[Prestidigitweeze]

Interestingly, that very novel is often referred to by critics as "great," yet it is listed on Amazon under Fiction > Genre > Historical. That alone tells us the distinction between genre and literary is too arbitrary to focus on either way.

Some of the most respected writers I've known are the very people who got me to read specific genre novels. Recs from writers generally celebrated as literary include Mantis, by J. W. Jeter, La Brava, by Elmore Leonard, Red Harvest, by D. Hammett, Code of the Woosters, by P. G. Wodehouse, A Hell of a Woman, by Jim Thompson, everything by Patricia Highsmith (whom novelist Lynn Tillman feels is the best modern novelist on the subject of guilt), Black Friday, by David Goodis, short stories by Ramsey Campbell generally and Killer on the Road, by James Ellroy. My best friend (who had written eight published novels at that point) even recommended a book by Mickey Spillane, but I must confess I've never been able to read it.

I grew up in a houseful of literary classics collected by my English-teaching mother and grittier modern lit favored by my father (Selby, Sartre, Rechy, Henry Miller, Mailer, William Burroughs, Genet, etc.).

My older brothers, however, read a lot of SF. The books they left behind comprised my only real exposure to genre fiction until certain writers I knew personally suggested I pay attention.

So whenever someone teases you about reading genre fiction, remember that the books they do read might have been written by genre fiction fans.

Remember, too, that books which seemed lurid, pedestrian and declassé to readers in the '50s and '60s are often considered literary classics today.