Still the Same Old Story: Literary vs. Genre

Ray Banks blogged his latest thoughts on the matter, including:

While I'm racking up the Hail Marys, I might as well confess this too: I didn't read a hell of a lot of crime fiction when I embarked on The Big Blind. Jim Thompson was an obvious influence, but then so was Chuck Palahniuk. So was Charles Bukowski. So were Ken Kesey, John Fante, Raymond Carver and Hunter S. Thompson. While arguments could be made for Palahniuk as a genre writer in literary clothing (what's more noir than transgressive fiction?), in the Ira Levin mode, I never set out to be a crime writer.

I commented:

I got hooked on reading crime fiction because the plots moved fairly quickly in a direction I could follow easily: a crime has been committed; it's up to the protag to piece things together, and I get to play along.

All writing, I think, can benefit from setting clarity as a goal. What writer wants to go over the heads of his audience? The only answer that comes to mind is a writer who's too clever for his own good.

Like you, I set out to write what I enjoy. What I enjoy isn't limited to crime fiction, so I hesitate to label myself a crime writer—except in the sense that I'm a writer whose stories sometimes involve crime.