Jim wrote:
"Despite the still-enduring attitude towards genre fiction
among a shrinking number of academics, the fact is that the
number IS shrinking."
I think it's been a while since you've been on a campus. This
attitude HAS shrunk to almost nothing. It's been over 30
years since George Pelecanos took that class on hardbiled
detective fiction in the University of Maryland's English
Department that later inpired him to write. The professor who
taught that class loved to leave a copy of Spillane on his
desk to tweak other professors. I doubt it would even raise
an eyebrow today (and if it did, it would more likely be for
political reasons than literary, not that the two aren't
connected).
Of course, convincing the New York Times of the legitimacy of
popular culture, and how "transcending the genre" is at least
damning with faint praise and at most an insult, may be a
whole lot harder.
"Enough academics have been converted that we ought to be
able to declare victory and stop worrying about it."
This mention of academics reminds me of something I've been
meaning to mention in this "test of time" discussion. "Still
being studied' is not the same as "still being read." For
instance, someone recently mentioned, rightly, that Spillane
will continue to be studied for what ther popularity says
about America during the McCarthy era. This is sociological,
not literary endurance. I think it's important to distinguish
the two aspects. Of course, many works have both sociological
and artistic value, and they are not always found in the most
artistic (as in striving to be artistic) works. For instance,
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, among many others, has long
been thought to give great insight into this same era, so it
is studied for its sociological and historical
representation. However, it also endures as a movie worth
seeing that says something about humans beyond its historical
origin, which may alsoexplain why it has been remade so many
times.
So there are two ways for Spillane to endure, being read as a
period piece, boun within its time, and/or being as a book
that happens to have been written and set in a particular
time. I'm finishing up my first rereading of Maltese Falcon
in a few decades. It ain't no academic period piece to me. It
retains its vitality.
Mark
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