The English Teacher's List of Defiance: Popular Genre Books That Are Better Than "Literature " - Page 4

I was once asked during a job interview who I thought were the 3 greatest American Novelists of the 20th Century. I said Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Elmore Leonard. I didn't get the job. (I learned later that I was supposed to say Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner.Mea Culpa.) In my subsequent career in Academia, I have held to two principles:1) Drama is not Literature - it is its own separate form; and 2) The best writing is found in the genres. I don't discount mainstream literary fiction; "Gatsby", for example, is a great book. It's just that "The Glass Key" is just as good, and Hammett is a better storyteller AND writer than Fitzgerald. So here are a bunch of genre titles that meet the criteria of "Literature", and are better than some of the crap I was required to teach.