In the round-up over at NBCC blog today, the recent roundtable on genre reviewing is mentioned. Here we go:

Former NBCC board member J. Peder Zane discusses the panel at the recent NBCC meeting, and the pressure to review "genre fiction." Is this why David Foster Wallace’s list of top ten authors includes Tom Clancy and Stephen King? You decide.

UPDATED: The link in the NBCC post to Zane's site is now gone. No idea where it went or why, but they are no longer mentioning his post in the round-up for today. Odd.

So over to Zane's blog where it turns out he is an editor of a recent book on writer's top ten lists (which explains the DFW mention). Zane is not pleased with the perceived reviewing pressure. As he explains:

Truth be told I was dismayed by much of the discussion which suggested that newspapers should devote more of their dwindling review space to "books people actually read."

So then he trots out James Patterson and Danielle Steel (might as well have been Stephen King and Nora Roberts) and bemoans the fact that they already "dominate the bestseller lists" and states "What readers do need is assistance in locating the less popular "literary" works worth their attention. "

Okay - I'm not annoyed. Yes, everyone knows what they are getting when they read Patterson and Steel (and Roberts - although I won't agree to that on King), but sometimes you just want to read something expected, sort of like you want to watch reruns of "Friends" or go see a Spiderman sequel. Popcorn movies, mindless tv, comfort reading. We all have our reasons for reaching for this sort of entertainment and they are our own reasons. So let's not judge what some folks do sometimes.

Where Zane gets me (because he does try not to judge) is the "less popular literary works" statement. What about less popular mysteries, science fiction, romance, thrillers, etc? Why does it have to be nongenre (and thus literary) underappreciated works that critics should look for? I can't be the only person who was bombarded by Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy or Thomas Pynchon in the last few months. Did they have to be reviewed in every newspaper everywhere? Were readers possibly missing out on hearing about other books because the whole world had to notice The Road?

But then again - those are literary books, so I guess extra reviewing is needed.

Zane is worried about this push to review genre books - very worried. "My fear - no, make that prediction - is that literary fiction will be increasingly marginalized as general interest publications focus on "'books people actually read.'" So clearly it must be one or the other, right? And to carry that further - readers apparently reach for only one or the other. Huh? My mother reads every new Mary Higgins Clark mystery - she puts them in the bathroom or beside the bed and gets through them in a matter of days. In the meantime she is also reading a half dozen other literary books at the same time. She just likes Clark. That author does not define her however - it is just one small part of who she is.

Right now I'm reading Liseys' Story. What does that make me? (I also love Tom Clancy's Patriot Games - one of my all time favorite books.) Yet I still happily look for fiction wherever and whenever I can find it and I think the fact that I am very democratic in my tastes is a strength, and not something to fear.

In the end Zane gives us a huge generalization: "Of course there are many fine genre writers who deserve - and receive - critical attention. But one of the main reasons reviewers don't focus on their work is that there is only so much one can say about books that, like sitcoms, are formulaic and predictable. The best effrots [sic] of Michael Chabon, Lorrie Moore or Jonathan Lethem provoke far more interesting responses than the works of Patterson or Steel."

Okay - so all genre books are "formulaic and predictable"? Does that mean Jo Walton, whose Farthing is alt history and thus sci fi is equal to Steel? Is every mystery the same? Every fantasy? (Are we saying Philip Pullman is predictable? Was Tolkien?) It is absurd to suggest all genre writers everywhere are the same (you can't even say that about sitcoms - Sports Night anyone?), and just shows yet again what this whole discussion is really all about.

Literary works must be better because they are literary and genre works must be worse because they aren't. LIterary works deserve to be reviewed and genre works, aside from a few exceptions, don't. Where I come from this is called snobbery (literary or otherwise) and I'm ever so sick of reading about it.

Just review books that are good and get over the category crap. All readers want to hear - ever - is about a great book. Where it sits in the canon of literary achievement does not matter. And if that makes a difference to a reviewer then I'm sorry, you aren't thinking about your audience, you're thinking about yourself and how liking that book reflects on you.

I have read Danielle Steel (long ago - but still), and Roberts and King and Clancy and Grisham. (But no Patterson, I'm afraid - he just never caught my interest.) This does not make me common or lazy or stupid. Nor does reading Andrea Barrett or AS Byatt or Michael Chabon or Jonathan Lethem or Ernest Hemingway or F Scott Fitzgerald make me smart or cultured. They are all books, and reading them simply made me a reader.

Go ahead and judge; I'm too busy reading right now to care.