The grubby heirs of Excalibur: swords in the world of Eddie LaCrosse

My friend Teresa Frohock, author of Miserere: An Autumn Tale (my review is here), asked me how the idea for naming Eddie LaCrosse’s swords came about. I thought this might be interesting to others as well. First came the idea of writing the initial novel, The Sword-Edged Blonde, as if it were a 40s detective novel. This was after years--well, Read more

Writer's Day #9: C2E2 report

  In my latest Writer's Day video, I share some of my experiences at C2E2 in Chicago, by far the biggest convention I've ever Read more

The Hum and the Shiver eBook sale!

As the release day for the second Tufa novel, Wisp of a Thing, approaches, you can now get the eBook of the first, The Hum and the Shiver, for only $2.99.  It's a limited-time offer, so hurry before supplies...oh, wait, it's an eBook, they've got plenty.  But the sale ends June 7, 2013! Click here to order from Amazon for Read more

Guest blog: Dale Short on his film Recovering Racist

I was honored to be the first contributor to this documentary Kickstarter project, and rather than attempt to convince you myself, I asked acclaimed author Dale Short, one of the people behind the film, to explain where the idea came from and how important it is.  And please check out the video trailer at the end of his article Read more

Book Review: Paperback Writer by Mark Shipper

"Rock and roll is a joke and the joke is on anyone--performer or audience--who ever takes it for any more than that..." (p. 11) Writing about music, as I've said before, is tricky. The ones who do it well--P.F. Kluge, Sheila Kay Adams, Lee Smith--take it very seriously. So it follows that writing a parody about music, one that's simultaneously Read more
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Genre respect and the NYT

Posted on June 15, 2011 by Alex in blog | Leave a comment

It’s an ongoing issue that genre fiction–mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror–is somehow less important than so-called “literary” fiction. That involves forgetting that in many cases the disposable genre fiction of yesterday (Jules Verne, HG Wells, Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, Louis L’Amour, Jack London, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler) has become the acknowledged classics of today.

Still, it’s frustrating to still see this play out right in front of me, as it did last month in the New York Times. I won’t use the authors’ names here, because it’s not important; it’s not hard to figure out if you feel the need, but it’s utterly beside the point. To me, what’s important is how this “corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals” (props to Spiro Agnew) pronounces and supports its judgment.

Here are two excerpts from the literary novel’s review:

So does the new novel deliver? I’m not so sure…the author seems a bit lost, adrift in unfamiliar waters, and the book feels less like a second novel than it does another try at a first.

There is only so much we can read this way before we are overwhelmed by the desire to drop the pretense.

And here are two from the review of the genre novel:

[The author's] novel has the stylized quality of books by Angela Carter like The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, and it displays similar pyrotechnics.

Yet in a highwire act of her own, [the author] still raises the novel above the ordinary through her ability to convey the richness of the [characters’] emotional lives, coupled with impressive writing.

Clearly the first review was less than positive, while the second was close to a rave. Now, the kicker: which book got the three-page excerpt also published in the New York Times? That’s right, after their reviewer says “There is only so much we can read this way before we are overwhelmed by the desire to drop the pretense,” the Times decides to put that to the test.

As I said, I mean no disrespect to either writer. I do mean disrespect to this constant shafting of the genre in which I work, in which a lot of people do great work that readers actually want to read. How do I know? You don’t get David Foster Wallace conventions; you do get Terry Pratchett ones.

But perversely I also enjoy this lack of respect. Like Superman and Lex Luthor, or Batman and the Joker, your hero is measured against the strength and cunning of the villain opposing him/her. And when you get right down to it, the Literary Establishment is actually a lot like Lex Luthor: powerful, entrenched, sophisticated, and–most delightfully–fundamentally threatened by those aliens in their brightly colored costumes.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go put on my cape and long underwear.