All my English major friends and relations will want to look at this guy’s rant (you have to scroll down to Monday the 16th) on how all the good stuff to read is consigned these days by the high-brow to “genre fiction,” meaning mysteries, thrillers and sci-fi. Of course it is; always was; the real question is why anyone cares where it’s been consigned as long as it’s available for a couple of bucks at the used bookstores. Sci-fi fans (I can’t speak for mystery and thriller fans because I never read that crap) periodically strain for an academic stamp of approval, and even get a provisional version of it for a little while sometimes, but the best stuff invariably comes in unexpectedly (if not always unpretentiously) from the fringes. Amherst took in Samuel Delany only after he was well into his post-intelligible period.
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