Wouldn't it be enough that writing these books helped them
just to keep alive? If there hadn't been a market for these,
Westlake and Block and certainly some others just might not
have become the authors they are now.
(And there's no learning ground for these writers anymore,
certainly not one that pays. You have to become a bestseller
with your first novel.)
Curt mentioned that he has a reader's interest in the sex
novels. Same here. I've read some (sadly not anything by
Westlake and Block) and they are genuinely interesting. As
Curt, Bill Crider and James Reasoner have proved on their
blogs, these books can be well-written and entertaining - and
certainly close to noir and hardboiled crime.
I don't my have notes on the sleaze books I've read handy,
but I'll post about them later on.
Juri
PS. Lee Server has also written some porn paperbacks. In one,
he said in an interview, he took the plot out of HEART OF
DARKNESS. I've seen a list somewhere.
PS2. Jess, maybe Server needed the money. I take it that the
book wasn't his own idea in the first place.
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