When something is really bad - a book, a movie, a painting, a joke, it is, in fact, really good. Perhaps that is why some of our actors and writers are as successful as they are. People love to check out what fresh depths they might have plumbed.
Harry Stephen Keeler was a pulp novelist who was so bad that he was good. As a writer of detective fiction, the only thing he had in common with Agatha Christie was the year of birth, 1890. His plots were ridiculous, the denouement pathetic, and his characters had strange names and spoke in strange dialects. Years after his death, however, Keeler became a cult figure with fan clubs and websites devoted to him.
The popular novelist Neil Gaiman said of him, “My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may have been the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. There are few faults you can accuse him of that he is not guilty of. But I love him.”
