NewMexiKen watched an interview early this evening with mystery writer Tony Hillerman. If he’s unfamiliar to you, I suggest you take remedial action. Suffice it to say that his main characters are Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, and his whole cachet is the Navajo culture where he sets his stories.
Anyway, Hillerman said he sent his first novel, The Blessing Way (1970), to his agent, who had trouble selling it. As Hillerman put it, the novel was caught between genres — not quite a mystery, not quite a literary novel. Hillerman asked the agent what he should do about rewriting the book. “Get rid of all that Indian stuff,” she replied.