From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   Dorothy J Heydt has brought this to us :   
   > In article <1lvubqe.xjjz8wstn6qcN%mbottorff@lshelby.com>,   
   > Michelle Bottorff  wrote:   
   >> Dorothy J Heydt  wrote:   
   >>   
   >>> Lawrence Block, who back in the day wrote lots of whodunits and   
   >>> also wrote a monthly essay for one of the writers' magazines on   
   >>> how to write fiction (generally, everything else in the book was   
   >>> about how to write nonfiction and how to sell it to the editor   
   >>> before you had written it).  One of his essays was titled "Let's   
   >>> Hear It for Sex and Violence!"  He gave a couple of sample   
   >>> paragraphs full of sex and violence, and then said, "You'd go on   
   >>> reading, wouldn't you?"  No, I wouldn't.   
   >>   
   >> I probably wouldn't have either.   
   >>   
   >> I read a Lawrence Block book once, and I did actually finish it, but I   
   >> didn't pick up any more Lawrence Block books, because I prefer my   
   >> mysteries not to have utterly pointless sex scenes inserted in them.   
   >>   
   > Yeah, well, Block (as he admitted from time to time) kept beans   
   > on the table till he hit his stride, by writing soft porn thinly   
   > disguised as case-histories, by "[Various Pseudonyms], M.D."  He   
   > seems to have gone on thinking, perhaps unto the present day,*   
   > that if nobody gets bonked or beaten up in a chapter the reader   
   > will not buy it.   
   >   
   Look at it this way:   
      
   If you buy a DVD that says Slant Eye for the Straight Guy on the cover,   
   you have certain expectations about what you're going to see.   
   If you buy a book that says Lawrence Block on the cover, you have   
   certain expectations.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)