{"id":16105,"date":"2010-09-01T23:35:03","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T03:35:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=16105"},"modified":"2010-09-01T23:35:03","modified_gmt":"2010-09-02T03:35:03","slug":"more-prof-mondo-thoughts-on-overrated-writers-what-lasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/09\/01\/more-prof-mondo-thoughts-on-overrated-writers-what-lasts\/","title":{"rendered":"Prof. Mondo: More Thoughts On &#8220;Overrated Writers&#8221; &#8212; What Lasts?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2010\/09\/block.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16106\" src=\"http:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2010\/09\/block.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"185\" height=\"273\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>The Huffington Post<\/em> published <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/anis-shivani\/the-15-most-overrated-con_b_672974.html\" target=\"_blank\">the article on America\u2019s most overrated writers<\/a> that inspired the <em>National Post<\/em>\u2019s article previously discussed <a href=\"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/2010\/09\/01\/national-post-the-overrated\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> at <em>TEI<\/em>. Having read both articles, I was reminded of a conversation I had with detective fiction grand master <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lawrenceblock.com\/\">Lawrence Block<\/a> this past Winter.<\/p>\n<p>Block has spent his virtually his entire career (more than sixty books) writing genre fiction, from lesbian porn in his college days to his award-winning series featuring recovering alcoholic PI Matt Scudder. He was the visiting writer here at Mondoville, and as the fan\/stalker who did the most to get him here, I escorted him around town, and among other things, we talked about fiction, mainstream and otherwise. He noted that with very few exceptions, almost no one reads the \u201cserious [read mainstream or literary] novelists\u201d of fifty or more years ago. On the other hand, people are still reading and rediscovering the writers of genre fiction, especially science fiction, fantasy, and detective fiction (which was, after all, a favorite of Frye\u2019s.) For that matter, people still read Verne and Doyle, long after such contemporary best sellers as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/E._D._E._N._Southworth\">E.D.E.N. Southworth<\/a> have been consigned to the ash heap of doctoral dissertations.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, bestselling fantasist <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/David_Eddings\">David Eddings<\/a> observed that when a writer enters the area of the mythic (as distinct from the self-consciously mythologically allusive), he or she \u201cmay as well be peddling dope,\u201d and he meant it as a good thing. These genre novels are highly conventionalized, of course; in the same conversation, Block mentioned that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_B._Parker\">Robert B. Parker<\/a> (who wrote a dissertation using Frye) described himself as \u00a0writing Westerns on a frontier that was paved over, and that the Western itself was a romance.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s worth noting that the writers both <em>Posts<\/em> beat up on are mainstream writers, the sort that Joan Hess described as \u201cwriting stuff where nothing much happens to people you didn\u2019t like to begin with.\u201d However, if Block\u2019s observation holds up, it\u2019s the Parkers and Blocks that will continue to engage readers decades from now, and perhaps even a century later, and it may well be because their works tapped into the archetypes and myths in a way that the \u201cserious\u201d writers (and the critics) found to be infra dignitatem. Frye would have understood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Huffington Post published the article on America\u2019s most overrated writers that inspired the National Post\u2019s article previously discussed here at TEI. Having read both articles, I was reminded of a conversation I had with detective fiction grand master Lawrence Block this past Winter. Block has spent his virtually his entire career (more than sixty [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[75,123,142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","category-popular-culture","category-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Prof. Mondo: More Thoughts On &quot;Overrated Writers&quot; - What Lasts? - The Educated Imagination<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/09\/01\/more-prof-mondo-thoughts-on-overrated-writers-what-lasts\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prof. Mondo: More Thoughts On &quot;Overrated Writers&quot; - What Lasts? - The Educated Imagination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Huffington Post published the article on America\u2019s most overrated writers that inspired the National Post\u2019s article previously discussed here at TEI. 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