Well, I’m confused then, because I thought you just said the DD keeps them separate.
Mine does. There’s separate alphabetically sorted sections for Fiction, Scifi/Fantasy, Mystery/Crime, and Teen/Young Adult.
Did you read the second paragraph of the post you responded to?
Sez who? I’m not even sure what you are calling “literature”. Is “Tom Sawyer” literature?
Absolutely. It is a work of prose fiction that has became a “literary classic” (to quote the National Endowment for the Arts).
Are you asking whether it is shelved with fiction in libraries? Yes, it probably is. Certain classics are.
As I also said above, dividing lines are blurry.
I did, it was not illuminating.
As with so much great literature, repeated readings may prove rewarding.
Well, my library does separate out mysteries and science fiction from general fiction. But it does not have a section for “literature”. It just has a big fiction section sorted by the author’s last name.
Apparently not in this case, but if you’re not interested in elaborating, I’m not that hung up on it.
I judge humor and some sf for a contest, and most years I get a book entered in both categories - and properly so.
My library shelves humor differently also - and Twain goes into literature, not general fiction. My example was more whether the book was humorous fiction or humorous nonfiction. I get some humor books in both classes - sometimes it is hard to judge. But I’ve got different rubrics for each, so I have to pick on.
Historical fiction is another example. It is mostly fiction, but if you fictionalize known history there is a problem, unless it is in an alternate history genre.
I’m told that historical fiction is hot now. Especially mysteries set in the 19th and 20th centuries, undoubtedly because modern forensics, databases, and communications make classic whodunit forms nearly impossible without many contortions.
Putting famous people into or solving mysteries goes back a ways, to be sure. Peter Lovesey’s Bertie series, about Edward VII when he was still Prince of Wales, contain wonderfully sly looks at Victorian England. Elliot Roosevelt (ghostwritten by William Harrington) had mother Eleanor solve a murder in practically every room of the White Room during her husband’s terms, with plenty of high-level Washington scandal, though not nearly as much sheer fun as Lovesey was capable of. (Take that The Residence.) Probably hundreds more by now.
I’ve read two different series with Groucho Marx as the detective, so, yeah.
I have Ron Goulart’s (awful) series. Whose is the other?
The other has him visiting Chicago and getting messed up with gangsters. Though, come to think of it, he might be a guest star in another series. It’s been a while and I don’t read that many mysteries.
Agree with you on the Goulart one. His continuation of The Avenger series wasn’t so hot either.
That’s probably Stuart Kaminsky’s You Bet Your Life. The private eye series protagonist is working to save Chico’s life from gangsters he owes money to. Both Harpo and Groucho are also characters. Better than Goulart by far.
I’m currently reading a Victorian murder mystery series by Irina Shapiro about a police inspector in London and a nurse (who was in Crimea with Nightengale). I’ve caught a few anachronisms, but mostly entertaining.