I understand (and agree) with the idea that genre fiction should not be all that one reads (which is part of why I have moved into other "realms" of fiction the past 10 years or so), but I still read it as an attack on the SF/F genres in general, claiming that the vast majority of it is crap (which is what those snobs see it as). He didn't do that good of a job differentiating good SF/F from the bad, and seemed to be making the case that non-genre fic was the only form that wasn't all crap.

I realize that genre's typecast authors, and that can be a serious problem (kinda like racial profiling), and that there ARE indeed crap works in my preferred genres. But I still think that his apparent prejudice that genre fiction is diversionary is very narrow minded.

And whether he truly has that prejudice or not is besides the point: most book critics/reviewers out there (including the people that teach "Literature" courses in schools or universities), and book sellers and librarians as well, do indeed have this prejudice.

I remember when Piers Anthony (not somebody I would say was much more than popcorn/diversionary in most cases) put out the novel "Firefly" he intended it to be a "mainstream" horror novel (like King and Koontz, neither of them gets lumped entirely into genre sections), but everywhere I saw it (library or store) it was sitting there in the SF section, or with an SF sticker on it. That even happened to Whitley Streiber's "Communion" which was written as Non-Fiction (Streiber truly believes that he was abdcted, and that the stuff in the book really happened). But where did I always find the book? In the SF section.

Do you understand what I'm trying to say? Did I miss what you were trying to say? Did I read his post wrong, and get the wrong message? Please clarify for me.