by Ed Gorman

I woke up the other day to find several e-mailings expressing great irritation, shall we say, with Ben Yagoda's dismissal of contemporary crime fiction in that day's Salon. I logged on to it immediately, of course, expecting to take my place in the mob that was just then forming.

To my surprise, I found Yagoda's piece to be awfully civil for an "attack." Even more surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with him on a few points.

For instance, Yagoda says that blurbs have become ridiculous. And who could disagree with that? In a rush to make our genre respectable, we've begun lavishing ridiculously inflated praise on each other. I know whereof I speak. I've been both lavisher and lavishee.

What Yagoda doesn't mention is that not only are genre writers doing this, so are literary writers. Authors such as Toni Morrison, Johnathan Franzen and Cormac McCarthy are constantly touted as "great" writers. And if you doubt me, take a peek at the New York Review of Each Others' Books sometime.

Another thing Yagoda doesn't take into account is that all of us scribblers work in the most inefficient business in the history of capitalism. I don't think you can blame us--lowly mid-listers like myself --for hoping that people will say nice stuff about our books in advance. Blurbs, if nothing else, are like security blankets for writers and editors.

I also agree with him about the unseemliness of literary writers "anointing" writers of popular fiction. It's almost always a bit condescending, the massah standing on the back porch pointing out the "best" of his darkies to his friends. He mentions Eudora Welty's "annointing" of Ross Macdonald. Not only do I agree with her assessment that Macdonald was a major literary figure, I think she managed to do this without a whiff of snobbery. Other anointments might be more problematic. BUt as with all literary judgments, isn't this always a matter of taste?

Where I think Yagoda gets into trouble is in the expectations game. First of all, he sets up Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald as absolute masters. He doesn't seem to have the time or inclination to point out that masterful though they were--and how can a reasonable person argue that judgment?--they were hardly without flaws. Nobody is an an absolute master.

If I remember my Flaubert correctly, even he wrote a few lousy scenes.

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