Talk:Airport novel

Anecdote
not sure if it is worth mentionning on the main article. What is called an Airport novel in the States is a Railway Station Novel (roman de gare) in France. I personnally find the parallel amusing. Hachette, the French publishing house started its activities selling in railway stations' newly created bookstores.


 * By all means, it is indeed worth mentioning. Thanks.  -- Smerdis of Tlön 02:06, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

tom wolfe has his critics. but airport novel? hardly

Tom Wolfe is not an "airport novelist". He has only written three novels, and they aren't that popular. How would one equate the Day of the Jackal with A Man in Full? Mauvila 11:30, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Porn?
This excerpt puzzles me: ''Whatever the genre, airport novels typically contain pages of explicit description of sexual encounters, often to the point of pornography; unlike pictorial pornography, an elaborate sexual fantasy that appears only in text can be enjoyed by the reader without making it too obvious to the other passengers what is being read. The cover of an airport novel is often a painting that depicts a collage of attractive women and action scenes.''

As a freqent traveler and avid reader of this genre I have yet to see anything that describes this. Is this a subgenre of Airport Novels? My personal feeling is that it is another genre altogether and has nothing to do with this one. Erotica, like Horror and Sci Fi do not fall into this category. --Laveaux 19:23, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * No, it's not a subgenre (well, maybe romance novels are...), but describes the often-mechanistic (some would say clumsy) way writers of this sort portray sex in their books. I'm not saying you don't read much, but it's hard not to notice a difference between an author who usually just alludes to a sexual encounter occurring and one who writes about the full event. Like Mr. Ludlum and his one-sentence paragraphs. :) Shadowrun 05:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I love this article
Packed full of original material, and seemingly aimed at authors rather than the general reader... But it's just a nice bit of writing. Bravo! Don't let the Wikipedia fascists wear you down!

I also think that Wikipedia desperately needs an article like this, but this one needs to be revamped.


 * I'm not sure if the above comment is meant to be genuinely positive or sarcastic. Nevertheless, I do not consider the following good writing, and if that is too subjective, I think we can all agree its tone is not encyclopedic:


 * "'Wizards and space explorers do not seem to make the airport novel reader's heart beat faster; spies, government and military officials, and powerful business executives do.'"


 * I don't mind that this article exists, but I imagine it will be a challenge to source it, even if the stilted writing is fixed. VectorPosse 09:54, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Serious sourcing problems
Because of the derogatory nature of what we're describing here, we need reliable sources for any authors whose names are to be listed here. Listing an author as writing in this genre without having somebody to quote as a source for the assertion is inviting a libel suit. See WP:BLP. JulesH 13:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)


 * FWIW, I wouldn't call describing a novel as an "airport novel", or an author as writing airport novels, "libellous". It doesn't besmirch anyone's character, attribute a loathsome disease, or even call the writer professionally incompetent.  If so, the reviewers who toss around the phrase would have been sued long before this article was written.  Airport novels are useful things.  Not all fiction has to contain fancy writing or deep insight.  It is possible for a book to be a good airport novel. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Untagging or changing the tags
I have tried to find some sources for this article. It isn't really easy: a lot of people toss the phrase "airport novel" around, but relatively few say more than a couple sentences about what they consider airport novels to be. It apparently isn't a genre that invites analysis.

At any rate, I don't think this is described as "unreferenced" anymore, and I've tried to pare down some of the statements that might be called original research. I'd propose to remove the "multiple issues" tag at minimum. If someone else thinks it still merits a cautionary tag of some sort, please let me know. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:48, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Unanswered Questions?
Is this the only genre defined by where it is read? Or is "beach book/beach read" also a genre? Where and when was the term "airport novel" coined? If you have a Dan Brown in hardbound is it an airplane novel? Nitpyck (talk) 22:39, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

yet another phony genre
The article is just another example of a kind of game many editors like to play with Wikipedia. I call it "metastasizing genres." Nitpyck's questions above are right on the mark. (I might ask, can they really be "airport novels" if most of their sales occur outside of airports? Or if many of their most avid readers might rarely set foot in airports?) I don't recall ever hearing the term "airport novel", but then again, I've never spent much time in airports. "Beach read" is a much more common term (in the US, anyway) -- but it's not as narrowly and arbitrarily defined in terms of theme and quality (or implied lack thereof) as the examples given here. The article doesn't belong in a general-interest encyclopedia. Bacrito (talk) 03:28, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

romans de gare
> "writers in France were aware of this potential market at an even earlier date"

French writers don't necessarily make up marketing terminology. In France train travel was not deliberately killed off as it was in the US, and high-speed train travel developed from the 1960's, largely in parallel with air travel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spamhog (talk • contribs) 19:31, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

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