Bitchin' Blog Posts
Big words is harrrrrd
by Candy | October 31, 2005 | Monday at 10:12 pm | 23 CommentsVia Sara Donati’s blog, I found this Slate article on Diana Gabaldon, the Outlander phenomenon and A Breath of Snow and Ashes.
Have I mentioned how very, very much I love being condescended to? Check out some of the steaming nuggets of wit and wisdom offered up in this article:
She has a point: There aren’t too many Harlequin titles that include winking references to the Scottish writer Tobias Smollett. Still, Gabaldon doesn’t skimp on the heaving bosoms and heavy breathing. How did she turn her odd mishmash of high culture and low into a No. 1 best seller?
Hey, asshole, there aren’t too many books written nowadays, highbrow or otherwise, that make winking references to eighteenth-century Scottish authors of picaresque novels.
And sex scenes immediately make a book part of low culture? Way to break Tom Wolfe’s heart, man.
Despite Gabaldon’s insistence that her books aren’t romances, her earliest readers were, in fact, bodice-ripper fans—or, at the very least, people who enjoy juicy descriptions of bedroom gymnastics.
Yes. Wading through hundreds upon hundreds of pages of story to get about 10 pages total of sexual description is VERY efficient for us sex fiends. Outlander: steamier than Backdoor Sluts Vol. 8!
Gabaldon’s books do include the elements required to appeal to this vast market. True, they’re brainier than anything featuring Fabio on the cover (...)
Ahhh, the stigma of Fabio. See what evil those covers hath wrought?
Also, note to Laura Kinsale: You apparently write brainless smut. Just thought you’d like to know.
Lovestruck fans can relish A Breath of Snow and Ashes’ steamy bedroom scenes, which are detailed in prose that borders on purple. How else to describe an erotic encounter that begins with the line, “I made love to him at first like a sneak thief, hasty strokes and tiny kisses, stealing scent and touch and warmth and salty taste”?
Aieeee, again with the obsession with the sex scene.
OK, let’s try an informal poll here: How many people read the thousands upon thousands of pages of Gabaldon’s deathless prose just so you can get to Jamie’s turgid swordplay?
To those of you who raised your hands: May I suggest erotica as a more fruitful avenue for your smutty pursuits?
Gabaldon’s books are in fact so assiduously researched that they’re sold at British souvenir shops as accurate depictions of 18th-century Highlander life.
Oh my God, where’s Maili? Her head will EXPLODE when she reads this.
The series contains big words aplenty, a Dickensian surfeit of characters, and scenes of chilling brutality; A Breath of Snow and Ashes features a post-mortem Caesarean section, for example, that is not for the faint of heart. Even the sexual horseplay has an intellectual bent: Leave it to Gabaldon, the onetime university professor with a Ph.D. in ecology, to describe a woman’s response to getting her ass squeezed as “dissentient.”
Ladies, I think we’ve been dissed. The smutty books! They have big words! Alert the presses!
It’s a wonder that bookstores didn’t sell out their entire stock of dictionaries the day A Breath of Snow and Ashes was released, as sex-starved
porn hounds
bodice-ripper fans everywhere got their sticky mitts on the book.
They’re also the folks who apparently don’t blanch at passages that refer to “the warm, musky weight” of a fiftysomething Scotsman’s testicles.
Really, what’s with this article’s obsession with sex? It sounds like the Mr. Koerner has read only the jiggly bits, because those are the only parts he’s bothered quoting. At the very least, he’s unhealthily focused on them. Most reviewers who read and enjoy romance don’t dwell on and on and ON about sex scenes in quite the way this guy seems to.
I wonder what would happen if he read an Emma Holly? Would his pants catch on fire, I wonder? A fire that can only be put out by the innocent yet wildly arousing touch of a lush-figured widow who’s secretly a virgin?
See, it’s not even that this guy took potshots at a genre I read that I take offence to. It’s that he took potshots that were lazy and just plain WRONG. It’s like making fun of Chinese accents by saying “pretty prease.” Look, if you want to engage in puerile stereotypes, at least get them RIGHT.
Filed: Ranty McRant
Victoria Dahl said on 11.01.05 at 12:15 AM • [comment link]
What a patronizing assdrip. I comfort myself with the knowledge that his wife must take her womanly thoughts outside the marriage. God knows she wouldn’t want to disturb him by accidently touching his balls in a loving way.
Gabriele said on 11.01.05 at 02:53 AM • [comment link]
Oh my God, where’s Maili? Her head will EXPLODE when she reads this.
So does mine. :bug:
*we need a rant smiley* ;-)
Gabriele said on 11.01.05 at 02:54 AM • [comment link]
You think he has balls? :-D
Lisa said on 11.01.05 at 03:57 AM • [comment link]
You think he has balls
Pruney ones. Never used.
Excuse me while I go pick through my dictionary to find all the big words I need for a full-on rant. My poor romance-reading peabrain can’t think of them.
Ammie said on 11.01.05 at 05:47 AM • [comment link]
Yeah, but who was he patronizing? It seemed to me he was backhandedly patronizing Gabaldon. Like, maybe he hated her for writing best-sellers and slammed her for appealing to romance readers, which explained her popularity? He was definitely snide towards romance readers, that’s a given, but the whole article seemed to have been written without any focus but snideness.
I’m thinking he was drunk when he wrote it. It such a disjointed bitter mess.
Isn’t it weird how many people “explain” the popularity of romance novels and have never even talked to any women who read them? 49-52% of the market, and most romance readers cross genres enough to support the entire careers of writers in those genres and no one bothers to offer a cup of coffee and an honest attempt at an actual fucking conversation?
What’s up with that?
I wish someone would bite his dumb ass. All their dumb asses.
azteclady said on 11.01.05 at 06:25 AM • [comment link]
From Brendan I’m-an-asshat Koerner’s piece: “Layering such erudition atop a simple romantic framework creates a literary style that may be particularly appealing for readers who share Gabaldon’s demographic profile: women ages 45 to 54, with college degrees or better and household incomes above $75,000.”
Someone should have told me this - I’m off by several years and docens of thousands of green bills.
Ammie said: “I wish someone would bite his dumb ass. All their dumb asses.”
Personally, I’d rather their dumb assess and other assorted body parts rot and fall off on par with the rot eating at their brains.
“how did she turn odd mishmash of high culture and low into a no.1 best seller?”
Gee, maybe it’s well written.
Or interesting.
Or *gasp* both.
Nah.
It’s written by a woman.
azteclady said on 11.01.05 at 06:26 AM • [comment link]
egads - I may deserve the condescension: doZens
*sigh*
Ammie said on 11.01.05 at 06:58 AM • [comment link]
Sigh of relief… I thought it was just me that was grossly underpaid. And like, that I deserved to be underpaid because I’m a Fabio-musky-balled obsessed moron.
I looked him up, saw his picture.
He’s a Jedi Warrior, hahahaha… Seriously!
reby said on 11.01.05 at 07:45 PM • [comment link]
candy,
great read! you showed HIM! I laughed out loud! but..must point out…something….even though my instincts say SHUT UP REB!..I NEVER WAS ONE TO LISTEN TO THE VOICES IN MY HEAD…
you wrote:
“See, it’s not even that this guy took potshots at a genre I read that I take offence to.”
you spelled offense wrong.
not that one mispell means you SHOULD be condesended to.
Samantha said on 11.01.05 at 07:54 PM • [comment link]
The ass-jack even contra"dicks” himself by explaining how it attracts “mainstream” readers(by being highbrow), right after quoting that romance dominates the market! Ummm, so what the fuck is mainstream if romance dominates the market? Just guessing but maybe it’s fucking ROMANCE??
***Yet Gabaldon has been able to reach well beyond the straightforward romance market, which is dominated by $6 paperbacks with titles like Intimate Betrayal and The Redhead and the Preacher. The Outlander series has enough historical twists and highbrow touches to attract mainstream readers**
**52 percent of all paperbacks published in the United States are romances, and the industry rakes in $1 billion per year**
And I guess he “blanches” every time he has to un-musk is own tiny testes.
Marianne McA said on 11.01.05 at 08:05 PM • [comment link]
I’d spell offence that way as well. Course, that’s no guarantee of anything. Might say ‘take offence at’, instead of ‘take offence to’ but that could be a British English thing.
Either way, I think I’m giving up being offended about snide articles about how worthless everything that I enjoy reading or watching is. Basically, he’s feeling good about himself because the fact that so many people enjoy Gabaldon shows that he’s more literate than most, and if that’s how he gets his kicks, fair enough. I don’t have to respect his opinion just because he’s written it down.
Candy said on 11.01.05 at 08:18 PM • [comment link]
you spelled offense wrong.
That’s what I get for spending my formative years in a former British colony. After 8 years of living in the United States, I have successfully squelched my desire to add extraneous Us and Es to assorted words (colour, judgement), but the American tendency to replace PHs with Fs, Cs with Ss and Ss with Zs still trips me up (sulfur vs. sulphur, offence vs. offense, sterilise vs. sterilize).
I also say torchlight instead of flashlight.
*cries*
Tonda said on 11.01.05 at 08:44 PM • [comment link]
“Gabaldon’s books are in fact so assiduously researched that they’re sold at British souvenir shops as accurate depictions of 18th-century Highlander life.”
Oh my God, where’s Maili? Her head will EXPLODE when she reads this.
My head is exploding! Well researched my ass!!! She knows next to nothing about the clothing of the day, let alone how people lived. I know I’m in the minority, but I couldn’t read these. The details were all just too wrong.
Lauren said on 11.01.05 at 09:00 PM • [comment link]
Oh, the smug man condescending to the empty brained, low sexed housewives. A classic.
I suppose it’s better, certainly with better vocabulary than “bored housewife porn” that I heard recently.
Still, it does chafe to be patted on the head, called a nympho AND stupid while seemingly insulting my intelligence because I like my books with big words and sex, too.
What an asshat.
EvilAuntiePeril said on 11.01.05 at 09:16 PM • [comment link]
“Gabaldon’s books are in fact so assiduously researched that they’re sold at British souvenir shops as accurate depictions of 18th-century Highlander life.â€
…along with all those other products so representative of traditional British culture. Like miniature cast-iron-effect pencil sharpener replicas of Big Ben, haggis flavoured crisps, china thimbles adorned with portraits of the queen, Paddington Bear dolls in the uniform of a Grenadier Guard and tins of tea and biscuits in the shape of double decker buses. Off to go make a cuppa in my Charles and Camilla commemorative mug now.
Candy said on 11.01.05 at 09:24 PM • [comment link]
haggis flavoured crisps
OK, that? Is incredibly perverse. And I say this as someone who’s eaten jellied pig’s blood.
Off to go make a cuppa in my Charles and Camilla commemorative mug now.
Is it the kind with the picture of the glorious couple at the bottom of the mug, so that as you take your last sip, you’re rewarded with their glowing visages?
Because, y’know, that’d be HOT.
Lisa said on 11.01.05 at 09:27 PM • [comment link]
And I say this as someone who’s eaten jellied pig’s blood.
I am *so* glad to know I’m not the only one who has done this. I thought it was red tofu.
And the worst part, was that I sorta LIKED it until I found out what it was!
fiveandfour said on 11.01.05 at 09:52 PM • [comment link]
Oh good, I’m not the only one who has to do a double take over sulfur vs. sulphur, offence vs. offense, sterilise vs. sterilize. I think my problem stems from reading too many things published on both sides of the pond - both spellings look “right” and it often takes a dictionary to sort me out.
Now as for our Mr. Koerner, I will say it takes some talent to smile an ingratiating smile and sneer at the same time, but he pulls it off to perfection. It’s really too bad, I think, that more people can’t have the “democratic” approach to books like that of my book-reviewing hero Michael Dirda. Mr. Koerner is doing his best to use his brain as a weapon, though unfortunately not in the cool River Tam kind of way, and has somehow failed to realize that if he really wants to come off as looking intelligent, he’d do some actual work and look beneath the labels and the stereotypes and not just sneer at it all like an asshat. He wasted an opportunity to do something interesting and unexpected with his article, to say the least.
And haggis flavored crisps? Really? My mind is well-and-truly boggled at the notion. I think I need some Halloween candy to help calm the stomach back down, stat.
fiveandfour said on 11.01.05 at 09:55 PM • [comment link]
(Oops, sorry for the bad link. Dirda is proving extra slippery of late.)
Feklar said on 11.01.05 at 11:15 PM • [comment link]
On stereotypes:
As a fat, single, thirty-something who mostly wears birkenstocks and slouchy clothes, I hate that I fit all the worst stereotypes of the lonely spinster who is desperate to marry (and reproduce
) or is at least gagging for a piece of ass and is therefore reading romance novels as a poor substitute.
On the one hand I want to say “Hah! I bet my purity test score totally tromps yours!” (fyi, 48% [ http://infohost.nmt.edu/~kscott/purity/ ]).
On the other hand, I do engage in various contortions to hide salacious romance covers when in public, largely because of this.
Lisa said on 11.02.05 at 12:06 AM • [comment link]
is at least gagging for a piece of ass and is therefore reading romance novels as a poor substitute…
Okay, honestly? If I was horny as hell, a romance novel would be my last resort for any “satisfaction.” The first being my vibrators and a nice poster of Nathan Fillion, James Marsters, Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortenson, or any number of suitably sexy male eye candy.
Why is it that these dickwads think that horny women use romance novels as an outlet? When I was a teeny-bopper, yeah sure. As an adult or bored housewife or spinster, there are much better toys on the market, many readily available through blowfish.com or your local adult store. And goodness knows that a vibrator can get you off much faster than most of the love scenes in a romance.
Oh wait. Admitting that would mean that romance novels might actually have some substance, like big words and historical accuracy.
Tonda said on 11.02.05 at 01:35 AM • [comment link]
Why is it that these dickwads think that horny women use romance novels as an outlet?
Cause they’re MEN. And they think romance novels are nothing but girly porn. And men do use porn to get off.
Feklar said on 11.02.05 at 06:46 PM • [comment link]
I guess as a follow-up to my post…
1. There are many pleasures for me in reading romance. One is definitely the smut. Indeed, I have grown so accustomed to the erotic payoff of unresolved sexual tension in Romances and fanfic that I get kind of annoyed at the sexual timidity (and the dreaded fade-to-black) of “mainstream” genres. Not that I’m getting off on the subway (hiding behind my cleverly concealed, man-tit-laden bodice-ripper), but in other genres rather that after reading hundreds of pages of angst, growth, affection, adventure, UST, etc., the lack of erotic payoff leaves me feeling a bit unsatisfied. It’s like an oreo without the filling—still tasty, but missing something.
OK, so if Smut is an important and satisfying part of the read, why is this bad? Cosmo, various Sexperts and random relationship gurus have gone to great effort to convince women that just because their male SOs watch porn doesn’t mean they aren’t completely satisfied with their sexual/romantic relationship. So, why is it assumed that a woman would never enjoy, even crave, smut while having a satisfactory sex/romantic life? Why the crazy cat-lady-spinster stereotype?
Is it because men really only do watch/read porn to jack off, while in romances the smut is an integral part of the whole and, thus, not just for jilling off?
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