tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post5140044274724015528..comments2023-12-14T10:28:43.397+00:00Comments on Declan Burke: Alas, Poor Novel. We Knew It, Horatio ...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-21121901606655998282007-11-18T09:45:00.000+00:002007-11-18T09:45:00.000+00:00Dana - I think the key word here is 'enjoyment', o...Dana - I think the key word here is 'enjoyment', on whatever level that happens to occur - story, style, character, etc. I think the more experimental literary writers have wandered off at a tangent, in which the writing has become an end in itself rather than a means of conveying a narrative. Shun them in the streets, they who declare 'story' naive or - worse - claim that 'all the stories have been told already'. A story doesn't have to have a moral, or - as Poe demonstrated in his short stories - anything as conventional as a beginning, middle and end. But almost by definition, the inherent conservatism of the crime / mystery genre lends itself to narrative - 'experiment' that drifts away from that undermines the whole point of crime writing. And that's my two cents ... Cheers, DecDeclan Burkehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14322645323239292406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-48207448529253222822007-11-17T21:09:00.000+00:002007-11-17T21:09:00.000+00:00Well put. A recent thread on the Crimespace site d...Well put. A recent thread on the Crimespace site decried the lack of the "new" in crime fiction, an unwillingness to be "experimental." Not advocating for the same old same old, but experimentation for the sake of experimentation runs the risk of moving writing into the realm of contemporary classical music, where the composers really only write for each other, as it takes a DMA to understand the compositions; forget about listening to them for enjoyment. Literary fiction risks a similar fate, if the comments on Thirwell's book are any indication.Dana Kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350344882342624735noreply@blogger.com