The Los Angeles Times has a Q&A posted this week with Michael Chabon on the topic of genre and pulp fiction as Chabon continues to promote Maps and Legends.

“Every so often a writer hacks and crawls out of the brambles of genre,” Chabon says. “Somebody like Philip K. Dick clearly began in the pulps, writing mass commercial fiction. Almost by dint of the passion of his fans, and the intensity of his vision, and all of that stuff, eventually he ends up getting canonized in Library of America. But those are much more the exceptions.”

Chabon gives a list of authors who have inspired him over the years: Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Ross Thomas, Ursula K. Le Guin, Frank Herbert, Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury, Jack Kirby, Steve Gerber, Alan Moore. “And there are a whole list of borderland writers — John Crowley, Jorge Luis Borges, Stephen Millhauser, Thomas Pynchon — writers who can dwell between worlds,” he adds.

The rest of the interview can be read here.