
This is a superb work. I started thinking of how many novels
published in 1950 I would like to read today. I bet almost
all of them would be "genre" novels.
So I don't make any distinction between mainstream and genre
fiction. In fact, I reject such distinctions. That is one of
the main reasons why I joined Bill's list in the old days of
1997 (can it be that long ago?).
Enough rambling and back to a collection of Sturgeon
stories.
Best,
MrT
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