Defenders of the genre

It's the day after the fast. I'm trying to stay out of the big litblog skirmish (except to say that shame, shame, SHAME on Salon for publishing an article about one Jew having a beef with another Jew on Yom Kippur. Like that's gonna help matters...) and what do I see? the whole literary/genre argument getting revived thanks to PD James and Ian Rankin:

TWO of Britain’s best loved authors have hit out at literary snobbery, saying that crime writing is long overdue the recognition of a mainstream literature award.

Baroness James of Holland Park, better known as P.D. James, and Ian Rankin said at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival that genre writing at its best was the equal of so-called “prestigious literature”.

Despite the popularity of crime writing with the public, they said, the literary world looked down on it and on other genres as “inferior”.

James, the creator of the detective Adam Dalgliesh, told The Times: “I would say genre writing tends to be less well regarded. I don’t think that’s fair.

“Genre writing at its best can stand with any good, straight novel. It can tell you more about life today than more ‘prestigious’ novels.

“What’s interesting about the crime novel is it can explore all sorts of problems that worry people today and often does it more realistically. It often tells you more about the age in which it’s written . . . the crime novel can tell you more about the social mores and problems and complexities of the age.”

Rankin, who made similar comments at the Cheltenham Festival, also sends a shoutout David Peace's way, which I certainly won't argue with. The man's a phenomenal writer who should get way more recognition than he does (hmm, if Martyn Waites can get published here, thanks to Pegasus Press, why not Peace?

Comments

[birnbaum]

Sara I am not going to try to figure out your thinking or motivation in mentioning Steve Almond’s crotch-grabbing, dick -pulling press release at Salon and opting out of any comment other than to trivialize the matter as a squabble between two landsmen.

Admittedly I literally have a dog in this hunt as Stevie thought it was funny to drag my precious, and, dare I say innocent, Rosie into his latest impersonation of a real writer. Not to mention comparing me to Regis Philbin. Ouch. To quote Omar (of the Wire), "he gotz to be got."

Seriously though, mentioning this scrum and not commenting suggests that there is an equivalence here between Mark Sarvas' stance and Almond's posturing. Which there isn't. And that doesn't even deal with his transparent pandering to an anti web-log backlash. I leave it others to comment on Almond’s talents as a writer but his ambitious striving and attacks on other writers are self serving and,well, pure crap.

[Ron]

Oh, for crying out loud. There's no moral obligation to take sides on Almond v. Sarvas. You want Sarah's opinion? She said it was a lousy thing for Salon to do. Gee, I wonder what that might possibly imply about whether she admired the piece?

[David J. Montgomery]

This reminds me of how literary feuds are so much like academic feuds...and as Santayana said about them, the reason they're so nasty is because the stakes are so low.

That being said, the Salon piece struck me as being more tongue-in-cheek than anything else.