Very happy to have found your substack and am looking forward to your future essays! Also please keep feeding us those book recs. I always feel an extra groove being etched in my brain after reading one of them.
Try Tony Hillerman. Very much in Burke’s mode. There is also a pretty unknown series about which everything is escaping me except that its protagonist is a fish and wildlife officer in CA and the books revolve around various kinds of smuggling, poaching, and sundry other such activities.
I feel the same way about mediocre genre work vs mediocre literary novels. A mid-level science fiction novel will still give me some interesting ideas to think through, even if there's something lacking in the story or prose. But a middling literary novel is mostly just disappointing.
Young novelists with literary ambitions today are going to have to contend with the reality that you do have to offer something to a reader if gaining an audience is part of your plan. If getting a reader to turn the page isn’t a goal, and if you look down on the sensationalist tropes of what’s by now a very rich American tradition informed by a massive genre-pool—which includes other forms of art and media apart from narrative prose—you will have to be colossally gifted. Colossally gifted.
Welp, you've essentially given me a 2026 reading list. Thanks, and I hate you.
Vinny, I got more for ya.
Tremendous article Brett. Yep James A. McLaughlin’s Bearskin (2018) was a mammoth read. Am yet to read Panther Gap (2023).
Thanks, Roddy! Same with Panther Gap but I'd happily read another of his books.
Very happy to have found your substack and am looking forward to your future essays! Also please keep feeding us those book recs. I always feel an extra groove being etched in my brain after reading one of them.
Thank you! And I’m here for the groovin’ and the etchin’.
I love Tana French! I'm a Tana French completist!
I might become one! She’s operating at a very high level.
Try Tony Hillerman. Very much in Burke’s mode. There is also a pretty unknown series about which everything is escaping me except that its protagonist is a fish and wildlife officer in CA and the books revolve around various kinds of smuggling, poaching, and sundry other such activities.
Then of course there’s Chris Offutt
I'll check out Hillerman! Thanks for the recc, and love Offutt.
I was thinking of Kirk Russell’s John Marquez series. No flashy writing but well constructed and thoughtful books
I feel the same way about mediocre genre work vs mediocre literary novels. A mid-level science fiction novel will still give me some interesting ideas to think through, even if there's something lacking in the story or prose. But a middling literary novel is mostly just disappointing.
Young novelists with literary ambitions today are going to have to contend with the reality that you do have to offer something to a reader if gaining an audience is part of your plan. If getting a reader to turn the page isn’t a goal, and if you look down on the sensationalist tropes of what’s by now a very rich American tradition informed by a massive genre-pool—which includes other forms of art and media apart from narrative prose—you will have to be colossally gifted. Colossally gifted.