Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site dartvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!zehntel!dual!amd!decwrl!decvax!dartvax!karl From: karl@dartvax.UUCP (S. Delage.) Newsgroups: net.books Subject: Top-class genre authors. Message-ID: <2296@dartvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 14-Aug-84 13:35:33 EDT Article-I.D.: dartvax.2296 Posted: Tue Aug 14 13:35:33 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 16-Aug-84 03:47:52 EDT Organization: Dartmouth College Lines: 19 allegra!don tells us it's unusual for a top-class author to write science fiction or other ``genre'' books. The four he cites, C.S. Lewis, H.G. Wells, J.R.R. Tolkien, and E.R. Burroughs, are not, by many people's standards, top-class authors. That's fine; we all have different ideas about what makes a good book. But his article implies that ``genre'' authors are somehow inferior to whatever the other kind of author is. -- Isn't all fiction a ``genre'' of one kind or another? It seems that ``mainstream'' fiction is [at least] as prescribed in its limits and is as much as ``genre'' as science fiction, westerns, and the others allegra!don lists. -- The general denouncement of writers who don't write what the N.Y. Times Book Review likes, {i.e., ``genre'' authors.} is something that no one needs. So they like to write differently than John Updike. That doesn't make them non-``top-class''. dartvax!karl -- karl@dartmouth