Comments

1
"Hanky panky pay dirt" is not allowed.
2
So, wait, I can't be an intellectual AND a porn star?

Well, shit. Time to find some new career plans.
3
"This horrible shit is why people don't read book reviews anymore."

Don't you mean, this horrible shit is what it takes for book reviews to get read anymore. I liked when you used to write them, more than just the blurbs you do now, I mean.
4
What's a book?

Is that something like a bank?

You know, those old disused 20th Century fallacies?
5
The snobby books editor of the Stranger decries snobby book reviews.
6
@4, a book is one of those things your mother used to thump you on the head with, sadly not quite hard enough.
7
Worth noting that Duncan here was being self-descriptive. See his recent Q&A about selling out by writing a werewolf novel, and liking it (and imagining himself as a sex worker in the process: "The hooker found herself prodigiously turned on by her trick."): http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov…
8
Anyway, isn't this kinda like bashing Cormac McCarthy for writing Fallout fanfic?
9
@6 no, even though my mom was my 1st and 2nd grade teacher, hitting kids on the heads with books was frowned on in Pennsylvania, outside of Philly itself.
10
@9: I thought you were from-oh God, never mind. If you have unregistered comments hidden, 7 is good.
11
I agree that this review is total BS, but it's worth pointing out that Glen Duncan has flirted with "genre" for a long time, and just wrote a high-profile book about a werewolf. I suspect all his comments about genre purists grumbling about non-canonical details are taken from recent (and bitter) experience.
12
Oh, didn't read @7. Welp.
13
"like an intellectual dating a porn star"

With terrible analogies like that, is the reviewer a porn star for their dayjob?
14
@7: "Worth noting that Duncan here was being self-descriptive. See his recent Q&A about selling out by writing a werewolf novel, and liking it (and imagining himself as a sex worker in the process: "The hooker found herself prodigiously turned on by her trick."): "

I don't think that makes the analogy any less curious/inapplicable. I think it's worse, that they seem to regurgitate the same bad analogy because they for whatever reason think it's "clever".
15
"I thought we'd finally done away with the tired old snobbish idea that 'real' writers are literary writers, and that genre fiction is not 'real' fiction."

Snobbery never goes out of fashion.

Paul, maybe you're significantly younger than Duncan* (46), but I doubt that he's as young as theses snobs come.

* Based on clues from things like your story about Borders, I think you're 10 or fewer years younger than this.
16
Absolutely dead on. There is no room whatsoever for exposition in a genre novel. These people should take their cues from authors who were hugely successful - like, say, Heinlein, and stay away from exposition or exploring things like politics.

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