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So he borrows a stack and finds his conceptions of the genre were out of date.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.
I don’t blame you, Barb. Missouri probably has never read a single romance novel in her life.
The whole thing, in a way, reminds me of an incident I had in college. I was taking a creative writing course – this was before I realized, I’m a terrible writer and should stick strictly to singing. The teacher was one of those women whom give real feminists a bad name. She only read that boring kind of fiction where no action happens, the wife gets cheated on but stays with the husband, cries a lot, and kills herself without ever confronting anyone. Anyway, I had just finished reading the book Hannibal by Thomas Harris. She got up and started bashing it (without knowing I read it) calling Harris a woman hater and praising Jody Foster for not being in the movie.
I asked her, “Did you even READ the book?”
She blushed and stammered and admitted she hadn’t. She judged the book solely on what other women, many – thought not all – who only knew how the book ended, had said/written. Decrying Harris as a woman hater who was against the feminist cause and wanted women to be slaves to men.
I proceeded to point out that the book actually praises Starling’s strength as a woman and is actually very empowering, and how Dr. Lecter is the only man who is brave enough to not only agknowledge her strength, but love her for it. (Though he does intend in the end to brainwash her into believing she’s his murdered baby sister. Instead, however, she gets one up on him by becoming his lover instead.)
TOTALLY humilated my teacher. She barely spoke to me after that and never offered an opinion as she had been discredited in the eyes of the other students. Judging a book solely on the reviews of others. Not reading it herself. Not only that, but judging the author as well.
That is what both MM and Mr. Elsner remind me of. My CW teacher who judged a book based on what others told her and her preconceived ideas. Without reading it.
I would have liked Elsner to provide the names of the romances he read and their authors, so that we could have some idea of where his opinions are coming from. There is such a wide range of quality in romances, as in any other genre. He really should have asked someone with more experience for their recommendations.
I found his article much less interesting than the notice on the right-hand side of the page that Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has a new book coming out, entitled Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 😀 . Spamword is whether98 as in ” I wonder whether 98 romances recommended by actual readers would have changed Elsner’s opinion”.
I get so damn mad at these “liberal” publications like the HuffPo that are so gracious to grant me the right of anything.
I really don’t give a flying fuck if Mr. Elsner thinks it’s ok that women like porn or not.
And as for romances vs literary fiction or porn or anything else. I love romances because they let me sink into the feeling. I always equal a good romance to the end of Kevin Costner’s speech in Bull Durham. A good romance is like “a slow wet kiss that lasts three days.” Oh my.
@ Sarah
Hmm, the last time a man disrespected the genre so blatantly we ended up with this:
http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/an-open-letter-from-sb-sarah
Not to suggest that Mr Elsner could ever rise to the level of our own DocTurtle (because, you know, Patrick IS pretty cool).
But methinks perhaps what Mr Elsner needs to hear is the slap of a gauntlet being thrown to the floor, followed by the thud of Lord of Scoundrels being delivered to his mailbox…:-)
Just a thought.
If Elsner is really interested in stories of love that “has to fight for its existence against all the other challenges present in life”, he should log on to Ashwinder and read Miamadwyn’s Care of Magical Creatures . Its one of the most moving love stories I have ever read. Spamword his56 as in “his 56 novels couldn’t possibly be as well written as CoMC.”
Elsner’s column is entirely predictable. Disappointing, but predictable. He’s a third rate nobody, so desperate for attention, that he has to trash an entire genre, without any real effort to be fair. Mr Elsner, it is romance novels that support the entire publishing industry. It is romance money that pays romance authors, and many others. To dismiss an entire genre in an effort to seem literary and above it all, only makes you seem small and bitter. You wouldn’t know romance if it bit you on the ass.
@Barb Ferrer:
(sorry, bit of a tangent here!)
FTW! It’s so funny that here is an article about not generalizing romance books, but yet, it’s okay to generalize about men and women – that we think differently. Who knows how much of that is socialization and culture? I really hate it when people tell me that I “think like a man” and mean it as a compliment. What does that mean? What does a man think like? It opens a whole can of worms – what women are like (emotional, nurturing, blah blah) and men (logical, straightforward, blah blah). So, thanks for your response!
Whether men and women are hard wired to think differently or not, there is one thing that has been scientifically tested, we do as a general rule respond to sexual stimulus differently.
Which is why I made the claim that men and women can see totally different things in a love scene.
Not all men think alike, and women aren’t all alike, and we don’t all respond to the same stimulus alike. It is literally different strokes for different folks.
What bothered me about the article is that it seemed to completely ignore this fact. Even if this guy read every romance in the history of romance, he still might not see what others see because his brain isn’t reacting to it in the same way as someone else.
I guess that’s his loss.
I guess it also means that any of these arguments about opinion are pointless in the long run. I’ll keep doing what I do because I love it.
As my husband would say, everyone else can go pound sand.
Did anyone look at his author page on amazon? He says that “In this book, I also have female protagonists which is also new.”
On the male verses female reactions thing, anecdotal evidence:
I sent the book I am currently editing for publication out to my 4 beta-readers – 2 men, 2 women. This book features, among other things, a “bromance” between two men, Simon and Hal. At one point during the book, they have a severe argument which sets off a chain reaction for later events.
The 2 female readers? A-OK on that. The 2 male readers? Wanted to know why Hal lost it at Simon at that particular point (as opposed to all the other times that Simon is an arsehole to him). The growing tension I thought I had subtly but clearly painted sailed right over their head.
Sample size of 4 doesn’t mean a lot, I know, but it is a minor example of how women respond differently to relationship cues than men…
Vicki,
It looks like he means that for him as an author writing female protagonists is new, not that it’s a new idea in general.
Of course, I could be wrong…
@Wendy and Jess: I just disagree that those differences are solely due to gender. Even if it happens to be true in a lot of situations, I just don’t see the point in generalizing because people are all different. Yes, Alan Elsner may have those viewpoints because he’s a male, but I’m willing to bet there are women out there who have those same viewpoints about romance books. Are they exceptions? If so, then overgeneralizing isn’t really useful. I just don’t really see the point in it. I think stressing gender differences is a lot of times, a bad thing. When an author writes targeting one gender, I feel like it pigeonholes both and keeps the non-target gender away. I think an author should just write a good story.
And you’re right ::shrugs:: These are all opinions so, I’m afraid we will just have to agree to disagree on this point.
Miri said:
That is presumably why you didn’t bother to run a search on HuffPo for the term ‘romance’.
If I were Joanne Rendell, or Emily Cotler, I’d be a bit pissed off about that…
(Might be a double-post, I encountered a computer problem and am rewriting from memory.)
One of the reasons I love this site is the thoughtful and articulate comments (along with the man-titty and cover snark of course). I hope someone posts the link to the comments section at the original Huf-Po article so that Elsner can see what dimbulbs romance readers are.
Taking my cue from Elsner by making a broad, sweeping generalization based on extremely limited exposure, I’m going to say that his book is a piece of crap. Not that I’ve read it (or anything else by him other than his Huf-Po article) and thought about it or anything like that, but I already know that it’s dreck.
I am starting to wonder if critics of romance who dismiss the genre as porn do so because, when (if) they partake of the infamous random sampling, they get massively and humiliatingly turned on as a result. Hence, OMGS PORN!
I don’t really get a girlie boner when I read romance. Like someone mentioned upthread, the scenes more often read as symbolic and illustrative of the ‘state of the relationship’ to me. In well-written romances, they progress the story because are part of the narrative, not just a hompy hiatus from it. However, if these noobs have never been exposed to inventive, rich, nuanced sex (scenes) before, the poor dears probably can’t handle the stimulation.
I agree he should read Care of Magical Creatures 😀
congress48? Really?
@Jody: I was right there with you on that thought. I thought that was kind of odd as well. Personally, I think a romance novel is extra awesome if the sexxoring is so hot i get turned on… I read a LOT of erotica (for research, really) and so I’m not easily moved by much. I fingt the hottest sex scenes are the ones where the emotion is so palpable that you’re completely in their heads, in addition to being privy to their lust.
I can see Tessa Dare’s comments on Huffpo now. It may have taken the moderators a while to read through all of the comments and approve them.
This all comes back around to “OMG the little woman ain’t readin’ what she ought.”
When Elsner claims romance is sucking all the oxygen out of the room, I think what he really means is it’s sucking all the hot air out of pretentious windbags who talk out their asses about shit they don’t know about in self-important book critic blog posts. To which I say, “sluuuuuurrrrrp!”
spamword “standard37” standard response repeated 37 times is “Fsck you, I read what I like.”
Oh HuffPo, you’re such a joke. I’m with the commenters who are like… what do you expect? Not that it doesn’t irritate me anyway, I just already associate HuffPo with screaming headlines, yellow “journalism,” and as many hot pictures of women as possible, even when irrelevant to the story or to, you know, the universe generally.
Anyway, men are people too. I think it’s ludicrous that we as a society often act like they are somehow hardwired to understand “feelings,” OMG. Because Nabokov, Shakespeare, Neruda, Donne, etc., didn’t understand every lousy nuance of human feeling? Right. I do think men and women are different, though I’m not going to attribute it to biology when we’re brought up so ridiculously differently, and our lived experiences *are* separated by a vast gulf. I don’t think it’s an uncrossable one though, and in fact I think the very possibility of crossing it is at the heart of romance. At any rate, I think saying men “just don’t get it” is both untrue and excuses a type of intellectual and emotional laziness that is so prevalent in our culture right now. Men just don’t get Jane Austen? No, many of them just have no interest in exerting themselves to do so, because they’ve been told all their lives there’s no reason they should, just as I’ve been told all my life that NASCAR is not for me (it’s been very effective too). But it would be wrong, and worse, LAZY of me, to assume that therefore NASCAR is worthless trash, and that if I went to one race an thought it was awful I’d have the right to dismiss the whole thing. A man asked me and another woman once why he should read Pride & Prejudice since, “It’s just a love story, right?” Aside from the pure folly of that comment, I think our response was instructive—both our jaws dropped, and then I said, “No! It’s about money and status and power too.” And the other woman said “And it’s about communication and first impressions and well, about pride and prejudice!” And beyond that it’s certainly a historical document at least as entertaining as say, Pepys’ diaries, which are about a lot of the same themes. And not one of those themes pertains only to women.
Anyway, end rant. I’m just mad because the whole thing is so lazy and casually insulting. If you’re going to insult my reading, you’d better READ it first, and have a real critique. And even then I’d like to point out that even if some of my reading is akin to eating Hot Cheetos, both of them bring in millions of dollars a year and are enjoyed by thousands, so maybe you’d be better off analyzing the appeal and exploiting it. And don’t even get me started on his “permission” to enjoy what he considers smut. Ugh!
And I do join with those who think this fellow merits a “care” package and an open letter, perhaps containing Lord of Scoundrels and Naked in Death… except that really I feel like he deserves a lump of coal and such a nice present would be better for someone more deserving.
Spamword was really94… as in, “Really??? I can think of at least 94 reasons why this is ridiculous!”
Oops, hardwired *not to understand feelings. Twitchy typing fingers!
Plenty of men feel threatned by what they perceive to be ‘porn for women’ as, I would gather, plenty of women aren’t into the porn industry targeting male fantasies. The question is whether the perception is correct – are romance novels porn? No – but, it exists and is called ‘erotica’ Maybe the line is becoming blurred.
One thing I do know is that romance is advertised as porn, light-porn, call it what you will. Even this website’s homepage has some cover of a man with his pants down and some guy seated right at his penis! And the covers & titles and the blurbs, etc. If I’d never read a romance I’d think it was all about sex, too. I’ll admit when I started reading my mom’s as a teen that is why I read them! And discovered it was much more – it was indeed ‘romance’ in the end.
Since romance is one of the few genres experiencing growing sales during the recession, I expect even more of the “it’s just lady porn” articles.
I think men experience feelings and emotions very deeply. I think they understand them perfectly well, but I think they respond to that differently than women do. Is it biological? Is it cultural? Is it social upbringing?
I don’t know, probably a strange mix of all those factors and more. And every individual is different.
So when one individual doesn’t get the point of a style of writing, that is one thing. Wholly dismissing millions of people who do get it as somehow vacuous is another.
I don’t get horror. Don’t get it at all. I try to get it, but I don’t. Now I’ve just given up and I don’t want anything to do with it. It scares me and I don’t like that feeling.
I could have horror enthusiasts parade the best of slasher flicks in front of me, and I don’t think it would change my response. And you know what? That is fine.
But I’m not posting on public forums that all people who enjoy horror are obviously disturbed individuals with gore fetishes who will probably end up a danger to society because they enjoy seeing people dismembered as a form of entertainment.
And by the way, I absolutely don’t believe that is true. I believe horror enthusiasts get some sort of catharsis from facing fear and death. I don’t get that same experience, and that’s fine. Maybe it’s because I’m a girl, maybe it’s not, but it doesn’t matter. Men and women alike should watch slasher flicks to their heart’s content.
I don’t have to put them down to bring myself up. That’s the hallmark of a bully. I don’t have to put myself in a position of moral superiority because clearly horror fans are disturbed *snort, yeah right* to make myself feel like I’m not disturbed.
All of that applies to romance. Just cut out anything I said about horror and fill in the blanks with the flack we get from romance.
Again, this is why usually these type of arguments are pointless, because usually a bully doesn’t want to be set straight.
@ Susanna Kearsley:
That is EXACTLY what I was thinking. We were able to convince DocTurtle, why not Elsner? In fact, what if DocTurtle laid down the gauntlet to Elsner? I’de be all over that.
enough28: enough with the dissing of Elsner. Let’s help him read 28 great love stories.
You know, call me simple, but I think there is a very simple explanation here to what he wrote and it has nothing to do with the romance genre.
The man wrote a novel titled ROMANCE LANGUAGE that was published by a small press with a small print run and nobody noticed. So he wrote an incendiary blog entry with the soul purpose of, A) making it clear that what he wrote wasn’t “that trash” (since people evidently asked him if he’d written a romance) and B) selling his own book.
He doesn’t care about romance, and never would have wasted any time thinking about it, much less reading (or pretending to read) a few.
He just cared about using romance as a platform to promote himself. By saying, “I am not them. I am better. Buy me.”
I don’t get mystery genre either – why on earth do you want to sit for a few hours contemplating all the various reasons a handful of people would want to kill someone? The acutal ‘mystery’ thrill of trying to figure it out I can get – but, the way you get there? Yuck! Secondly, what really gets my proverbial goat is that these genres frequently have racy, explicit sex – between folks usually not in love, in fact frequently salacious & affairs, etc.! And then they turn their noses at ‘romance’? Ah, well. Image is everything – and I cringe at most covers, titles, blurbs. Even this site admits it: ‘trashy books’!
dragging out that tired old chestnut that, since the limited sample he read were “chick porn,” therefore ALL romance is sucky, icky “chick porn,” is like saying Dracula must suck, because Twilight is horribly written. Head, meet desk. I have a feeling the two of you will be spending a lot of time together in the near future.
Marie, since you doubt that there a biological differences may I recommend you check into some accounts of women undergoing testosterone treatment to become men? Some truly interesting insights there on how different emotion and perceptions are depending on the primary sex hormone.
There’s no doubt there is also cultural conditioning, but to negate biological differences is just not supported by the scientific evidence.
Looks like the Huffington Post is being a bit of lightning rod. Alan Kaufman has a blog post about ebooks called Google Books And Kindles: A Concentration Camp Of Ideas http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-kaufman
I confess to not having got past the first rather overwrought paragraph but it seems to be causing a bit of head shaking.
Well said, @pooka. This bears repeating.
Perhaps he needs a refresher on Marketing 101: if trying to sell a book, do not alienate the people who buy lots of books.
@DS: Well…that’s inflammatory, huh? Equating the Kindle and ebooks with the Nazi holocaust? Hyberbole much? Also…what’s that term when someone decides to compare something to Nazism or Hitler?
Today’s moral: Don’t ever read HuffPo.
It’s ‘Godwin’s Law’ and Mr. Kaufman has already rebutted the law.
“As not a few comments on this and other sites have invoked Godwin’s Law in response to my article, as though it were Holy Writ, I’ve fornulated my own law:
KAUFMAN’S LAW: “Efforts such as Godwin’s Law to thwart the finding of contemporary relevance in the Holocaust is a form of Holocaust denial.”
Well, aren’t we a smartypants?
Y’all were nicer to Poor Mr. Elsner than my blog entry. I think he’s a MAN and equates descriptions of sex with porno. That explains why the winner of the Bad Sex In Fiction Award is also ……..a man.
I also think we should keep patronizing Poor Mr. Elsner. After all, he spent so much time in his piece patronizing us.
Someone should tell him that there’s a difference between “Dick Leapt Jane” and “Dick Kept Jane.”
Proving, in fact, the relevance of Godwin’s Law in the first place. Sheesh. Randi, you Holocaust denier, you.
Beatriz: LOL. Based on the comments to his article, I’m in good company.
@ Randi,
Ditto. 🙂
My husband is an intellectual by profession who lives in his mind 99% of the waking day. And, well, he’s definitely a man. When he reads my books he laughs when it’s funny, gets teary where I wish readers to get teary, and turned on where I hope readers will get turned on. He engages his complete human person in reading fiction (and non-fiction), just as I do in writing, and as I hope my readers will.
Perhaps Mr. Elsner is missing two-thirds of the equation. Romance definitely has a cerebral quality about it. But to separate the mind from the body and heart in any endeavor… Well, that’s just living without the full richness of life.
GrowlyCub—I’m aware of the vast array of studies aiming to show how biological differences result in cognitive differences between men and women. I’m also aware of the vast body of critical scholarship that finds even the basic premises of such studies deeply problematic. There are multitudes of warring camps on how to think about identity and gender, and I wasn’t trying to launch us into the endless debate on the topic. My comment was just a disclaimer that I personally don’t care to attribute whatever differences we do experience to biology when it appears impossible to separate the influence of nature from that of culture.
That said, my gut reaction, both academically and experientially, is that to a hammer everything looks like a nail—the first problem with studies looking for essential differences between men and women is that they’re studies looking for essential differences between men and women. I often read them with great interest, but that *is* the lens I view them through.
I’m sorry if this is a snippy response—I did read it over and tone down the first version!—but honestly I found your comment condescending. I’m sorry if I interpreted your tone incorrectly over the internet and I hope mine doesn’t sound even worse! Still, despite the privileged position science occupies in our culture and in my own life, I don’t think it is (or ever will be) able to offer final answers on how people tick. If we’re recommending reading though, I suggest Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow for a nuanced, entertaining (and occasionally controversial) look at the issue.
Marie,
I was recommending no studies, I was specifically talking about first person experience to do with hormones and perception of self and others, anger and aggressiveness during the transition from female to male.
You found me condescending, I’ll not share what my feelings are in regard to your effusions. Looks like a stalemate to me.