The Millions - Details

Dear Millions readers, do you have any insights into the mystery of the two faces of David Brooks? I find his duplicity fascinating and genuinely troubling and would be delighted to have it illuminated.

The "Let me explain my master plan" speech is a staple of crime novels, and has enlivened any number of TV shows. We accept the convention without balking because generic narratives likeThe ABC Murders, Scooby Doo, andMurder, She Wrotearen't claiming to be "smart"; they're meant to entertain. But when characters who've been granted all the appurtenances of serious drama - histories, mannerisms, tastes - are suddenly reduced to conduits for information, as they are inTell No One, the reader experiences cognitive dissonance.Who writes this stuff?he wonders.

The answer, in this case, is the quintessentially AmericanHarlan Coben, from whosenovelthe film was adapted. In a memorableAtlantic Monthlyprofilelast year,Eric Konigsbergportrayed Coben as a nice guy, albeit slightly insecure about his reputation vis-a-vis that of his Amherst dorm-mate,David Foster Wallace. But this being theAtlantic, the profile also attempted to pose questions (or stoke resentments) about the nature of literary distinction:

In Las Vegas, I asked Coben how he felt about being invisible to the world represented byThe New York Times Book Review,and about the parallel-universe status that so much crime fiction, including his books, has. At first he wasau faitabout it, but then he got worked up. 'If I asked you to name five great books that survived 100 years ago that don't have a crime in them, you couldn't,' he said.

Konigsberg and Coben are right to suggest (and I'veargued before) that the distinction between art and genre fiction rests on false premises.Cormac McCarthyalone should demonstrate that a novel can contain a murder, or an apocalypse, or adead mule, and still be literature. Yet to imply that a writer of westerns, thrillers, or romances automatically deserves to be considered alongsideDostoevskyis to err in the other direction. If anything, theNYTBR'sproblem is not that it accords too little serious consideration to genre writers, but that it accords too much to novelists toiling in the vineyards of literary fiction.

That is, there is a distinction between art and entertainment; it's just not the one we've been thinking of. FSG'sJonathan Galassiand Grove/Atlantic'sMorgan Entrekincame close to pinning it down at apublishing panellast year, when they suggested that "genre fiction" aims to repeat an excitement, by meeting established conventions, whereas literature inaugurates new conventions, and thus new excitements. (Of course, innovations of character and of language require more column-inches to explain to potential readers.) By this definition, plenty of the short stories inThe New Yorkerconstitute genre fiction, while some "crime novels" - those ofRichard Price,for example- are literature. And even great artists - the Dickens ofLittle Dorrit, comes to mind - can lean too heavily on crutches like the expository filibuster.

Without knocking the pure entertainment value of watching Harlan Coben's characters fulfill their generic destinies,Tell No Oneis noCrime and Punishment. It's not evenThe Fugitive. Yet it seems frivolous to bemoan the literary establishment's "parallel universe" when your own universe comprises a vast audience and sums of money Dostoevsky only dreamed of. If literary discrimination is, by definition, elitism, it is, in America, an elitism without teeth. And even when elitists like me campaign to preserve the meaning of the words "smart" and "literary," we know that a taut, sexy, and ultimately silly thriller is still nothing to sniff at.

Well, the short answer is that they don't have a date yet, but we can at least hazard a guess. The first book,The Path to Powercame out in 1982; the second,Means of Ascent, in 1990, and the third,Master of the Senate, in 2002. So, after doing some back of the envelope calculations, I would expect to see the fourth and final volume (tentatively titledThe Presidency) some time between 2010 and 2014.

The historian says he has completed the opening section of his fourth LBJ book, filling hundreds of pages just to tell of Johnson's brief, unhappy vice presidency underJohn Kennedy, concluding with Johnson being sworn in as president after Kennedy's assassination. The last book will be "very long," although likely less than the 1,000-plus length ofMaster of the Senate. He is reluctant to reveal details, but says the Kennedys will be "more than characters; they are protagonists in this book."