Niche-ification

James Reasoner, who’s certainly written his fair share of novels in a variety of different genres, wonders when the mystery world became so heterogeneous to the point of polarization:

When did the mystery field become so balkanized? I started reading mysteries in the Sixties, and I read everything. The classic hardboiled stuff — Hammett, Chandler, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Mickey Spillane, Richard S. Prather. More traditional whodunits — Ellery Queen, Rex Stout. British mysteries — Agatha Christie, Dorothy S. Sayer, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham. Spy novels — Ian Fleming, Donald Hamilton, John Le Carre, Man from U.N.C.L.E. books, Edward S. Aarons. I read about rogues like the Saint and the Baron, I read about cops like Roger West and the guys from the 87th Precinct. I could go on, but you get the idea. I read just about everything there was in the mystery field . . . and it seemed perfectly normal to me. Now you got your hardboiled readers laughing at cozies and your cozy readers sneering at the hardboiled stuff, and for all I know people who read cat mysteries can’t understand why anybody would want to read a dog mystery, and vice versa. I don’t understand it. Give me a good story and some reasonably interesting characters, and I’m fine with it, no matter what the trappings might be.

It could be said that back in the Sixties, the world was a far less niche-driven place. I’ve already spoken about how the middlebrow ruled popular culture back then, but they sure don’t now, because technology and society have shifted away from a common culture, where everybody paid attention to the same few things, to a disparate culture, where a few people pay attention to many separate things and argue vociferously in favor for those things. And where there’s passion and vociferous defense, there’s also argument and defensiveness.

Never mind that the mysteries Reasoner brings up, while there are big differences, they really aren’t that many, once you look past the surface trappings. But I do believe that it’s a different story, that when it comes to genre niches, style rules the day over substance, at least in terms of how the constraints are laid out and adhered to (or not.) In other words, Agatha Christie is closer to Ross MacDonald than oh, Ken Bruen is to Lilian Jackson Braun.

Lee Goldberg (who linked to Reasoner’s post first) goes a step further, wondering if this penchant for conflict isn’t just a fan-based thing but inherent among writers:

You notice this a lot on many of the mystery lists (like DorothyL, etc.) and among the writing blogs.  What’s interesting to me is that the balkanization doesn’t just exist among mystery fans, but among mystery writers as well with, for example, the hardboiled writers all but sneering at authors who write cozies, as if they aren’t real writers because their heroes don’t fuck, or take a beating, or go to murder scenes and see the brain matter on the wall and the dead man who has shit himself in his last spasm of life.

Hardboiled detective books and police procedurals have no more literary merit than any other books in the field because they are grittier.  I don’t much like cozies myself, but I certainly respect the writers who write them. It’s just as hard to write a cozy as it is to write a tough noir tale. Who knows, maybe it’s even harder.

The interesting thing for me is that I’ve been questioning my own reading tastes of late. Generally, as anyone who’s read this site for a reasonable length of time knows, I don’t read cozies. Most of them aren’t my thing, and I just don’t buy into a lot of the amateur sleuth constraints. But at the same time, I’m fully aware that many of my readers — at least, those who read my column at the Baltimore Sun — do, and want to know what the best of that subgenre is. So even though they might not be to my taste, I’m making more of a concerted effort to read them in the hopes of finding a gem that dedicated fans can then look for and buy. Might not be worth much, considering my inherent bias, but it’s something I must try.

But more importantly, reading different subgenres or different fields means that I can expand my own ways of writing and telling a story. I don’t know if writing a cozy is harder than writing noir, but writing itself is really, really difficult. There are so many variables I’ve only become aware of since starting a novel of my own, and in order to improve and build, I have to seek out other work that gives insight into how it’s done, how books are structured properly, how to pace and show conflict and tell a story. Why should I sneer at certain books based on subgenre alone? I should only be disdainful of bad writing.

And since there’s plenty of that to go around, why make an issue of what’s actually being written in the first place? It’s great that mystery fiction has so much diversity and scope. Why limit yourselves to only a small slice of it?

So let’s give the last word to Ed Gorman, who sums up things rather nicely:

The cozy vs. hardboiled argument got so dull after about the sixth time I ran some version of it, I would no longer even print letters about it let alone opinion pieces.
Thus Mystery Scene had several years of pure bliss.

There’s only one way to say it–we read what gives us pleasure. Why would you read something that irritated or bored you? I agree with James. No sub-genre is inherently superior to another.

Both sub-genres are filled with really good writers and really lazy writers. But if you can get past your particular snobbery, you’ll find that both have plenty to offer readers who like good writing and strong storytelling in any form. And that’s absolutely true. Arguing the inate superiority of one over the other is waste of time.

Works for me.