Dorte reading.
I was perusing a list of books I read in 1987-88. Most of the so-called mysteries still rang bells--probably because the network of bloggers and websites on crimespot and other similar gathering places keep them alive.
But a lot of the mainstream or literary fiction I read was from authors I know longer hear mentioned: Charles Dickinson, William Wharton, Nancy Price, Anne Bernays and so on. I wonder if the crime fiction community is doing a better job at keeping names alive than the literary community. Is the link tighter here or am I missing the equivalent of crimespot for other types of fiction? Any one know?
20 comments:
Wharton is ADORED here in Poland and BIRDY is one of the standard books that teenagers study.
I am so happy to hear about BIRDY being read. It was a splendid book and a decent movie.
I totally agree with you Patti. Genre fiction will always have a dedicated fan base who likes to bond over the shared love of the genre. For more broad based literary fiction I think the wide spectrum of stories makes it hard for people to congregate around one idea.
And I second the love of Wharton. I did my senior author paper on him in high school.
Gee, maybe it's crime fiction that now has staying power and will be read in 100 years.
Naw, couldn't be. It's just genre, right?
Non-genre fiction must congregate somewhere though. With the death of the newspaper, how in the world do new writers get any attention much less old ones?
I pulled out my fiction lists from 1987 and 1988. Authors who made my top ten in 1987 were Paul Hemphill (did a Forgotten Books on his fiction), George Plimpton, Peter Gethers, Sara Vogan, Will Weaver, James Lee Burke (The Lost Get-Back Boogie), Thomas B. Morgan, David Saperstein, Mary Gardner and Rick Boyer. The 1988 list included Paul Quarrington, Dan O'Brien, Winston Groom, Richard Ford, W.P. Kinsella, Russell Martin, Robert Daley, James W. Hall, Avery Corman and Doug Hornig. Except for Burke, Ford and Hall and Quarrington here in Canada, the other living writers seem to have disappeared.
The publishing market has been transformed over the past 25 years. Literary fiction is a "niche" market. It seems that all publishers want now are Dan Brown books or Oprah Book Club books. How many of the books and authors you cite would be published today, Patti?
I think college courses in lit are keeping a lot of those authors alive.
I don't know if you'd consider them literature but I'm still reading Bret Easton Ellis & Jay McInerney both of which wrote their most popular/most famous books in the 80s (Less Than Zero & American Psycho by Ellis and Bright Lights, Big City by McInerney). Granted that's just 2 writers and while I've heard of Bernays some of the other authors you mentioned are unfamiliar to me.
No fiction escapes genre, and nearly everything has some devotees who might discuss it somewhere on the Web. Aside from having clangorous anniversary issues out recently, TIN HOUSE and THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION both do their own "forgotten" books columns...Kinsella is still pretty widely-read, I'd suggest...there's a rather self-aware sports fiction fanbase out there, that even still had a fiction magazine or two over the last decade (ELYSIAN FIELDS QUARTERLY for baseball fiction and essays, and ATHLON, I believe, had an eclectic sports fiction title in their stable at one point).
Kent-A lot of those are unfamiliar to me. Is it that they're Canadian?
Of course, Winston Groom, Richard Ford, Kinsella-but some of the others...
Ellis and McInerney still alive.
Hopefully college courses serve this function. But they mostly seem interested in things other than literature if I am to believe my friends who teach it.
Kent-A lot of those are unfamiliar to me. Is it that they're Canadian?
Of course, Winston Groom, Richard Ford, Kinsella-but some of the others...
Ellis and McInerney still alive.
Hopefully college courses serve this function. But they mostly seem interested in things other than literature if I am to believe my friends who teach it.
Some familiar names here. Doug Hornig wrote a pretty good series, 4 hardcover books with Loren Swift as protagonist: Foul Shot (Oct-1984), Hardball (Nov-1985) Dark Side (Oct-1986) and Deep Dive (Mar-1988). I don't know if they were published in paperback. As far as I know, those were his only mysteries. I heard a rumor (so take it with a grain of salt) that his contract was up and no one gave him a new one. That happens a lot, then and now. The bottom line and all that. Kinsella wrote well-liked and successful books about baseball. I thought James Hall as still writing.
As for the genre thing, SF and Fantasy fiction is strongly supported at the fan, author and publisher levels.
Sadly, the publishers don't support fantastic fiction (or, to a lesser extent, crime fiction) backlists as much as they did up through the '70s...
Rick, at least some of the Hornig books (which I also liked) were published in paperback.
I liked reading those lists, even though there were a few authors I did not know.
Like Patti I read mostly mysteries in those years (1987-88). Both were down reading years for me. In '87 I did read George MacDonald Fraser and a couple of Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole books. Fraser died fairly recently, of course, but Townsend is still writing.
In '88 I read two books that remain among my favorites: Lonesome Dove & The Prince of Tides, along with books by Richard Ford and Avery Corman and a couple of my friend Bill Crider's westerns. All are still writing.
Jeff M.
Oh, boy I remember reading the Adrian Mole books. Wasn't there a movie or series too? Lonesome Dove was one of my reading group's favorite books, which really surprised me given the length and setting. And a great movie, too.
THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE and THE GROWING PAINS OF ADRIAN MOLE were both seen on US television (I think I missed GROWING).
wv: dismst
Patti:
The only Canadians on my lists were Kinsella and Quarrington. Todd:
Kinsella has stopped writing due to some type of blockage. His last book was a collection of stories titled Japanese Baseball in 2000 that is not easy to find.
Robert Daley wrote a number of police procedurals and non-fiction books about cops set in NYC. Some I believe hit the bestseller lists. Rick Boyer won a best first Edgar for Billingsgate Shoal and wrote at least another half-dozen featuring a New England dental surgeon named Doc Adams. Then he disappeared. Peter Gethers was a prominent editor. Dan O'Brien wrote several well-reviewed novels set in the Dakotas. Will Weaver is a Minnesota author.
Then I need to look into some of these writers. Oh, I do remember Avery Korman now that I look again. But still...Was 1987 so long ago?
That's a really interesting question, Patti! I think there are a lot of literary communities out there that "keep the memory alive," so to speak for different genres. But I have to say I'm not aware of them. I think part of it is that so much fiction has been written that it's really hard to keep track of it all. So unless one's a fan of one or another genre, it's easy to forget. Another is that maybe other genres don't have someoen like you to remind us of forgotten books : )
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