I prefer hard-boiled crime stories (Westlake, Ellroy, Crumley, Pelecanos, that sort of thing), as well as classic noir (Hammett, Chandler, Thompson, Goodis, Woolrich, etc.), but I actually like Christie, or at least the Hercule Poirot books anyway. I can’t take them too seriously, but they go down easy. Not as easy as Erle Stanley Gardner, though.

The old Spy magazine used to have a great little monthly feature called “Logrolling in Our Time” where they dug up actual instances of authors praising each other’s books. I’m sure they could still dig up plenty of material if they wanted, in chick lit, literary fiction, sf, or just about anywhere else.

I’d just like to make it clear that I don’t think Maureen Dowd is satan. Or even stupid. She has a weekly column and I’m thinking sometimes she just can’t think of anything, you know, what with how quiet the world is at the moment. And when she’s got nothing she churns out nothing.

Mark Shulgasser:

i’m just here by accident, one click leading to another, but i dutifully read the rules and yet i see your dowd entry is full of CAPS. so I dare to introduce some myself but i’m confuSed, disOrientED.
Cordially, Mark ShulgAsser

it is odd that ‘women’s’ lit is always such an easy target, isn’t it? i have a special fondness for spy thrillers, and some of them are, indeed, atrociously written.

david baldacci, for instance, made me want to beat myself over the head when I (mistake! mistake!) borrowed one of his books from the library. and i never read sniggery columns about him. Or that Clancy guy, who I used to love as light reading, but can’t stomach any more. god, i hope he’s not one of scott’s ghost writing gigs…

And as you mention him, two hundreds years from now the only thing people will remember about Salman Rushdie is that he was a hopelessly bad writer who the Ayatollah tried to kill. On the other hand, there will be a handful of chick-lit (and YA, and crime) writers still being read.

everyone should read “love walked in” btw!

Scott has made an astute point about guilt. As to the rest, well, it’s awfully easy to take potshots at Dowd.

The thing that really killed me about this piece was that Dowd and her little buddy Leon suggest the following:

“These books do not seem particularly demanding in the manner of real novels… And when we’re at war and the country is under threat, they seem a little insular. America’s reading women could do a lot worse than to put down Will Francine Get Her Guy? and pick up The Red Badge of Courage.”

Apparently they don’t see the irony of using column inches in a national newspaper to write about how people who read Chick Lit should be reading serious books on war….am I missing something or are they wasting space by pointing the finger at fans of the genre when they should have been using that same valuable NTY real estate to – I don’t know – WRITE ABOUT THE FREAKING WAR!!!!!!!!!!

Maureen Dowd has jumped the shark, period.

I should say, although I do not tend to read chick lit myself, I am all for heels over Hemingway — dancing on his grave by moonlight, perhaps.

and angus is awesome. people who take it too seriously are obviously going to miss the whole point of the books. but most people with half a brain will figure out that those books are not meant to be read literally anymore than…. er, certain other texts i could mention. anyway. it disturbs me that dowd is able to get an article like that out at all, but we all know she’s full of crap.