I agree that popular=bad has been the reigning critical stance for certainly the last 30 years. What's ironic about it is that many of the writers in the Western canon, including Shakespeare, Dickens and Twain, were wildly popular in their time. Popular taste does not always stand the test of time; the public loved Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth and Josiah Allen's Wife and didn't think much of Hawthorne and Melville. Still, if you go back a hundred years, popularity seems to be about as good a predictor of literary worth as critical acclaim.

*cough*

Yale graduate. Living in New York.

Just sayin'.

Micole, you also read a broad spectrum of stuff and I've yet to see you sneer. There are some damned good editors out there. The problem is with the attitude (and I went to both Erasmus and PA in my day, so ex-New Yorker myself, and I loathed the attitude then, too).

And substitute any university you like for Yale - in fact, thinking about it, I don't think any of the reviewers I'm talking about are Elis.

And as someone who is writing crossover genre but who has also written literary fiction, I like 'em both.

Oh, me too. But on a merit basis. Just because someone, as you say, is deemed "literary" by the Powers That Be doesn't automatically make me want to read it. As, of course, something being considered "genre" doesn't make me not want to. (Okay, that couldn't have been any clunkier, huh?)

Right now, most of the stuff in my "to be read" pile is the literary stuff, and that may be simply because I don't have lots of time to read, and when I do (with new baby, two other kids, writing deadline) I'm usually exhausted and not up for much effort on my part.

With writing, too, most of the stuff I wrote in the past was probably what would have fallen under "literary" (or least aspirations thereof, since none of it ever got published), and what I'm writing now is very commerical. Or supposed to be. But that doesn't mean I'm not trying to make it good.

Did you ever read Margaret Lawrence? The Burning Bride, Blood Red Roses? Also mysteries, set against the years following the Revolutionary War. Brilliant, raw, emotional stuff, and she writes like she's a poet at heart.

But on a merit basis.

Yes, exactly. I'm a Georgette Heyer junkie for that reason - her research is meticulous, her sense of time and place stone perfect, her writing lively. She makes me happy as hell, mostly.

But during the kerfuffle at the NYTBR, their man in charge said something about "of course, we'll continue to review the latest from Franzen" (and a couple of others)...

Really? Why? That's parochial crap - why are these people autrmatically going to get the consideration? Suppose they're writing garbage, while someone in West Podunk is writing great stuff? It's the Ladies Who Lunch mentality, and I don't think it's good for publishing. I don't think it ever has been.

(and me out for the afternoon, hoping to have not started a kerfuffle, because all opinion stated by me are mine only)

Franzen. Not all that. IJS. "Mildly amusing" would be what my review would say. If anyone cared...which, maybe...I'm gonna go to Amazon.com and slag "The Corrections" probably not till tomorrow, though.Not just for Deb, because it was the most overrated thing I've read in years. I gave it to goodwill after reading it once...that never happens. Cause I'm broke...buying books is a committment. I gave JF my heart...he gave me a pen...um, the Corrections.

I hated The Corrections. Miserable, nasty people living miserable nasty lives. Most of what I read is books-on-tape, and the topper was that it was read in a miserable, nasty tone of voice by Dylan Baker. (If you are an author, do not let him do your book on tape.)

I was talking books to someone at a party and he and his wife had a topper: the book was so nasty, it took them forever to listen to, and they ended up with something like a $25 book fine. Begs the Q, why didn't they just rewind it and return it, but it was the capper our mutual hate-on for the book.

Sometimes for me, nasty=funny. I'm callous and strange. But I was led to believe that it was also screamingly hilarious and everything and it wasn't. "Bridget Jones" was funnier and she's got three jokes...and I need to let go now, don't I? But I spent money I shouldn't have, because I was depressed and looking for schadenfreude."I can't face the day unless I know somebody is more miserable than me."

It's an odd thing - I'm not saying there aren't people who ought to get looked at automatically, but there again, that has to do with longevity and weight of honours and consistency of work. I'm not a Norman Mailer fan, for instance, but I can totally see why he'd be an automatic. Ditto Phillip Roth. I like about half his stuff, but so what? He's worked his ass off and produced for decades, and his stuff always makes people think. I can get behind that, as a reason to make him automatic.

But why the trendier stuff? Because it's popular with the New York review circle, and because they're buddies with the reviewers? OK, fine, whatever. Just damned if I'm going to be able to take "well, Johnathan and I had truffled risotto at Tavern on the Green last week" seriously as a reason to shoot a given author to the top of the pop charts at NYTBR.

And I realised why I mentioned Yale, earlier. It's because my closest personal acquaintance in the NY literary mafia teaches at Yale.

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray -- it's a YA novel set in 1895, featuring a 16-year-old girl sent to boarding school when her mother dies, who realizes that she has visions.

I read this at first as WRITTEN in 1895, and was fascinated by the concept. Then realized that's not what you said. Dang. (And welcome!)

I can see how the "happily ever after" bit could get annoying and disrespected. And sometimes it's so lame and tacked on (could someone PLEASE restrain a lot of romance novelists from writing any more freakin' epilogues that try to prove that not only are the happy couple happy, but so are their children??). But really, that's part of why I LIKE romance novels. It's comfort food--I know exactly how it goes, and I like it that way, when I'm in that mood....

And hey, if it freaks people out when when me and my Harvard-educated dyke friend are trading trashy romances? More power to us, I like to freak people out.