What a pity. I had higher hopes for HuffPo’s book section but wow, they were dashed against the rocky shores of sweeping generalization and people who don’t know diddly squat talking out their asses. I mean, how else am I to judge the entire offering of a diverse selection of writers discussing all things book except by judging the whole on a limited and asinine sample, right? Right! Of course!
Alan Elsner went to the library and borrowed a stack of romances. Seems because he wrote a book called “Romance Language” he is often asked if he’d written a “romance novel.” You can see where this is going.
So he borrows a stack and finds his conceptions of the genre were out of date. He then takes the time to carefully list the ways in which romance novels take the romance out of romance.
Well, I suppose it’s only fair that he make such cringe-worthy judgments, since his article takes the quality out of the HuffPo Books section.
The sad part is, aside from some painful and cruel assumptions about romances and the women who read them (hold on to your blood pressure medication), there are some points upon which I agree with Mr. Elsner. He isn’t so far off base with his first assessment – that the female protagonist is usually young, brave, and independent.
But Elsner’s assessment of the hero is monolithic and indicates that when he went a-hunting for romance, he was sadly limited in his selection. Not all heroes are ‘hunky but haughty” “prototypical alpha-males.” Considering that the hero will “find himself way out of his depth when this chit of a girl awakens feelings he’s never known,” I suspect Presents may have been a part of the reading material building this list.
And then he moves on to other commonalities of the romance novel, making sweeping pronouncements that remind me of Dr. Google diagnosing every symptom as meningitis, no matter what symptom it is. No, Mr. Elsner, most of the barriers to the happy ending are not always misunderstandings. Some are sweeping judgments pronounced by someone who ought to know better. No, wait, that would be the happy ending to something else entirely.
And avast, ye hearties, here comes the expected smacks at the genre: the protagonists “are usually exchanging fluids by around page 60. This involves detailed and highly explicit descriptions of kissing, oral sex, mutual masturbation and full penetration. Both parties experience mind-blowing orgasms, described in minute detail.” I’m not sure what to address first, the idea that sexual explication is a bad thing (which it is not) or the myth that romance protagonists knock boots by page 60. In all honestly, this many misconceptions stacked up in ignorant formation just makes me exhausted. But no, there’s more.
Elsner continues on with summaries of the evil characters who try to break up the happy couple with schemes or whatever, and the hero and heroine defeat said evil and live happily ever after, hooray.
Then, alas, my head exploded.
I have nothing against such escapist fiction in principle. And I guess that women have as much right to enjoy pornography packaged to their liking as men. But I simply don’t find these books romantic….
Oh, no. You didn’t.
When does stupid-to-solar-power conversion come out? I could use it to fuel my whole house based on those three sentences alone.
In the romance novels I have read, love is expressed through sex and only through sex. The fact that the hero and the heroine can provide each other with tremendous orgasms becomes proof positive of their undeniable love for one another. If the sex is that good, the love must be real.
Actually, sir, there we agree. I find the books that express the emotional complexity of human relations through the congress of nookie to be tiresome and hate that so much of what is erotic narrative is presented as romance and sold as such, because it is not. One good orgasm does not a happily ever after make, despite many insistent books packaged as “romance” to the contrary. I wonder at the list of books Mr. Elsner took home with him, because that which we consider to be excellent romance avoids that sexually-ever-after cliche with determined alacrity.
Mr. Elsner’s mistake is in assuming that the books which DO rest the struggle of the relationship upon sex are romances. They’re not. Really. I’d almost want to create a recommended reading list but the overwhelming weight of judgmental asshattery is keeping me from doing so.
The true disservice that the “romance” genre does is that it sucks all the oxygen out of the room. It sets up expectations and lays down rules of what “romance” should be and what great sex is like. Publishers expect writers to follow these rules. So do readers. Anyone trying to write a real love story involving real people grappling with real dilemmas is breaking the rules of the game.
No, sir, anyone trying to write a real love story about people grappling with real dilemmas is most likely writing romance. Quality romance, at that. What you are writing, however, is ignorant whining.
But what really made my head meet the desk repeatedly was Mr. Elsner’s discussion of why he doesn’t write explicit sexual scenes in his books:
Partly, it’s because it’s so easy to write bad sex scenes and so difficult to write good ones…. But mostly, I don’t do sex because I’m more interested in love—and love takes place in the mind where it has to fight for its existence against all the other challenges presented by life.
Yes, that is certainly true. But yet it’s so easy to write articles dismissing romance novels based on a rudimentary, dismissive and woefully incomplete understanding of the genre. May I come into your house and criticize your writing based on the note you left for the paperboy?
No?
Then I will judge the entirety of the HuffPo books section as tawdry, limited, incurious and dense based solely upon your article. Fair is fair, after all.
Well, hopefully someday they will make books that work like those damn greeting cards and play music when you open them. Classical music for “appropriate” romance, and some rousing Boom-chicka-wow-wow jazz for the cheap porn. Might make that distinction a little easier for some who only have 1 neuron. I can only dream.
SB Sarah said:
Bingo!! Maybe what he really needs to do is take a statistics class and get a refresher on what it would take to get a statistically relevant sample!
Would he do either? (take a class or read a bigger, randomized sample of romances)
“Ah, bah!” as one of my favorite heroines would say.
And if you read between the lines, and realize that the entire point of his essay was to draw a thick self-congratulatory line between genre romance and his own finely-drawn love story, you get the general idea that he had a hard time selling this novel to the major publishing houses.
The crux of the matter, isn’t it? He reads a romance-novel sex scene as gratuitous pornography, whereas we read it (assuming it’s well-written and appropriate to the context of the story) as a way for our protagonists to express love—or at least its potential—before they’re ready to acknowledge it openly. Ah, hunters versus gatherers.
Liz, if you are really that bewildered, and can’t see through this old set-up, let give you an example of how the racket might be run from my end:
I don’t even have to read Mr. Elsner’s novels to know what I say is true about them.
Why bother? After all, he didn’t bother to read mine.
I loved this post. It’s a great summation of my feelings on the matter. Obviously this man is clueless. What more can I say.
No. I don’t see.
Some of my biggest fans (among the twelve that I have) are men. My husband has read everything (published and unpublished, YA and adult) I’ve written and while he could be saying he likes it just to keep the peace, that’s not how he rolls. In fact, I wouldn’t show him my work for the longest time because I knew he’d be completely honest with me and my tender, Writer’s Ego wasn’t ready to take that on. No one was more surprised than me when he said he loved it and better still, got it.
Husband aside, I have other men who have complimented me on my work—said I made them reconsider earlier opinions of romance. And this is considering I write YA romance, so it’s not like they were thumbing through looking for the pages-long explicit sex scenes. They liked the story.
And as for me? I happen to like fast cars and Sportscenter and baseball almost as much as I like my Christian Louboutins and Valrhona dark chocolate.
My point? We’re all different. We (men and women alike) simply cannot be categorized or compartmentalized based on assumptions or sweeping generalizations.
I have to say, as someone who used to hate on romance novels from afar, I felt the same way as Elsner. Then I actually read one that I randomly pulled off the shelf at Walgreens. It was everything Elsner complained about.
Then I found some book lists and found Kinsale, Roberts, and ohmygod Bitten (Armstrong). I probably looked like that old ad where the guy sits in the chair in front of a tv and has just been blown totally away.
Also, the sex scenes were a revelation. The scenes from books I love are so complicated, so gorgeous, tender, fun, crazy, and wild, I’m amazed at the level of writing.
I read quickly, and widely, from many genres and I have so many favorites, but I have learned to LOVE these books about love. When they are bad, they are worse than other bad books of other genres, possibly because when they are good, there is nothing better.
Sarah: But Elsner did make clear that his opinion was limited to only those books he did read, and not the genre as a whole. The last paragraph is the only one that lumped the genre in with the mix, and while his last paragraph isn’t one I agreed with, what he said about publisher guidelines and reader expectations was true—some publishers do have very strict guidelines and readers of the genre do have expectations. For him, those guidelines and expectations leave little room for his definition of romance. But not everyone subscribes to that definition, nor is he saying they should.
There were hits and misses in his post, but for my part, I didn’t feel as though he encroached upon my opinions by stating his, even when he referred to what he’d read as girl porn. A lot of the reason why has to do with the fact that the point of his post is that he doesn’t find romance fiction particularly romantic. Fair enough. His post was an opinion piece, not a review of the genre, and nowhere did I see him profess himself to be a romance genre expert. In the same way you seem to think he’s reading more into the romance genre than his limited experience allows, I believe there are more than a few people here and on the Huffington Post forum who’ve read more into his post than was actually written, and I don’t understand what makes one reprehensible and the other A-OK.
Laura – There’s nothing wrong with not liking romance, thinking it’s porn, and saying so. Is it the most flattering thing in the world to read? No. Can it be upsetting for some? Obviously. However, until someone demands outright that I acquiesce to their opinion that romance is porn, and that I submit to their idea of what romance should be, I’ll allow them their opinion. That’s just how I see it. The source of my bewilderment isn’t with his post, but why so many feel it necessary to ‘read between the lines’ and make assumptions based on facts that aren’t there. It’s OK to be angry and feel insulted by what was written, but making shit up to back up those feelings? I dunno. Makes me feel weird is all.
Barb – Saying men and women view relationships differently isn’t a sweeping generalization. Psychologically, men and women look for different things when it comes to relationships and romance. They also react differently to situations, and release different hormones and chemicals. Most romances are written with a female reader in mind. It doesn’t mean men can’t or don’t enjoy them, but men aren’t the target audience, so a man not understanding the appeal of romance doesn’t surprise me. That was the only point I was trying to make.
I never understand this argument. Of course he’s allowed to say that it’s porn. Just as I’m allowed to say that his assessment of romance is ridiculous.
I mean… he’s posting it online. On a major blog. Clearly, he’s either trying to spread the word about his opinion, or he’s welcoming debate. It’s not like I overheard him talking with a friend while waiting in line for a movie.
Really? He says, “Here are some general conclusions” – if the conclusions are general, do they not apply to the genre as whole?
The only place I found where he limits his opinions to a specific subset is in just one phrase here: “In the romance novels I have read, love is expressed through sex and only through sex.” And yet, his conclusion is, “Publishers expect writers to follow these rules. So do readers. Anyone trying to write a real love story involving real people grappling with real dilemmas is breaking the rules of the game.”
Clearly, to me, he is extrapolating his experience with “the books he has read,” that all seemed to be about hott sexxoring and little else, to apply to the whole Romance spectrum. The “rules of the game” do not exist the way he thinks they do.
I don’t find the kind of books he read to be particularly romantic, either, but I know the whole romance genre, while it contains the books that fit into his conclusions about what the genre is, is neither defined nor limited by that subset. He seems to have missed that.
C’mon Liz. If there’s nothing wrong with his opinions, then there’s nothing wrong with ours. Getting a little disingenious there. You claim you don’t understand our reactions; when people explain them, you claim we’re making things up and aren’t letting him have an opinion.
I guess if you really can’t see what a lot of others see very clearly, you will remain bewildered and feeling weird. You use the phrase “making things up” as if what we are saying isn’t true. That’s an insulting accusation to those who’ve commented here, certainly. Did you mean it that way? Or are you just assuming we know we’re making things up and we wouldn’t be offended at you calling us liars?
Or is that just accusation of “making shit up” the same sort of making shit up that you are accusing us of?
HuffPo would not post my comment, but I took issue with the paternalism of Elsner’s conclusions:
That men have a right to enjoy pornography is taken as an established fact. That women might also is something that he’s forced to guess about. In other words, he expected more from us. He’d prefer we read Jane Austen, or better yet, an improving book like his that is a
His six point analysis is a basic outline of dramatic structure. Literary fiction rejects dramatic structure in favor of such nebulous ideals as “importance” and “realism.” The result is usually boredom.
Tessa Dare’s post neatly demolishes the rest of his poorly thought out essay. And you only have to compare her Amazon sales rank with his to know what the reading public thinks is worth their time.
Actually, I’ll admit to jumping to conclusions about one thing. I don’t believe for one solitary second that in every single book he read, “love is expressed through sex and only through sex” which is why I called him a liar. You’re all more generous than I am! 🙂
If he checked out a “stack” of romance novels, what is the statistical chance that every single book he picked up was just Tab A into Tab B = love? I believe he may have read one like that. Maybe even two. But all of them?
Not one had the man and woman learning about each other and gaining respect for one another? Not one had a tender touch or a sympathetic look or a full-throated declaration of love? None had devotion or understanding or groveling? None had genuine, deep conversations between the two characters? Letters exchanged? Risking of life and limb? Friendship? Caring? Vulnerability? Admiration? Sacrifice?
Not one?
I’m not buying it.
It’s not always fair but there is a certain element of being in a group and being able to criticize and being out of a group and being able to criticize. Elsner isn’t in the group, so he is allowed his opinion but I’m also allowed to feel that his opinion is likely ill informed. He is criticizing the entire genre based on a few books he read (he states everything as if it is fact that applies to all romance novels though he says he only read a few and at random at that) and doesn’t even use modifiers like “most” or “some” which might lead me to be less harsh on him. If someone in the group was critcal in the same way it would a) be a specific book and not all books and b) they’d have a higher level of credibility since I’d know they didn’t discount the entire genre ahead of time. Honestly this piece would bug me no matter what genre he was talking about, because it is lazily written.
Well said, Brigid.
Basically, you felt this article was like:
A good man in the room watching sports on TV while you are curled up with a well written romance novel that keeps you turning pages. But then this man hits the MUTE button so there is this sudden silence, so you can hear his fart against the leather of the chair.
While this is not the point of this post, I always wonder about reviewers who choose the “random off the shelf” way of picking books to represent a genre. I don’t read Westerns. Nothing against them (I actually really enjoy cowboy/ranchers/rodeo riders/etc m/m loving books, and the setting and lifestyle is partly why), I just don’t tend to read them. But if I was going to start reading them, I wouldn’t go into the section (if the library happened to have one) and randomly take three or four books off the shelf (cause seriously, how many did he really buy and then read?) and expect through blind look to hit the best of the genre, or even higher mid-levels. I’d go to a few review sites ABOUT WESTERNS and see which names repeatedly crop up, and then I’d go and ask people I knew what they’d recommend (and can have them narrow it by things they think I’d enjoy based on my own reading list), and then I’d get a freaking stack and read them. And if I didn’t like any of them? I’d assume I was originally right and Westerns just aren’t books I’d enjoy. I wouldn’t say Westerns “[suck] all the oxygen out of the room.” (Hey, I did link it back to the post.)
Out of all the people who dis the romance genre for being “porn” or “all bad” or “nothing but shitty escapism, which I would never do”, I really hate when the people doing so write “love stories” that “grapple with real issues.” Romance, at its core, is about love stories, and grappling with real issues (like, oh, relationships and friendship and love and sex and how to share your time and being with someone else, etc, not to mention all the other issues they grapple with like rape, disabilities, societal restrictions, etc).
Usually, the only difference is that
our heroines live
they don’t always have a HEA. Also (and this can totally be a generalization based on my limited experience with “literary love stories”), romance is written by women for women, and their stories are written by men for “intellectuals.” And if I’m not mistaken, the last time I picked up a “literary love story”, it ended where the hero thought the heroine enjoyed being raped by her father. (They may have had a HEA. At that point the book – which had not been so bad till then – became fire fuel.)
I think I will stick with romance, and doing one (of many) better than Elsner, I won’t say all “literary love stories” suck just because a few I’ve read did. Following my own advice, I asked around and found some I did like, because no genre has ONLY bad books or serves no purpose.
*huff huff huff* This article pissed me off much more by the end of this comment than I thought it would. Well, definitely woke me up.
Ha, I see others made a similar point so I guess the beginning of my comment was related. But just yay!, yay!, yay! for you Smart Bs.
It’s not that he didn’t make good points. It’s just so hard to find them through all the bullshit he was also spewing.
Loved your comments on literary fiction Laura. That is exactly how I feel and why I read a lot of romantic fiction. Interestingly I was in a book store today (that also carried magazines) and I was stunned at the number of skin flick mags ie FHM, maxim etc taking up shelf space versus the amount of space allotted to romantic fiction. I have never read any diatribes that say “I guess men can have their porn in magazines as they feel fit but that is really shithouse journalism”, so why does this continually occur with romantic fiction?
Maybe it’s because all five of the only honest-to-God romance novels that I’ve read have been historicals set primarily in England and published after 1990, but what he claims to have read doesn’t sound like it fits in the genre at all. Isn’t love sort of an essential part of the romance?
I don’t buy the ‘‘men and women are wired differently’ argument. It may be true, but it isn’t verifiable, since males and females are socialized differently from birth, and the societal (and sometimes physical) penalties for stepping out of the assigned roles are considerable.
As others have said, there are terrible books in all genres. I have seen bashing of other genres, or bashing of all fiction, or bashing of television. People love to feel superior about something.
“[The romance genre] sets up expectations and lays down rules of what “romance” should be…. Publishers expect writers to follow these rules…. Anyone trying to write a real love story involving real people grappling with real dilemmas is breaking the rules of the game.”
I hate to admit it, but having been rejected multiple times by category romance publishers for my “unique voice” (what exactly does that translate to, anyway?) I too have entertained this particular gloomy sentiment on a wine-soaked evening or two. But excuse me, he doesn’t get to say it! Not only is it an inaccurate blanket statement, but I don’t think he’s earned the right to complain about our industry the way we have.
Romance writers have been fighting the image that we write “women’s porn” for years. Romance novels have a plot, an emotionally satisfying ending, and a likeable characters. Porn is sex for sex’s sake. Too bad Mr. Elsner can’t figure that one out. He’s so condescending I have to wonder what his problem is concerning sex. A lack of frequency or a lack of knowledge on the application of making love?
Y’know, when I read this in his post, it reminded me of something and I couldn’t quite place it until finally, this morning, when I was wiping off my dog’s muddy paws after she’d been cavorting in the rain, it came to me. Several years back, I judged a book in a contest that left me shaking my head and wondering WTF? This was part of the back cover copy:
Now, this particular book happened to be written by a man, but I’m well aware there are male and female writers alike who have this attitude towards writing “love stories” vs. “romances.” You suggest that their book even has romance embedded within it and they recoil with horror saying, “No, no, no! My book doesn’t have romance. It has a love story!”
So what creates the difference there? Is it because of the sexxoring? Do pleasures of the flesh somehow preclude somehow from achieving that higher plane of lurve?
I mean, to me, I know that the difference between something I would call a romance vs. a love story generally has to do with the tacit and not-so-tacit rules of the genre. That the relationship between the two main characters remain central and without their becoming involved with other parties (as a general rule) and of course, the HEA. But I’m also well aware that most people who recoil at the idea that they might romance and insist that they write love stories have no clue of the genre framework. (Such as Mr. Elsner and that commenter over at HuffPo, Mrs. Missouri.) They just know that what they’re writing is more important or different or flat-out better than romance.
So… how?
Oy, sorry for the wonked up formatting. Coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.
I appreciate that many of the people posting are offended by Elsner’s essay but you do seem to be overlooking the fact that it could have been a great deal worse; at least Elsner regards love stories as something worth writing.
Now that Harlequin has not only comprehensively trashed the brand but also claimed that the only people complaining are ‘a small, but vocal, group of authors’ we can expect to see a lot more people falling in with Harlequin’s assessment of romance readers…
I’m a voracious reader and I’ve never heard of this guy.
I know that means nothing, but if he’s going to be petty, so am I.
Either way, I think the thing that disturbs me the most about his ‘essay’ is that you never mention any citations.
Any clown can say they went into the library and checked out a bunch of books and write an opinion down, but doesn’t make it an essay. It makes it a bad blog entry.
It’s kind of sad that out of everything this is what really gets under my skin, but really. What writer above third grade level doesn’t know how to do that? How freaking hard is it?
Unless he went out of his way to find the most ridiculous romances he could find and it was so obvious he didn’t want to admit it…
So the author walked into his local library and “borrowed a stack.” He was “quite surprised” at what he read in that random sampling of romance novels, “especially the graphic descriptions of sex in which little or nothing was left to the imagination.”
So my question is… where is his local library located? In Soddom? Or maybe the next town over, Gomorrah.
::cough::
actually, I’d kind of like to know where it is. I might be switching libraries. ;D
LOL i totally hope so LOL
@Jess Granger
Doctors have, for years, run trials on drugs meant to treat males and assumed they would also work on females. Or, for that fact, run drug trials on Caucasians that they then assumed would work on other races.
What’s more troublesome are that women (dare I say it? I shall! those who style themselves feminists) join in this tirade about “women’s porn” or “emotional porn” or what have you. As if women don’t have a right to anything but bare feet and KP.
And so what if it IS porn? Or even EMOTIONAL porn? (Good of them to differentiate.)
@Victoria Dahl
Because you dissented. HuffPo isn’t known for taking dissension well.
@Wendy
Maybe they just don’t like sex. Or don’t get any. Smacks of self-loathing to me.
@Bronte
That.
@Barb Ferrer
Exactly.
My book got reviewed/critiqued by a stranger (if not outright hater) of the genre and she entirely missed the point that my book is an HOMAGE to the genre.
It still pisses me off and this is an arena where the authors are encouraged to comment on reviews, and I still haven’t decided whether I want to or not.
@Brad Hanon
Yes. “To sum up” is the key here.
@Moriah
I agree with you on the so what if it is, point. So what if women feel sexual gratification while reading. There are a lot of things that turn me on in this world, but I don’t hear anyone calling ballroom dancing porn.
It is sexual, personal, emotional and at times certainly explicit. But it is more than that.
A good love scene is always about more than sex. And good romances, even good erotica is about more than sex. It’s about something else too.
I don’t think I’ve ever come across porn that was about more than sex, which is why so much porn is boring.
To say romance is nothing but women’s porn is to say romance is flat and focused on one single emotional response, one of sexual gratification.
I find that very little romance is that one-dimensional. Porn doesn’t usually have the power to make one cry. (Unless it is painfully bad) Yet I’ve laughed out loud and shed tears over more romances than I can count. Porn does not convey emotion. If this man didn’t feel the emotion of the novels he read, he probably didn’t connect with the emotion of the story for some reason, either they were romances that were bad, or he just didn’t “get” them. It happens a lot.
And I will stick by the fact that men and women think differently. It’s a good thing. What is a bad thing is dismissing other sex because of a difference of opinion and placing one’s sex above the other’s as superior. I think this article subtly did that. That’s what I object to.
I wonder if it bothers HuffPo that they are a forgone conclusion? Even before I read the article I knew what it would say. HuffPo + Romance Review = Unoriginal snark, sweeping generalizations, references to women and porn. Yawn.
You know what would be refreshing is if they would use those shiny intellects to write something real about the genre.
But no, as usual the so called “smart kids” took the easy laugh, the cheap shot. As I knew they would.
Oh and I hate to break it to men (with regards to romance genre), but It’s not about YOU! It’s about us.
@Jess Granger
I don’t disagree with you at all. Maybe my analogy to drug trials was misplaced.
Oh, sorry Moriah,
I agreed with you there. There were a couple of comments that seemed to be saying that the men vs. women thought pattern argument was unfounded. Sometimes I do think the “you just don’t get it because your men,” argument gets thrown around as a dismissal as easily as the “that’s fine for you because you’re women,” patronizing tone seems to sneak in. I think we should all be smarter than that. There are differences in perception but no one should be writing the other side off easily.
I actually thought the drug trial point was brilliant.
Those of you whom refused to reply are better then me. You’ll find a short reply to him from me – the one refering to him as “Dude.”
Part of me really wants to go to his house backed up by people from here (including a few of the men I’m sure are on this site) and Wendy: The Super Librarian, and give him an earful.
The other part of me just wants to roll my eyes and dismiss him as a putz.
Yeah, well, I gave in, although it was that Mrs. Missouri responder who finally broke me. And amazingly enough, my response got through. I thought for sure I’d be banned or something, since I essentially mocked her.
Well, at least we know he’s not gay.