File under: Journalists who don�t understand literature, vol 94
Peter Preston adds to David Baddiel�s and DJ Taylor’s entries at the weekend.
He complains that genre fiction - specifically gorgeous, pouting Ian Rankin’s crime fiction - is ‘the poor relation’ to ‘literary fiction’. The usual example is wheeled out in triumph: “Dickens would have seemed a ‘genre’ merchant in so many modern eyes, a mere spinner of yarns for the masses, a downmarket plucker of heartstrings.” Sigh. The Emperor’s tattered old clothes. Dickens was a genre merchant FFS.
But Preston isn’t listening. This isn’t stunning insight; it’s robotic repetition of purblind, provincial ideas. We read it every week as the links show. Thank God for John Banville’s small voice of resistance last week! Literary fiction isn’t about, as Preston assumes, ‘raising big moral issues’. Leave that to Alan Rusbridger. (Try not to laugh).
And anyway, why are these people so worked up about crime fiction’s apparent status? Evidentally they feel shame for wanting to read this tripe. I tell them now: don’t feel shame. Just read it; enjoy your little crimey-whimey and don’t bother us anymore.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- The Third Alternative Sci-fi and speculative fict…
- Fudging the issue
- Fiction Enclosure Before Spike was born, I was …
- False Opposition The ever-stimulating Metafilte…
- Hogging the limelight
