I'm with Jesse. (Still struggling with "That's genre, isn't it?" issue.) Maybe they get a bit more respect than the others, but it's like gonorrhea vs. syphillis(and I can't believe I typed that.)Ginger's metaphor's classier...I'm just Tacky Tackerman lately.

who is always a combination of three not especially interesting things: toughness, efficacy and sensitivity.

One of the most gripping Josephine Teys (not telling which) ends with the detective realizing that the detective fingered entirely the wrong person for the crime, and that there is no way for the detective to rectify this mistake. The detective isn't particularly tough, either.

I've often felt like mysteries have the imprimatur of literary approval that fantasy and science fiction doesn't get, and that overpraising mysteries allows the hypothetical (and perhaps mythical) Snobby Reader a chance to slum with the entertaining reads without guilt.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear dear dear. Very bad time for me to read this, because I'm cooking and cleaning and can't stay online. However, listen carefully enough and you'll hear my teeth grinding.

So, warning: cranky ahead, which you must have known that would trigger.

I think that stuff about literary slumming is crap, frankly. Which mysteries have snob value? Simenon, and Conan Doyle, and PD James, and they're the only ones I can think of. Simenon gets it for creating an unforgettable character in a blisteringly real Paris that changes with time, and for writing about the workings of the human mind as it talks to human motivation, rather than tossing clues about. Conan Doyle? Holmes is not likeable, he's a drug addict and a misogynist, but say "my dear Watson" and there's an entire universe becomes visible, gaslight and hooves clattering over cobblestones and the entire panoply of London in the time of Jack the Ripper. And James? About as unsentimental and crisp as it's possible to get, when she's on. Plus commander Phyllis Dorothy James of Scotland Yard has some cred at her back.

But I'm really curious about which fantasy and/or scifi writer you think isn't getting that snob value or, at least, being taken seriously. Tolkein? Heinlein? Asimov?

I don't buy it. I've spent thirty-plus years listening to people drop their voices to awestruck hush levels when discussing scifi and fantasy.

How is that not interesting, anyway? I don't think I get that.Especially, if you mix in other stuff.

How is that not interesting, anyway?

Damned if I know. Maybe being able to actually write has something to do with it, rather than the choice of genre in which said writing occurs?

Sorry, Deb, don't mean to affect your molars.

But I'm really curious about which fantasy and/or scifi writer you think isn't getting that snob value or, at least, being taken seriously. Tolkein? Heinlein? Asimov?

I get the feeling Heinlein and Asimov have both suffered huge drops in their literary cred. Tolkien less so, since Auden pimped for him and the movies have renewed interest.

I'm not really advocating for science fiction or fantasy to get a boost here, so I don't have a list of under-respected authors in mind. I do think writers like Ursula K. Leguin and Samuel Delaney do get a bit more literary respect. Maybe Wm. Gibson.

But that wasn't so much my point. I'm not necessarily buying the article's contention, but just musing about the idea that mysteries have gotten a critical free ride. Not the Josephine Teys of the world, but the Sue Graftons who write very formulaic stuff.

I've spent thirty-plus years listening to people drop their voices to awestruck hush levels when discussing scifi and fantasy.

Yes, but they're fans. Seriously. In the mainstream reviewing, Ursula Le Guin consistently gets respect. She is also consistently cited as the only respect-worthy SF writer. By contrast, Chandler, Sayers, and James always get props.

What free ride? A free ride by who? If one genre (and as you may have noticed, I don't write straight genre and rarely read it) is outselling another, there are all sorts of reasons that can be the case: better writing, sheer weight of numbers - a problem which solves itself in the end - or something in the concept of the genre or particular authors therein that fills a need in the public's reality.

And Sturgeon's Law (ahem) applies to every field. For every Sue Grafton there's a Robert Aspirin, writing fluff in another genre.

Jeez.

Wait, are you talking about reviews, as opposed to sales?

Oh. OK. Different deal entirely.

I wouldn't know. Believe it or not, I don't read reviews 99.99% of the time; only the ones I need (of my own stuff and friends). And I wouldn't read fantasy or scifi reviews in any event, because neither genre produces much that I choose to read, and the litcrit wouldn't mean anything to me.

Reviews, I'll take your word for it. Carry on.

She is also consistently cited as the only respect-worthy SF writer.

Well, Philip K. Dick too. And more obscure/literary people like Octavia Butler. Margaret Atwood gets tons of respect, even though she claims she's not writing SF (but she is!).

People like Karen Joy Fowler appear to making the transition to mainstream cred without stopping writing genre-ish stuff. Also Molly Gloss, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon (though Chabon is writing more genre as time goes on, and Lethem less) ...

I don't think anyone ever claimed Asimov was a great prose stylist, nor Heinlein.

Hecubus, as for that Salon article, I recall it being debated at length when it was first posted, but that might have been on LJ rather than here. I'm sure, whichever it was, Micole participated in it. *g*