Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Well, finally. I have been singing this refrain for a long time and all alone.

I like your ‘Aesthetic of Unhappiness’—I’ve been using ‘Culture of Ugly’ to talk about the litcriterati’s devotion to the morose, and knee-jerk reactions to any even remotely happy ending.

It’s all good. We got our first hate mail because I was quoted in the NY Times article as supposedly saying writing a romance is the same as writing a classic. Which doesn’t make sense anyway…you don’t really write a classic, you write a book and by some twist of fate, it becomes one.

What I meant was that it’s just as hard to write 100,000 words of romance as it is to write 100,000 words of any other genre. The curse of them only printing part of the message.

But the point is as you said it. We all make fun of our romance, it’s when it’s intimated that you are somehow a lesser being for reading them that it gets touchy.

We’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. I mean, it’s a cliche for a reason. But, apparently it’s more than okay to judge the reader/writer by the book he/she chooses to read/write.

I’m actually amused by this ad and the buzz it has created but at the same time, I’m baffled. When Romance readers and writers choose come together in a resounding WTF, then we’re not only stupid for reading and writing the trash, but we’re also judged as humorless.

I’m not outraged by the ad—it just shows their own ignorance…gotta love that irony.

Frankly, I think RWA should sponsor a group of rebuttal ads. One of the multi-pubbed members of my Online Chapter suggested the ads should show that romance novels were “required reading” on the DC Metro. I found that idea highly amusing.

According to a literary novelist friend of mine, I’m not a real writer because of the genre in which I choose to write. I guess all those not real hours I’ve poured into my not real laptop writing my not real books in order to land my not real agent has been a not real waste of time.

Oh well. I’m not really gonna shed too many tears over that, just like I’m not really worried about what a bunch of pretentious blow hards think of me and the books I write. Because as Stuart Smalley would say, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” And if they don’t, eh, wtf do I care?

Candy, I know where you are coming from, believe me. But I’m not inclined to say we’re always dominated by an Aesthetic of Unhappiness—I guess I’m far more used to getting frustrated because I often see people refusing at times to engage with books or art that contains something dark, serious, complex or remotely saddening, or that might in any way cast doubt on the Norman Vincent Peale Power of Positive Thinking school of thought. I’m a lot more used to see powerful people in public life make fun of intellectuals & say that, gosh darn it, plain common sense can carry you through any situation, even the most dangerous ambiguous.

Ah, behold the analytical mind of Candy, searching for answers to an age-old question.  I wish you all good luck.  However, if you never find what you seek, only hold on until you turn 40.  After that, you will feel as I do - I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of my choice in reading materials.

When people make snide remarks about what I write, I ignore them.  To do otherwise is useless and a waste of time I could be reading, or writing.  I save my fury for numbnuts like Napoli and Head.  Theirs are prejudices that may directly affect people in harmful ways.

I imagine morons who blather on about their literay superiority and look down their pointy noses at romance need to get laid.  How’s that for denigrating an entire subset of the population?

As for badly written romances, well, someone clearly liked them, or they wouldn’t sell.  That objective monster raises its ugly head and points out there are evidently quite a number of readers who enjoy secret baby, amnesia, cowboy stories.  I wonder, do the literary snobs exhibit the same breadth of choice?  Are there those who denounce Proust and Kafka as middling upstarts who waste paper with their drivel, and exalt Plato and Shakespeare as worthy?  Is there a Cassie Edwards amongst the classics?  Or are all works of literary value equally appreciated?

It’s quite freeing, entering middle age.  I highly recommend it.

Pardon the post—I hit “publish” when I wanted to hit “preview.”

That last sentence should read:

“I’m a lot more used to seeing powerful people in public life make fun of intellectuals & say that, gosh darn it, plain common sense can carry you through any situation, even the most dangerously ambiguous.”

In other words: The exhortion to “Accentuate the Positive” & the habit of changing endings in adaptations to make them happier & easier to swallow seems to me to be the rule, rather than the exception. So I’m kind of glad that some art offers me a refuge from all the over simplistic reduction & easy solutions I’m sometimes offered to very complex situations.

‘Frankly, I think RWA should sponsor a group of rebuttal ads. One of the multi-pubbed members of my Online Chapter suggested the ads should show that romance novels were “required reading” on the DC Metro. I found that idea highly amusing.’

http://www.wmata.com/bus2bus/adsonmetro.cfm

Anyone want to start taking donations?

Candy said…

people who assume I’m stupid and uneducated simply because I…

I cut off the quote there because that is such a fill-in-the-blank statement and I realized that everything floating around in my head came back to it, because we are all judged on various stereotypes that are in existence.  Then I got to thinking about all the things about me that I’m judged on and the one that pisses me off the most is my accent.  I am judged to be a brainless, slobbering, inbred hillbilly because of my accent.

Judge me on my reading.  Judge me on my size.  Judge me on my movie selection.  Judge me on the 9 million other superficial qualities about me that you don’t like.  Just don’t judge me on my accent.

However, and I’m going to get a lot of shit for this, I also can’t deny that romance novels are their own worst enemy. This genre is rife with bad, bad, bad writing….There’s bad, and then there’s romance novel bad, which is this whole other universe of awfulness ...

—>The cause of this (IMO) is the very success of the genre. The demand is so great that publishing companies literally cannot keep up.

You would think that with everyone who wants to be a writer the publishing companies could find enough good writers to meet the demand, right? But writers need more skills than just “writes engagingly.” They need:

1. writes engagingly
2. plots engagingly
3. writes quickly
4. meets deadlines
5. takes editorial direction well

Most wannabe writers fall down because they never even finish a novel. Of those that do finish a novel, most don’t write very well. But sometimes editors, under pressure and believing that “hey, this is at least better than average” will let #1 or #2 lapse if the author is very strong in #3, 4, and 5.

#3, 4, and 5 are of more immediate value to an editor than #1 and #2. (Which isn’t to say that editors don’t want good writing and plotting. Oh, lawsy, they do; they pray for it. But 3, 4, and 5 are more necessary.)

“This is at least better than average” is a terrible thing, but certainly the mantra of people trying to keep up with demand of any product. And while it’s true that the majority of romance readers would much rather read a GOOD romance novel, they will if necessary read a bad one. Sure, they’ll snark about it, and likely won’t pick up another book by that author, but the damage is done: Bookspan has another ticky-mark of a copy sold of a “good enough” novel.

As to the validity of people judging others by what they’re reading: obviously this is stupid. Or rather, the judgment should be on the whole, not the part. People should have the smarts to realize that the brain improves with variety, and someone who reads only classics, or only books written in the 19th century, or yes, only romance novels, is mock-worthy.

But a person whose Ayn Rand sits cover to cover with Lisa Kleypas…well, that’s likely going to be an interesting person.

Coming out of Lurk because this is such an interesting discussion. I read about 50/50 romance and other and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the sex that differentiates.

You can have sex in a “mainstream or literary” novel but god forbid that it’s a complete episode and everyone enjoys themselves.

I just finished reading the latest Zadie Smith (won the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker so, “obviously” not a romance novel *ducking*) and there are a couple of sex scenes in there. They are both fairly truncated and one involved grubby infidelity.

Maybe you can have literary sex as long as it’s not too much fun and is used as a device by the writer to show a character flaw in the protagonists.  In fact I don’t think I can remember reading a full sex scene written specifically to show love or a bond between two characters. Maybe in Birdsong but that was more like the one idyllic moment before all the shit came down.

Dunno - what does everyone else think?

Oh, and I think that the RWA should take out ads that show “The average romance reader” (a group of women of various ages, sitting together in a restaurant and laughing) and “the average Knowledge Economy worker” (a 40ish man driving a midlife-crisis mobile and being laughed at by a bunch of hottie young women).

‘Oh, and I think that the RWA should take out ads that show “The average romance reader” (a group of women of various ages, sitting together in a restaurant and laughing) and “the average Knowledge Economy worker” (a 40ish man driving a midlife-crisis mobile and being laughed at by a bunch of hottie young women).’

My ideas:

Spoof Version: Their Plato Gentleman in the first square. In the second square, same gentleman, same book cover—but the outer cover has slipped, exposing the romance cover.

The hot one:

The Plato Gentleman in the first square—all by himself.

In the second square, the man reading a romance novel…with a hottie kissing up on him.

Talk about mental stimulation.

This is fun.

Sad truth be told, romance publishers (and e-pubs, in particular) do pump out a lot of unadulterated horseshit…rendered even horsier and shittier by unqualified editors.  It isn’t the subject matter that’s worthy of disdain—not by a long shot.  And this is what the huffers and sniffers fail to realize.  In all their Plato-worship, they’re overlooking the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, D. H. Lawrence, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, blah blah blah etcetera. 

Now, if I were a huffer and sniffer (which I guess I am, in a certain way and to a certain degree), here’s how I’d respond:  No—love, sex and happy endings ain’t the problem; shitty writing is.  Maybe if the romance community fortified itself with some standards, it wouldn’t be so vulnerable to attack.

But, again, we’re back to what readers want…or, at least, are more than willing to accept.  If they’ve dumbed down to the point where they either don’t recognize or don’t care about crappy craftsmanship, then why not keep cranking out the crap?

I think the literati have a much bigger fight on their hands than they realize….

‘If they’ve dumbed down to the point where they either don’t recognize or don’t care about crappy craftsmanship, then why not keep cranking out the crap?’

Pride? Weird concept, I know. Pride vs. quick buck. Hmm.

Maybe if more pubs took the time to work on quality, the readers wouldn’t accept crap anymore. Change the market, you have to change with it, or die.

It’s all on the publishers.

Oh, Stef, if only we lived in a perfect world….

I fully agree with you.  Or, at least, I’d like to.  Pride in one’s product could be the solution.  If publishers of romance fiction took more care in sorting the wheat from the chaff (in terms of both the submissions they accept and the editors they hire), readers just might come to appreciate, expect, and even demand the wheat.

But the operative word here is might.

‘But the operative word here is might.’

Well, of course. Some might see it as reinventing the wheel. But somebody had to do that back in the day, or we wouldn’t be dealing with rush hour traffic.

I think you can run a profitable business and still care about what you produce. It’s a matter of keeping your eye on the market and your thumb on quality control.

That’s one of the reasons I hang here—I’ve learned more about what not to screw up in both writing and coverart to last a lifetime, because for once, people actually say what exactly the issue is with the books, instead of just a random “this book bites”.

The popularity of erotic romance, IMO, signals that the romance community will embrace different if it’s done right.

So who knows? Sometimes it’s okay just to keep tossing in the starfish—it makes a difference for somebody, anyway.

I disagree a little about what makes people disdain romance so much. I don’t think it’s the happy ending. Mysteries, by and large, have happy ending—the murderer is found and justice is served. Science fiction has happy endings, the orb/key/necklace/spell is discovered and the end of the world is averted.

I think men and women disdain romance for different reasons. For men: I do think it’s the squishy feeling stuff. Squishy feelings, not just acknowledging them, but wallowing in them is weak. And showing that you’re weak—very stupid.

I think women have a problem with romance novels because no matter what the plot is, no matter how capable the heroine, the goal is gettin’ a man. I think that makes women very uncomfortable—That other people would think that’s her highest goal. But, you know, sometimes it is. Family is important, relationships are important, and sometimes it IS the most important thing—finding a man to build a life with. But that’s so fifties; it’s so not feminist. I think that’s why women who say they don’t read romance call women who do read romance stupid. To draw a line in the sand.

So romance novels really sort of thumb their noses at two pretty core values that modern men and women have and hold dear and EXPECT other men and women to value just as much: men despise weakness and women hate other women who don’t value independence. Because it was so hard-won. 

The fact that romance readers don’t see how important these two things are to everyone else (evidenced by reading romance) or, if they do, are unwilling to conform or admit they’re wrong—well, that makes us stupid and worthy of scorn. Just like on the schoolyard.

I think some romances are technically bad. Which I think is a problem. But I also think I’m far more critical now than when I was a teenager. And I kind of think that’s what is going on. Some books aren’t written for women, they are written for girls. It’s a market; it will grow, and the purpose is to get repeat business.

If I’m getting you right, what you’re saying is essentially by reading romance, it’s failure to conform to the core values the nonconformists uphold, i.e boy does NOT have to meet girl. Girl can bloody well take care of herself.

A bit like the goth chicks picking on the Mary Sues. It’s not really personal, they just hate everything they stand for.

That might explain why that group doesn’t understand when the romance community gets so upset about slights—we’re taking it personally, and they’re not seeing it that way.

I’m not sure it’s conformist vs. non-conformist. Although that could just be my world-view. I actually assume most women are feminist.

What I do think is that arguing that romance readers aren’t intellectually stupid is never going to get it done. People don’t care whether we are intellectually stupid or not; we seem to socially stupid, which is far more offensive.

‘What I do think is that arguing that romance readers aren’t intellectually stupid is never going to get it done.’

So what will?

Romance reading isn’t defensible on intellectual grounds; that’s not its purpose. It’s purpose is that it’s emotionally satisfying. If it’s an intellectual experience as well, that’s just a bonus.

There is no argument. It’s cake. Cake is good. Cake is tasty. Cake is scrumptious and satisfying. Who doesn’t like cake? Who argues against cake? You can argue whether German Chocoate cake is better than Chocolate Chocolate Decadence, but really that’s not an argument as much as it is two people talking about yumminess.

You know? All reading might be cake. It just might be.

I learned in a PhD program in English that the romance genre is anti-feminist because it reinscribes getting a man as the highest goal a woman can attain, as y’all are saying. So, being a wanna-be novelist and a lover of romance AND a feminist, I spent a lot of time trying to come up with a new genre. Also failing.

Then I wrote this article, which was first published in the Journal of Popular Culture:
http://www.jennifer-echols.com/whatley.htm.
I compare the movies Air Force One and The American President as two versions of what people wished President Clinton could have been. Romance: he had good qualities, but wouldn’t he have been better if he could have had his love affair in office without cheating on his wife? (Sure! Kill his wife off.) Action/adventure: he had good qualities, but wouldn’t he have been better if he had secret military training and his plane were hijacked and his family were threatened along with the security of the country, and he had to kill foreigners with his bare hands?

In other words, some people fantasize about the perfect person coming into their lives. That’s kind of silly. Some people fantasize about the perfect person, already in their lives, being threatened or killed, so they’ll have an excuse to throw grenades. Also kind of silly.

The reason that romance is so much more maligned than action/adventure is simple: it usually belongs to women, and anything belonging to women is subject to more derision in our culture than anything belonging to men.  This is why the person reading the romance and Plato in the ad in question is a man. I made this point in shorter form in an earlier post, but I think this is very important.

After I wrote the article and came to my conclusions about these genres, I decided to go ahead and write romance as a feminist, and it makes me happy.

*Standing Ovation for ammie from the one who reads everything from the label on her tea bag to “the classics”*

ooo my word verification is my ex’s birth date

Jennifer:
You’re saying that women malign romance and its readers because it’s for women?

So you’re saying that romance-maligning women say, “Hey we may be women, but at least we’re not THOSE women?” Like it’s a self-hatred thing? And me, being one of THOSE women and not all that apologetic, am not a self-hater?

Hmm… this is interesting.

Gee, these are all good arguments.. but the purpose of the ads in DC and the article in the Times was to reinforce the perceived superiority of the guys who created them.  And why did they choose romance novels?  Because they are lowest form of literature?  I think we can all agree that every genre has it high and low forms.  Why not use comic books as the foil?  Well, those anime guys would argue that they have legitimate art form.  What about music magazines?  Well, those guys from Rolling Stone would point out that they transcend mere music.  Sports books or mags?  Well there are great sports writers…

Why ever did they chose romance novels then… Oh, how about because it is a chick genre?  And since no one will turn on women faster than other women (because they want to endear themselves to the powers that be (guys) or that they want to be perceived as superior as the guys that bring the charge of romance novel inferiority) it is safe for the guys to make fun of.

Regarding a RWA rebuttal campaign, I seem to recall a few years back there was an ad campaign that said “Look Who’s Reading Romance”, and it showed real people—a male airline captain, cops, women doctors, army officers, librarians, etc., who all read romance and were proud of it.

It might be a good time to revive that campaign.

They wouldn’t have known it was a bad, bad book without the cover. They didn’t chose a contemporary Nora Roberts book or a JAK book or a women’s fiction book. They wouldn’t have dared. They picked the book with the most easily translatable cover, which was shorthand for trash.

And what if they did deliberately google “Romance Novel” and then just pick the trashiest cover to make a point. Their point fails at the end of the day. Well-educated doesn’t mean intelligent and it has NO VALUE without the ability to think and act by discarding bad ideas in favor of good ideas. There is also NO CORRELATION between what you read and your intellectual capacity. There is even less correlation between education and intellectual capacity. You know what? We can’t even measure educational effectiveness. 

Washington D.C. is filled with well-educated, ineffective, wrong-headed people. That’s nothing to be proud of. All they did was prove that they are exactly where they belong.

I have always suspected that people who display any sort of cultural snobbery aren’t all that secure. Their’s is a bourgeois acceptance of higher authority, rather than seeking and finding their own joys in art.

Philistines.

Here is a scary thought? If enough anti-romance novel politicians get in office. How likely that they may impose certain restrictions on access to romance novels.

Can you imagine going into a seedy sex shop to buy the lastest novel from your favorite author?

Of course we all toast their hinneys but still the thought scares me.

The reason that romance is so much more maligned than action/adventure is simple: it usually belongs to women, and anything belonging to women is subject to more derision in our culture than anything belonging to men.
Bang on the money Jennifer.

“The reason that romance is so much more maligned than action/adventure is simple: it usually belongs to women, and anything belonging to women is subject to more derision in our culture than anything belonging to men.”

I think women also perpetuate this by being doubly harsh on other women.  I don’t dress for the men I might meet, I dress so I won’t be mocked mercilessly by women.

Anything that is seen as a weakness, whether it’s clothes, weight or the books you choose to read is subject to ridicule.  I think for some romance novels are a guilty pleasure and the guilt is transformed into mockery and put downs.

Jennifer has voiced my opinion much better than I ever could, but I’ll add my two cents anyway (and utterly ruin the thing, but hey…)

Women are the worst women-haters. We are. We’re slow to pardon other women for their “faults” or flaws or whatever.  Look at female celebrities and when they screw up big time…it takes them much longer to get back into the public’s good graces than their male counterparts (Martha Stewart should know).  Girls like to pick on girls best, and this gives clearance for guys to do the same.

Hey, I didn’t put my foot in my mouth too bad this time! I’m getting smarter…maybe.

Or, maybe I should read Plato.

Don’t have much to say, because it’s already been said, and because I’m on vacation. Yay!

Romance is snarked and/or dismissed—or worse, accused of being harmful because:

It’s primarily for women.
It highlights emotions.
It has sex.
It ends happily.

And yes, because many books in the genre are crap (subjectively). Because sometimes the plots, the writing, the sex, the covers are way over the top, or way below the bottom.

I used to cringe when I’d see some books, read some books, read some interviews with certain authors who giggled about how they did their ‘research’ with their husbands every night. Jesus. Don’t lump me in there, I’d think. Then I got over it because, hey, always gonna be lumped in.

No one should have to justify what they like to read, or write. And yet, we so often find ourselves in that position. I’ve been at this a long, long time now, and haven’t seen any real change in perception, attitude or media focus. I don’t expect to see any. And mostly I’m an optimistic bitch.

I personally think that some it’s a reaction to the way both have been exploited by people who use it to sell everything from greeting cards to phone plans to insurance. Sneering at sentimentality makes us feel smarter; we’re not taken in by this blatant manipulation. We’re better than that, smarter than that.

My god, Candy, this is brilliant.  I’ve read the sexist/feminist/anti-feminist arguments dozens of times, and I feel like a bobble-head doll because I’m just nodding and agreeing, but this is the first time I’ve seen this argument phrased so clearly.  The female-centeredness of romance is definitely a big part of why it’s denigrated, but the fact that sex & sentiment are manipulated to sell everything from soap to soup to SUVs marginalizes it even more.

Being used to sex & sentiment (I’m liking this phrase, btw) being manipulative has an effect, I think—making romance novels seem like the literary equivalent of squishy-sweet greeting cards or sleazy-sexy beer ads.

I’m going off to think about this some more.  Thanks for the brain snack.

I think women have a problem with romance novels because no matter what the plot is, no matter how capable the heroine, the goal is gettin’ a man. I think that makes women very uncomfortable

Yes, but the opposite is also true, if you think about it.  No matter what the plot is, no matter hos capable the HERO is, the goal is gettin’ a girl.  And I think that makes MEN very uncomfortable.  As much as romances show that no woman can be fully and truly happy and content and satisfied without her soul mate, the same works for men, too.  No man can be truly content and happy and satisfied without his soul mate, and with m/m slash at such a high premium, it’s almost DOUBLY true for men.

Add to that the fact that romances are written by women for women and you get something that will be put down and scorned precisely because its world view is so threatening to the established patriarchy.  What if Romancelandia became reality?  Men would have to stop being assholes and put their lovers and their families first and where would the world be then, hmm?

And going with the idea of the moral dimension of reading, this goes back at least until the start of novels and probably before that.  Everything that is now said almost exclusively about romance novels was said in 18thC England about all novels.  But once the genre was accepted as “literary,” all that scorn had to get dumped somewhere, and it was okay to dump it on the novels still written mostly by and for women, rather than dumping it on the novels written by and for men.  Then again, very few novels are written FOR men because women have always read just about everything, as soon as they were given the opportunity to read.

You’re so right Candy. I don’t even read romance (I mean never, ever.) but I love over-the-top, camp, kitschy, playful, feminist postmodernist pastiches of fairytales, melodramas and gothic horror, like Angela Carter and Sarah Waters, which is not quite “clean” either. I also love the concept of fanfiction (admittedly I don’t read much).
It’s not just literature, it’s philosophy and politics too. You have to be a pessimist to be “true”. If you think that everything sucks you’re such a Brave Young Man who has seen the light. I find it utterly childish and ridiculous. And I definitely think men (as constructed by the reigning patriarchal order) are more inclined towards this form of “seriousness”. It’s such a silly little game really, I would say “let them go on with it” if it wasn’t for the damage it does to the world and the power they wield in the universities, companies and governments.
Besides, that kind of literature, the grey kind, sucks. It’s the kind of literature you have to force yourself through because it’s “good for you”. But does it make you any wiser? Hardly. I often find it surprisingly banal and pompous and puerile.
And what about the rest of the classics, the not-so-grey kind? If you look at the older “masterpieces”, say before the 20th century or so, there really wasn’t much of a difference between “fine art” and “popular”. The required reading from that time is often just as melodramatic and moralistic and clichéd as the looked-down-upon genres of today. So there you go.
Oh and I loved your Plato-bashing. The Respect with which some (men) tend to look upon their Masters need to be ridiculed. I mean, not just for fun, as a political necessity.

I had a weird thought in the middle of all this: The male airline pilot who reads romance? TOTALLY HOT. Seriously. I got all flustered and had to sniff my salts. And I thought about it.

Men who read romance openly=sexy as all hell. Why?

1) Mentally flexible—by this I mean, they’re willing to think new things, take on new concepts and consider them. Free-thinkers/people who think for themselves=hot.
2) They’re willing to consider more of sex than “Missionary position, lights out, eyes closed.” They aren’t scared of sex and being…experimental=Really hot.
3) They know they’re a man. They don’t need society to tell them that they are. So they feel free to do what they like, if they like it, because they know nobody can steal their nuts. OMG, SO TOTALLY HOT!

Frankly, I blame the early, militant feminists who put the serious hate on men. I’m a feminist—ok, a humanist, I think everyone should be free to be what they be—and I don’t want to steal your nuts and take your place. I want to fondle your nuts and take you to my place. Much better sentence structure, no?

I like people who can step outside of society and be True. This ad was the product of insecure men who fear the theft of their nutsacks by rabid, romance reading women. And the sad part is, the “Golden Age” of feminism made them.

Maybe if people could get past the fear of the labels they think other people are putting on them, and stop thinking the world is out to get them so they have to constantly be on the defensive, all this motarded “You’re stoopud if you read XYZ genre” would just. Freakin’. Stop. Already. And a lot of other stupid labels people use would drop off and stop meaning anything.

Ok, back to your rants that make sense and aren’t inspired by Week Three of the Magazine by the Week or whatever it’s called.

I have to chime in here.  The idea that romance is maligned because of a patriarchal plot to condemn the tastes of women has a significant flaw in its reasoning.

Pornography is largely by men for men.  Is it revered as fine art?

Jackass largely targets a male demographic.  Is it considered fine theater?

There’s plenty of male-centered culture in our society that is equally relegated to the unintellectual fringe just like romance novels. 

It has nothing to do with patriarchy.  Any creative expression with mass appeal has always been viewed with disdain for its appeal to the “uneducated rabble.”

Kevin: Plato is high culture. Romance is pop culture. No argument there. But the creators of the ad could have chosen from lots of examples of pop culture rather than a romance novel. Give me one good reason why the man in the ad isn’t reading Plato vs. The Hunt for Red October.

Give me one good reason why the man in the ad isn’t reading Plato vs. The Hunt for Red October.

Arguably, it’s because romance is a genre that is smoothered in negative stereotypes.  I agree with that. (Not the stereotypes, but why it was chosen for the ad.)

I just don’t think you can blame patriarchy for why the romance genre has that image.  Otherwise, everything that largely appeals to men would be revered as high culture.  And that is not always the case.

“I don’t want to steal your nuts and take your place. I want to fondle your nuts and take you to my place.”

This made my day!

Welcome Kevin…but notice the ad involved Plato and a romance novel, not Plato and a Playboy. Although, now you mention it the Playboy would have been a more accurate choice for the male bus rider (or the previously mentioned comics).  Which is still an insult to romance readers, not just quality reading vs. entertainment fiction reading.

Kaite said:  This ad was the product of insecure men who fear the theft of their nutsacks by rabid, romance reading women. And the sad part is, the “Golden Age” of feminism made them.

Not understanding the connection here, Kaite.  Men have been in holy fear of their nutsacks for a century, at least.  A very good history called Gay New York posited that the cult of bastard ratfink masculinity that we endure today is the natural progression of a society that no longer defines itself by manual labor. 

If anything, I think the stereotype about romance goes the other way, toward some pre-feminist ideals or skipping feminism altogether.  Very few non-readers understand that the goal of romance these days is strong females and equal partnerships (the Joss Whedon model), and they revert to preconceptions about the 70s-80s bodice rippers.  The biggest flack I get about reading romance is from other feminists because they see the genre as a sell-out to a masculine hegemony.  (I just used “hegemony” - bite me, NYT).  If anything, men who see me reading romances have assumed that I LIKE the bastard ratfink-style hero and assume that their nutsacks can behave as ratfinkly as they want. 

If they knew what some of us are REALLY reading, they might be even more frightened of our potential for subversion. 

I think we should all blame Fabio.  If the dude had been half-way intelligible back when he was the bee’s knees and everyone knew about romance novels because he was on covers, on Leno, on commercials - maybe his smerts might have created a similar impression for the rest of us readers.  Instead, he sounded like a dunce and made for excellent fodder:  hey, if women are gaggin’ for him, they must be just as stupid.

But I do agree, Kaite:  the sexiest thing next to a hot cowboy would be a cowboy reading a romance novel.  Although a cowboy reading anything would be a start.

That’s it!  That’s the new ad campaign!  Like the old “Read” public library campaign (Remember Sting dressed all gothic novel heroish?  Yum!), what we’re going to do is have really hunky, masculine guys reading romance and the tag line will be “Women think men who read romance are hawt!  It’s a total chick magnet!”

Or something like that.

The real issue here is the condemnation of people for what they read.  We’ve all been guilty.

Over the years I have been a telemarketer (please don’t hate me) for a company that calls on renewals of magazines.  We have a wide variety of clients (the publishers), from well accepted journals (that I’m sure are at the offices of NYT) to a couple of tabloids.

When I first started the job, I was appalled at having to call about the renewals of a very large, very well known tabloid.  I think that embarrassment lasted a week.  Then I spoke to a woman who explained the value of reading, no matter what it was.  She renewed her subscription somewhat sheepishly.  Then she said she should be embarrassed but she worked at a very stressful job.  She worked with children terminally ill with AIDS.

This call was right after New Years.  She related to me how two of the children had died, one right before Christmas and one right after.  And how important it was to her to be able to come home and lose herself in the “mindlessness” of the tabloid.

Since that call (about 10 years ago) I have tried never to judge a person because of their reading material, because everything has its purpose.

Not understanding the connection here, Kaite.  Men have been in holy fear of their nutsacks for a century, at least.  A very good history called Gay New York posited that the cult of bastard ratfink masculinity that we endure today is the natural progression of a society that no longer defines itself by manual labor.[\quote]

A century that coincides with the women’s sufferage movement in the U.S., as well.

Any major social upheaval would create various levels of bastard ratfink masculinity, I suppose. Anything that puts a large portion of the population on the defensive lends itself to reactionary jackassery.

Witness some of the early reaction here to Plato and his writings in comparison to romance novels, and the whole debate over what’s real fiction and what’s trash. What did poor Plato do? Nothing, except found a large school in Athens that helped to mold European society and modern thought, and probably serial buggery.

Ok, I don’t really know on that last one, but everyone, myself included, got really defensive. Because the ad implied we were all mentally deficient, and all the snide comments from that place in Washington just make it worse by implying we’re whinging stupid people. 

Which just comes around to what (I think) was my point in the first place: Putting people on the defensive leads to the creation of pain-in-the-ass labels, which makes the labeled people feel defensive so they make up their own for the label makers. It’s a big, ugly circle jerk.

I’m all for taking us out of it. Read romance on the train! Read Plato! Fuck with everyone’s heads and READ TWO HANDED; PLATO IN THE LEFT, BERTRICE SMALL IN THE RIGHT. Serves them right for trying to feel all superior on you because they hide their glorified porn under a generic book cover….  ;-)

Oh, give over. You know they read it, too. The shame just oozes out of every reply they make….  :-/

I have a confession to make: I am not a romance reader.

“Why are you here?” you may ask. Because (1) I’ll take the company of smart bitches anywhere I can get it, and (2) I work for a publishing company, and about 20% of the titles I manage are romance. (Also, (3) I am a reader of the other much-maligned genre, science fiction, so I sympathize.)

I can’t claim that my reasons for not reading romance are the same as anyone else’s, but I do know they’re not the same as folks above are conjecturing. My reasons are twofold:

1. I’ve perused too many books where if the hero and heroine would just sit down and have a conversation, the plot would evaporate.

2. I’ve read too many books where the plot is clocking along nicely, the witty repartee is witty indeed, and I am enjoying the book. And then the author rushes the ending, ties up the intriguey-delicious plot in half a chapter, and goes all goo-goo HEA. (Often with an epilogue chapter wherein the H/H celebrate the birth of their first child.)

#2 is a big point here, because I’ve read an awful lot of books where I’m getting physically close to the end of the book, but the plot doesn’t seem close to a resolution. In an SF or F novel, I know this means there’s a sequel and I will be taunted by a cliffhanger. In a romance novel, I know this means the author’s going to rush the ending and sacrifice plot in favor of lurve.

Now, I’m sure the Bitchery will step up with many recommendations for titles that don’t commit those two sins, and I will be very happy for it. I promise to buy at least three of them and read them.

Maybe I’m just not the right target audience. But I don’t think the average romance reader wouldn’t like a thorough, well-paced ending to the plot. The Princess Bride ends with “the kissing stuff,” and the grandson is okay with that—but note that it was preceded by a solid ending.

Actually, I think romance works very well in movies. Romancing the Stone? LOVE IT. When Harry Met Sally? One of my faves.

? The whole plot wouldn’t exist without the romance.

It’s something in the conventions of the written genre that bug me. Maybe it’s the balance—I like romance as a subplot, but not as the main point.

Never defend.  Never.  Ever.

If you care about this issue, then attack.  Forget about protesting those ads, that was hopeless.  We don’t care what they think of us.  THEY care what we think of THEM.  Cultural snobbery is important to people; work with it.  Hit them in their weakest point: fear of their own absurdity.

Not that I think it’s worth an ad campaign, but by far the best reply to the ad would have been a series of “ads” here on SB’s which showed the most negative stereotypes of readers each with their genre—and please, start right out with the pasty-white 90 lb weakling (or make him obese, we’re talking bitter, bitter stereotypes here) reading SF; put him beside the wispy-haired guy with the overbite reading Plato, the savagely repressed, pursed-lip headmistress reading George Eliot.  Hit ‘em where it hurts.  They’re terrified of being mischaracterized by their reading preferences and would squeal like pigs.

I commented years ago in an interview for AAR:

I used to get upset about the way the media and the “uninformed” treat the romance genre, but frankly, they just wore me down. As a writer, it’s impossible to try to explain your own genre without sounding defensive. I began to realize that there is an extremely powerful force driving the denigration of romance, and no, I don’t think it’s hatred of women or feminism or anti-feminism anything like that. I think it’s the snob factor. Women are just as willing as men to hasten to say they don’t read “that trash,” because - in the U.S. at least, class is not based on ancestry, it’s based on wealth and intellect, so it’s important for society to have shorthand class markers that everyone understands. A house in the Hamptons happens to be one of those markers. So is the romance genre - and a far more convenient and broad-based one. It’s a cheap, easy method for someone to quickly state they are “above that sort of thing.”

You can’t reason people out of that.  But you can fight fire with fire if you want to.  ;)

Er, something happened with the formatting, and that last bit should be:

One of my faves. Pirates of the Carribbean: The Black Pearl? The whole plot wouldn’t exist without the romance.

This is why I started to read romance.

I started reading very early, as I’m sure everyone here did. And I read lots of different genres, but women characters, especially those written by men, were just bizarre. I didn’t recognize them as anyone I knew, as anyone with any basis in reality, I was honestly taken aback by the characterization. But when I picked up my mother’s gothics—I did recognize the women characters, they were real, I could identify with them.

That was really important to me. As a girl, you get a lot of negative messages about women, and so much out- and-out hatred. For reasons that didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t see women as controlling emasculating bitches or stupid brainless whores and I certainly didn’t see those qualities in myself.

So, I always look to romance for balance.

The reason that romance is so much more maligned than action/adventure is simple: it usually belongs to women, and anything belonging to women is subject to more derision in our culture than anything belonging to men.

I just don’t think you can blame patriarchy for why the romance genre has that image.  Otherwise, everything that largely appeals to men would be revered as high culture.  And that is not always the case.

I apologize in advance for the length of this, but here goes.

I have been thinking about these two statements and how they go together in my mind, even though they seem on the surface to head in different directions.  I’ve also been thinking about Candys’ point about the denigration of sentimentality, Sherry’s point about anti-intellectualism, and lots of other people’s thoughts about how somehow a combination of sex, sentiment, and sexism is continuing to marginalize Romance.  And maybe, in the end, that’s true.

But in the meantime, I keep wondering why films that are romantic comedies or television series that are built around romantic themes and set ups (“Friends,” anyone?) AREN’T treated to the same marginalization.  Sure, men may bitch about having to go to a “chick flick,” but Roger Ebert can still respectably review said flick and no one looks askance at him.  Even “Dog” the bounty hunter went through an excruciating process of buying flowers and jewelry for his wife on one episode of his show recently, and he did it (for the most part) with a straight face and a huge river of testosterone pouring off the screen around him.  So what’s the difference?  Is it really the fact that Romance is produced and read by women?

I just cannot get myself to accept this argument for one reason:  most often it’s women I see doing the judging of other women for reading Romance.  So have these women simply internalized the dictates of patriarchy in denigrating their sisters?  Again, I don’t think so.  I don’t really think this has to do with so-called militant feminism (and for the record, I am incredibly grateful that someone else had the passion and the stamina to fight for those rights I now enjoy and believe that the stereotype of the frothing man-hating feminist is largely exaggerated) or unadulterated sexism or men’s desire to disempower women or the wholesale dismissal of emotional intimacy.  All of those things may play a role, but I really think the issue of Romance’s marginalization is the culmination of a lot of intersecting factors.

As Candy pointed out, a lot of crap is published in Romance.  We can talk about how it’s the genre of subversion, but what percentage of Romance is really subversive?  How many Jennifer Crusie’s and Judith Ivory’s and Laura Kinsale’s are there out there?  And how many readers really want subversion?  The sheer diversity and expanse of published Romance fiction is staggering.  Before I was “indoctrinated” into the genre, I remember going to the discount bookstore to pick out one or two Romances, just to see what they were really like.  I can’t even remember the ones I picked, but they were authors I hadn’t heard of then and have not heard of since.  The bins of discount Romances in this store contained all sorts of shorter and longer offerings, most with garish covers, cartoonish fonts, and relatively cheap looking paper and covers.  How is anyone who doesn’t know about Romance supposed to be able to tell the difference between the books we all rave about here and Cassie Edwards?  And let’s face it, Cassie Edwards isn’t considered to be in the lower class (and yes, I do see Romance as falling into a caste system) of the genre.  Combine this with the fact that even at the top of the ladder Romances are cursed with some of the most hideous covers known to man and explain to me how anyone outside the genre is supposed to “get it” without a tremendous amount of re-education.

As to the re-education, how can that really happen when women are themselves so willing to dismiss a women’s genre as “trash” or “porn”—and a genre that, besides being the subject of certain (unfair) moral judgments, is itself implicated in a lot of moral issues.  Virgin heroines, dukes of slut heroes, taboos up the wazoo, from abortion to voting (which is why I think DC isn’t featured in a lot of Romances—no politics, please, for most readers, at least no overt politics).  Even readers police each other through discussion of particular novels.  Is the heroine of X book a slut because she slept with more than one man and enjoyed it? 
(to be continued)

(continued from previous post)

Personally, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have moral dramas playing out in Romance, because, after all, the genre aims to generate emotional responses in readers.  And I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong for readers to have strong moral judgments and to look for fantasy reading that confirms some of those judgments.  But because a lot of those issues are intrinsic to Romance, there will, IMO, always be a certain backlash against the genre, and some of that will be defensible from the POV of readers who are themselves uncomfortable with certain elements in the genre.  Frankly, on the other side of things, I don’t think that if Romance turned into a hugely liberating genre tomorrow that mainstream reception would be totally positive, because there are also plenty of readers and outsiders to the genre who appreciate more socially traditional values and associate those with Romance.  In other words, while on the surface the genre seems neutral and fluffy and inconsequential, it reaches to many issues that in other forums would invite instant and pugnacious debate.  And the cherry on top of all that is that so many women are ourselves still struggling with the moral dimensions of our own sexuality – what is okay and what isn’t, what are the “rules” and when can we break them – that we’re in conflict with ourselves.  That Romance can give women an outlet to fantasize freely or a reassurance that all will be well at the end or a sense of social stability also means that the genre presents boundaries and limitations and judgments many women are struggling with in their own lives and within a larger social structure. 

So on a base level, I really think that a great deal of the superficial elements of the genre, from covers to classes of books has a great deal to do with public perception.  But underneath, I think that the issues the genre itself deals with – issues that invite both positive and negative engagement from women – make it both comfortable and uncomfortable to women, and that on those deeper and often less publicly discussed levels, there is a certain aura around the genre that does not adhere to, say, the million different variations of “When Harry Met Sally.”

The first of these things can certainly change—covers can evolve and publishers could alter their production values.  Although I think the sheer demand, as someone else commented, does probably outstrip the ability to cultivate writers and support quality craftsmanship in any broad way (and many readers just don’t care if sentences are grammatical).

But as for the second, I don’t know—maybe if women managed to resolve our own general struggles with sexuality and the moral implications of such, the genre would shift necessarily and automatically (and boy, do I wish this would happen).  But until and unless that happens, I think the dynamics of readers and texts within the genre, the very touchy issues the genre itself handles, and the incredible diveristy of women reading the genre make it something that women themselves continue to form judgments and argue about—readers and non-readers alike.  I know that it seems sometimes that men are much more dismissive of Romance and of female sexuality and emotional intimacy, but actually, I think it’s women who have more control over the public perception of Romance (outside the way the industry markets and produces it, that is) than men, generally speaking.  Do you really think most guys even care that their wives and girlfriends are reading Romance?  But does your mother-in-law care—or your sister—or your best girlfriend?  And whose opinion are you more in fear of?

When I first started the job, I was appalled at having to call about the renewals of a very large, very well known tabloid.

Was it the Enquirer?  I love The Enquirer (inquiring mind, you know), but I used to feel a certain element of shame in my love until Dominick Dunne wrote an article explaining that during his coverage of the OJ Simpson trial, all the reporters vigilantly scanned the Enquirer because it was widely known that they had the best and most accurate scoop (Dunne speculated that they must have the best defamation lawyers in the country vetting the stories).  After that, I embraced my love wholeheartedly and have even been hankering to get a subscription so that I don’t miss any of those pictures of Star Jones in a bikini or Vince Vaughn’s new chicklet.  Ah, maybe it’s time to visit one of those consolidator subcription services on eBay (three years of Saveur Magazine for like 15 bucks was my last great deal there).

Robin, since I still work for that company, I think it’s safer to not mention specific products. ;)

I should stop, because I actually have work to do.

E. listed this among the reasons romance novels disappoint her:

1. I’ve perused too many books where if the hero and heroine would just sit down and have a conversation, the plot would evaporate.

Here is my reason for not reading many great big honkin’ books of literature:

Quite often, the literary characters will pursue a course of action that I just know is going to lead to tragedy - and if the literary character actually behaved in a senisble way… the plot would just evaporate.

And the epilogue? You can just skip it. I do.

Ammie—

Yes, I dislike any fiction with a “stupidity-driven plot,” and that includes non-romance literature when you just want to smack the characters. (It took the talent of Shakespeare and a really good professor who explained “theme” to make me like Hamlet. “All he does is whine! He never does anything he says he’s going to do!” “Yes, that’s the point.”)

Romance, however, is specifically about boy-meets-girl, and boy and girl must encounter speed bumps on the road to True Love. Some writers give the characters good reason for not talking to each other (Hero is a spy, and when Heroine saw him talking to Red Herring Chick, it was part of his job, but he can’t tell her because it’s Sekrit Spy Stuff).

Other writers… I can live with “they’re too insecure to ask the question” as a reason; I just don’t feel the writers I’ve read have pulled it off.

But that’s really the secondary reason. I’ve simply been burned by too many romance novel endings to want to invest in reading the first 350 pages (except for Stephanie Laurens. Though sometimes I like her secondary characters better than the primaries).

‘But does your mother-in-law care—or your sister—or your best girlfriend?  And whose opinion are you more in fear of?’

As my mother-in-law put it when she found out I wrote/pubbed erotica: “I won’t read any of it, but I’m still proud of you.”

Now, that’s the attitude we need.

Boy, so many thoughts…so little time.  I’ll try to fit it all in as quickly as possible…

I think the roots of this disdain lie with our cultural discomfort with emotional and sexual intimacy.

I think the disdain goes back even farther than the creation of America’s Puritan sensibilities.  I think it goes back to the time when the written word was first used to entertain and not just inform.  Before the first information age was ushered in and mass printing became available, writing was practically a sacred act - those who were trained to do it and those who could read it were statistically small in number.  Given the amount of effort it took to get anything written down, writing and books by their very nature had to be about “important” things: God and man’s laws, morality, free will vs. fate…you know, all the big questions.  I’m convinced that there’s still some cultural hangover out there - admittedly much weaker than it was when the first pulp fiction story was published - that says if someone has gone to all the trouble to get their thoughts into a book, they should be Important Thoughts.

I think a big stumbling point for people lies with the happy ending. It’s unfashionable right now for our Art to be happy.

This, too, I think has a long history.  Speaking for myself, I can agree that I value stories with a happy ending less than those with something that’s bittersweet.  This applies not only to books, but also to movies and even television shows.  When I think of most of my favorite stories (The Good Soldier, This Side of Paradise, Cry the Beloved Country, Out of Africa, The English Patient, Brideshead Revisited to name a few) there’s nary a happy ending in the bunch.  I don’t go to those stories for a happy ending - I go to them to dive into attempts to touch the deeper truths of life.  For some reason, those deeper truths as I perceive them rarely involve even the consideration of happiness.

But getting back more to why I took out that quote from Candy up there,  I also believe this avoidance of love and HEAs and happiness in general also go back a long, long time.  To my knowledge, it wasn’t really until the Middle Ages that love was even considered culturally significant.  Love did not protect a family, provide a glimmer of hope that food would be on the table today and that one’s offspring would survive tomorrow.  People didn’t marry for love - they married for alliances.  To my way of thinking, “love” as a concept in and of itself - as something worthy of respect and study and recognized to be an emotion of great power - is a relatively modern conceit.  It only stands to reason, therefore, that as a relatively modern conceit there would be some cultural disdain towards it.

Someone earlier had an interesting comment about the “goal” of a romance book being the HEA.  This is interesting to me because while I agree it’s an important element of a romance, I actually think it perhaps gets a little too much focus.  What I mean by that is sometimes a story can get wrapped up far too conveniently all for the sake of providing that HEA.  In those instances where that feels to be the case to me, I feel that the journey of those two people and how they deal with the often painful and embarassing process of not only falling in love, but also admitting and accepting it becomes sacrificed when in fact the journey through the fire of love was the point, not the HEA.

As respects high art, low art, no art we’re at a crossroads, culturally speaking, it seems to me.  The phrase “state of the art” used to mean that art was the thing on the fringes, pushing society forward, testing boundaries and forcing people to re-assess their assumptions.  Some years ago I took some criminal justice classes and one of the forensic specialists used the phrase “state of the science” and that has stuck with me ever since.  It feels to me as though science is now the thing that’s pushing us forward, not art, and I think that’s an important shift in a lot of ways.  (Which I won’t iterate here due to that time thing I mentioned.)  Anyway, I’ve had that thought, plus a quote from Bono (“taste is the enemy of art”), rattling around in my mind for some years now and I still haven’t really come to terms with what that implies for us, culturally speaking, if it’s true that science is now pushing our boundaries and that taste should be the last thing on an artist’s mind.  If true, one thing that suggests itself is that it means the definition of what is considered “good” and what is considered “bad” are being turned on their heads and perhaps don’t have any meaning at all any more.  Though I can’t help but hope that however they change, the definition of “good” art will still include that focus on reaching out into the slipstream in an effort to touch God, or if not that, at least Truth.

Finally, one of my favorite comments on Romance and its critics/naysayers comes from this essay by Jennifer Crusie (which some of you have seen before since I’ve linked to it from Smart Bitches in the past).  She touches on a lot of what’s being said here (including by me) in a cogent way that helps me understand even my own thoughts on the subject.

You know, considering that fewer and fewer people actually bother to crack a book at all these days, you’d think the makers of the ad would think twice about making fun of anyone reading any sort of book.

It would have been way more accurate to show the first guy with a Nintendo DS or PSP or a video iPod instead of a romance novel.

One of the reasons that romance writing carries little credence with the literati is, I think, because it is considered ‘easy or fun’ to write. We live in a world where (to quote a Prime Minister from my country) ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’. The perception that writing romance is easy makes those who don’t know the realities consider romance writing as a form of cheating ... in that we, as authors, cheat our readers by giving them a lower quality read that we must have ‘dashed off’ in our lunch hour.
Whether it is a leftover from the protestant work ethic or some other underlying culturial bias, it is common for people to consider that unless something is seen to be hard won, it carries little value.
Alas, writing for me is not the deeply emotional cathartic experience that I was taught it was supposed to be. I have fun writing my books—I work hard at it, no doubt about it, but that isn’t evident in the stories themselves because they are fun and lightweight, and aim to entertain (first and foremost). But that doesn’t mean they don’t also contain substance or issues—it just means that as a romance author I don’t aim to be in the reader’s face about those things.
I must admit I deliberately read romances in the bus or train nowadays—I like to see people’s reactions.

sort of, kinda, off subject, but not really since I stood up and proudly declared myself…

Lucy Said: It would have been way more accurate to show the first guy with a Nintendo DS or PSP or a video iPod instead of a romance novel.

Hey guess what! I complained bitterly that there were not any romance audiobooks over there on Itunes. There was not even a section for them! Now there is! I did that? Yeah! I did!
( I am taking full credit! )

It would have been way more accurate to show the first guy with a Nintendo DS or PSP or a video iPod instead of a romance novel.

So true. 

*wanders off to play Guild Wars*

To my way of thinking, “love” as a concept in and of itself - as something worthy of respect and study and recognized to be an emotion of great power - is a relatively modern conceit.

Actually Plato wrote a lot about love. It does depend on what sort of love you’re thinking of. I’ve just done a huge long blog post about Plato, love and the romance genre here. Hope it’s OK to post the link. I would say more here, but it’s rather late in the UK now so I should get off-line.

At my wedding reception, I was introduced to a relative of my husband’s who read Plato for fun, and yes, I was impressed.
No, that two minute conversation probably wasn’t enough to make an informed judgement of his intellect or moral worth, but my feeling was that someone who mightn’t have had a great deal of formal education - he’d been a miner all his life - but chose to spend his retirement puzzling through Plato might be an interesting man, an open-minded man, a bit of a thinker. It made a favourable first impression. Wouldn’t have judged him if he’d read Westerns, but I can’t pretend I’d have made the same assumptions about what he might be like.

[He didn’t drag Plato into the conversation - I read Philosophy at university, so my mother-in-law mentioned his interest when she introduced us.]

I don’t go to those stories for a happy ending - I go to them to dive into attempts to touch the deeper truths of life.  For some reason, those deeper truths as I perceive them rarely involve even the consideration of happiness.

Y’all need to read more Rumi. Pain is not necessary to find Truth!

The garden of love is green without limit
and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy.
Love is beyond either condition:
without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh.

Ooh, oooh, or:

Everyone is overridden by thoughts;
that’s why they have so much heartache and sorrow.
At times I give myself up to thought purposefully;
but when I choose,
I spring up from those under its sway.
I am like a high-flying bird,
and thought is a gnat:
how should a gnat overpower me?

Sigh, such ecstasy!

Pride? Weird concept, I know. Pride vs. quick buck. Hmm.

Pride sadly won’t pay the morgage. 

The thing is, once you’ve spent the past 10 years writing fiction, it can be darned hard to find a Day Job, so you take whatever writing assignment you can do, and do the best you can under deadline.  Doesn’t matter if you’ve got the flu or just had an appendectomy—you do the work.  There’s two novellas my novelist husband has no memory whatsoever of writing because he’d just had surgery and was snowed on pain pills. 

He’s also written gaming and SF novels where the publisher told him to tone down silly stuff like characterization and amp up stuff like sex and violence on the premise that that’s what the readers wanted.  And if you need the money, as a professional writer you do it, because that’s what the publisher wants.

“I think the roots of this disdain lie with our cultural discomfort with emotional and sexual intimacy.”

Or it’s simply the “bad, bad, bad writing”! I don’t think people would have a problem with romance novels if the bulk of the books had greater depth and down to earth depictions of what love is. Even though the writers have moved away from purple prose, there are still a lot of romance novel conventions that define and spoil the genre.

I have been running into the problem of people looking down on me for reading romance for several years.  During college I was an English major, a degree that focuses on those “superior” peices of literture.  When I would comment on a new romance novel or even some other pop novel that I had read my fellow students always looked at me like I was crazy. The horror that I wasn’t reading Shakespeare, Milton, or even some of the more “literary” contemporary literature. 

It’s nice to know that there are people out there who are sticking up for the genre.  Maybe then people will stop looking at me like I’m dumb for reading about romance, love, sex, and happy endings.

‘And if you need the money, as a professional writer you do it, because that’s what the publisher wants.’

Right. And my post was aimed at the publishers, not the authors. Quoting myself:

“Maybe if more pubs took the time to work on quality, the readers wouldn’t accept crap anymore. Change the market, you have to change with it, or die. “

The authors write the books, but the publishers are responsible for what actually hits the market, and the quality of same. If it’s going to change, it’s up to said publishers.

Holy crap!  I just read that NY Times piece and saw that I was quoted (without, of course, giving my name or the fact that I am a published romance author with a few graduate degrees under my belt, but, whatever)! 

Coolio!

Okay, to affirm that I’m a dork, I emailed the author of the NY Times piece with the following:

“I read your piece about the Greater Washington Initiative and saw that you quoted me in the article.  (To refresh, my comments began “Must we denigrate any form of literature?”)  I was happy to see my comments included in the article, though I felt that some weight could have been given to the fact that I am a published romance author as well as an MFA graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and also have an MA in Literature.  My feelings about romance novels arise not only as a producer of said books, but as one who reads them both critically and for pleasure.

There is a lot of bad romance out there—it’s true.  There’s also a lot of really wonderful romance out there that is just as nuanced, intelligent and literate as most literary fiction (which I also write and for which I have won awards).  There is a lot of bad fiction on the market in general, as well, both genre and literary.  No one demeans readers of breathless, mono-dimensional James Patterson books, or even something excessively solipsitic as Jonathan Franzen. 

Romance writers and readers have long lived with the prejudice against their genre.  We are, to an extent, inured to the criticism and dismissals.  We are fully capable of discussing the good romance and recognizing when other authors and publishers produce an inferior product.  I would even argue that the fact that the romance community can express ambivalence about the genre reflects a greater degree of self-awareness and sensitivity than those who would blithely embrace another as infallable.  We really do have a sense of humor about the books we love, as evidenced by the name of the website you referenced.  But the fact that we will not tolerate codification of such sneering condescention as represented by the DC Metro ads means that there are only so many insults that can be borne before the injured party must defend itself.  I am glad that the romance community spoke out against the advertisements, rather than meekly accept them or hide our faces in shame.”

And yes, there is considerable debate regarding the literary canon; some people are Not At All Fond of Jane Austen, for example.

And even Jane Austen has written a clunker (to my mind) - Emma.

As for canon, until the 1970s, Jane Austen was the only woman admitted to THE CANON. No Charlotte Bronte, No Viriginia Woolf. Hemingway wasn’t canon for anyone until after he died and neither was F. Scott Fitzgerald. And there was definitely no Alice Walker or Toni Morrison.  Booth Tarkington was considered classic, then was booted from the canon, pardon the pun. Hell, even Shakespeare got no love from the literatti of his day. So “classic literature” changes as time goes on.

So romance novels really sort of thumb their noses at two pretty core values that modern men and women have and hold dear and EXPECT other men and women to value just as much: men despise weakness and women hate other women who don’t value independence. Because it was so hard-won. 

Well, I don’t know what to say about what men think of women’s reading habits - because from my experience, men tend to make fun of ANYTHING that women do, simply because it’s a woman who does it. Some woman could be reading Plato on the subway, and some guy would be smirking that “she thinks she’s better than me; bitch needs to be taken down a peg.” ( Poor Plato! He really doesn’t deserve the abuse! Yes, I love Plato; why do you ask? :-) )

As for women who think that romance novels are anti-feminist, well they haven’t read a romance novel in a LONG time. When I was teenager, I gave up on romance novels because of Rosemary Rodgers. I hated that the sequel to “Sweet Savage Love” (and I’m totally blanking on the title) had the heroine being RAPED by a guy who wanted to court her in the first book! Thank god romances have changed since then.

No matter what the plot is, no matter how capable the HERO is, the goal is gettin’ a girl.  And I think that makes MEN very uncomfortable.

Sing it, sister! Because God forbid a man should admit that he NEEDS the woman he’s with, or that he’s searching for a woman to spend his life with.

Melabelo—thank God I’m not the only Emma-hater around.  I’m an Austen scholar, for God’s sake—I made my living off that woman, and I prefer Mansfield Park to that bitch, Emma!  ;)

Zoe, what a wonderful letter.  Go, you!

Somehow I don’t think I’ll be writing them owning up to my anonymous ‘stale raisin’ quote (though, for the record, I totally stand by it).  I think they only included it because New Yorkers would get a kick out of anti-DC snark.

I wish I could take a few hours’ break from writing books for the illiterati, in order to contemplate and express my thoughts on these issues with the depth and eloquence I see here on this blog.  Somewhere in a closet, my master’s degree is rolled up in a tube, weeping.

I agree on so many points that everyone has made, that I don’t know where to begin. First off, I highly agree with the fact that romance is looked down upon because it is written for women and (mostly) by women. We as a gender are not very nice to ourselves. I read a very enlightening book called Odd Girl Out that explains the reasoning behind this and it completely changed my world.

One of its theories is that woman are not groomed to be aggressive or forceful or express negative emotions as children, so therefore we turn to backstabbing, gossip, etc. as a way to get those emotions out. It was like a light went on when I read that. So much of my past school life and current work life (I work with a staff that is about 60 people - only a handful being men).

As for me, I have to read Children’s and Young Adult novels for work and feel more self conscious reading those while out and about than any romance. I am slowly getting over that and just enjoying my book. I do tend to peek at what other people are reading, but not for judgement. If it’s an author I know, I might start a conversation or if it’s one I’ve heard of, I might ask how it is. Books are one of the best conversation starters.

Plus, in my not so humble opinion, if I was on a subway and had the desire to judge those around me, I’d be more impressed with the people who had books in their hands than not. At least the readers were willing to challenge their brain in some way. I’d say that is a better thing than simply staring off into space.

And despite all that romance novels still sell more than any other genre.  And will continue to sell.  So personally, I dont’ give a rat’s ass what anyone says, those outside the romance genre, and those inside, I will continue to write and read romance.  It’s really as simple as that.

[Runswithscissors comes out of mothballs to post ...]

This topic is one I wrestle with a lot – I still feel the need to defend my love of romance novels by saying, well, you know, it’s okay because I’ve read the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost and lost several good months of my life working through Thomas Hardy and Henry James.  Like defending my love of dessert by saying I eat lots of leafy vegetables too. 

The insightful comments posted here prompted me to reread an essay George Eliot wrote called Silly Novels by Silly Lady Novelists.  The essay is actually very funny, not least when Eliot summarises the plots of popular novels of her day ... The heroine is usually an heiress, probably a peeress in her own right, with perhaps a vicious baronet, an amiable duke, and an irresistible younger son of a marquis as lovers in the foreground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in the middle distance, and a crowd of undefined adorers dimly indicated beyond. Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity; she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect; she is perfectly well-dressed and perfectly religious; she dances like a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues… 

Sound familiar?

The point Eliot makes in the essay is that, in a society which already makes it difficult for a woman writer to be taken seriously, the ‘silly lady novelists’ make it even harder.  I can’t help thinking that in 1856, as now, the ‘silly novels’ are just the easy target, their covers a shorthand for ‘women who read these are a bit stupid and bring the rest of us down with them’.  And it makes me sad that 150 years after Eliot wrote her essay, books for women, by women, are still, literally, being judged by their covers and not on their merits.

Delurking to stick toe in shark-infested waters…

It seems to me that the problem “literary types” (yes, I know, another stererotype, I’m sorry) have with romance novels all boils down to one simple thing.

Cash.

Romance novels are big business because even if a good proportion of them are stanky turds (thank you for that image, Candy) they still fulfill a need—or more precisely, a collection of needs, since romance readership is extraordinarily diverse and has diverse needs.

Slight digression. The first issue here, to my mind, is the age-old tension in our culture between “artist” and “hack.” If you make a good living writing what you love and refuse to be an alcohol-abusin’ messed-up suicidal suffering novelist, you’re a hack. You must suffer for your Art since creative work isn’t really work, is it?

Yeah. I’ll give everyone a second to snort at that one. But this isn’t even the main problem. End digression.

Romance authors are by and large uppity women daring to be (mostly) successful. Yeah, I’m an author too, I know we shouldn’t quit our day jobs. But still, romance authors get paid. There’s millions made in romance novels, and the only way to denigrate this success is with the (again) age-old chestnut that since women are doing it, it’s not REAL work. It’s fluff, and it’s silly and oversexed and hysterical and shallow and vapid. (Insert any old insult to romance readers/females as the “weaker sex” here.)

Could it get any more frocking Victorian?

It’s not that romance novels have literary value or lack literary value. The underlying “problem” here is with the fact that people pay good money for them, and will continue to pay good money for them. The cultural knee-jerk reaction is to denigrate anyone silly enough to read/pay for these female hacks. This reaction largely isn’t conscious—and cultural attitudes are such that romance readers can be infested with squirmy shame for daring to read something so “vapid” (translation: “female”.)

To which I say: goddamn it, romance novels aren’t just about romance. They’re about gender roles and women’s issues and cultural shifts and all SORTS of interesting things.

I don’t mind paying for them. I do, however, wish the mantitty would deflate…

age-old chestnut that since women are doing it, it’s not REAL work.

I think this is the big part of the reason why I didn’t tell anyone for months and months that I intended to write romance - that I wanted my kids in daycare - that I wanted to hire a housekeeper.  For what??  To write that stuff?  That’s not real work! 

But if I had been pursuing my history PhD, no one would have batted an eye and I wouldn’t have felt the need to prepare myself against potential criticism.

Luckily I got over that pretty quickly.  Now if only we could afford that housekeeper…

I admit I’m new to reading romances, and even admitting that tends to come a bit reluctantly.

I’ve been a big reader nearly all my life.  When I was six, I was on a third grade level and took novels to school.  I’ve kept up reading since then, going for pretty much anything but romance.

My first exposure to romance novels when I was young consisted of two that a classmate had given me in junior high.  One was about a woman whose promising career as an athlete was cut off when her legs were broken.  She showed no evidence of a spine and didn’t have a glimmer of hope she’d ever walk again until her hunky male physical therapist taught her to walk again and taught her about LUV.  Then, despite recovering to an astonishing degree by the end, she decided she wanted nothing more than to settle down and have tons of kids with him.

The second was about a cowboy.  I. . . don’t get cowboys.  Sorry if you like that, they just don’t do anything for me.

Passing encounters with them as the years went by (and an English teacher who assigned Wuthering Heights) left me with a hatred of the brooding male lead that can be found in the genre.  Like cowboys, I just don’t see the appeal.

I wasn’t openly disdaining romance novels, but I just dismissed the genre and kept to the other sections of the bookstore.

Then, a few months back, I picked up a slim paperback at a used book sale.  The title caught my eye, it had an interesting and dignified cover, and the back cover blurb sounded intriguing.  I read it, enjoyed it, and about halfway through it hit me that it was a romance novel.

Acceptance sinking in, I then did some searching online.  I went through various review sites, I studied the subgenres, and I picked up a few more that seemed to fit in my often bizarre interest range.  Some were winceworthy, others I’m hanging on to and willing to display spine-out on my shelf.

Thinking it over, there’s nothing wrong with the concept.  I’ve always been among those who feel a true feminist can still make the choice to stay home and raise kids—but that they view it as a choice.  I’m going to wince when a romance novel heroine quits the job she loves just because her boyfriend of less than a month proposed, but not all of them take that route.

The Happily Ever After? I love it.  Grim, gritty, ‘realistic’ stuff is in these days, but it’s comforting and more than a little satisfying to know that, at least, a fictional character can get a break.

And. . . I’m a geek.  From the time I was in elementary school, I took the stance that I’d read and watch what I liked, the obscure and the weird, and not give a shit what the ‘popular’ crowd thought about it.  I should be able to filter out the shitty romance as I do the shitty sci fi, and enjoy the rare gems without caring about popular opinion.

More on-topic, regarding the subway reading ad. . . when I’m on the subway, I lean toward light reading in both respects.  A book you can comfortably read with one hand is ideal, and weighty subject matter comes with the risk of drawing you in far enough that you miss your stop.

Possible counter-ad—

Frame one: The man is reading a romance novel, sitting attentively.

Frame two: The man is reading Plato, fast asleep in his seat.  His head is slumped back and his mouth is hanging open.

Hey, are we still picking at *that* scab?

I agree with Lilith (great name!) about the cash. If it makes money you’re a sellout, you don’t suffer for your Art, it can’t be serious/intelligent/literary…but you know what, they said the same about “escapist fantasy”.  Remember how Tolkien was looked down upon by his peers? Well, if it happens to him…

On another note, I’m so thrilled Candy quoted French and actually bothered to put all them accents. It made my inner Chihuahua chase her tail a few good turns.

Yes, I know, I need help.

But I see my language butchered enough that I think I’ve become oversensitive with the years.

Yay accents!

*I swear I’m not touching the It’s Not What You Read scab again*

Sorry if anyone’s already mentioned this - I did check, but it’s a long thread. And yes, I’m still picking - but I’ve been catching up on this so it’s still new to me.

Along with the interesting issues raised in other posts, it occurred to me that the advert’s sub-text relies partly on the classic rational/business/professional v. emotional/personal/fuzzy-wuzzy dichotomy. After all, why use the work of an ages-dead Greek to indicate intelligence? Particularly in marketing designed to encourage businesss investment. Why not a little article by Mr.S.Hawking as a mark of superior intelligence? Or a nicely-bound, gold-tooled leather volume of Proust? Or perhaps the latest hot bestseller on better methods to estimate stochastic general equilibrium models? (wheee…)

I suspect it’s because people relate philosophy to notions of pure mental discipline and logic, as well as the ability to articulate and comprehend complex abstract ideas (unlike mathematicians who, as every fule know, only communicate in imaginary numbers and weirdly archaic symbols; or those arty types who just wallow in untrammelled sentiment and cry at poetry readings). Philosophy is about clear-headed rationality (or empiricism, but leave that little detail aside, since we’re talking about Plato here). And this nicely feeds into the the hard-headed business ideal.

So Plato, champion of reason, is lined up against books which are all about mooshy feelings, messy visceral emotions, unquenched violent passions (as the cover clearly shows) and probably moral turpitude, none of which your average high-flying business investor wants cluttering up the office on a Monday morning. As opposed to contrasting with something like, say, revelation which at least has the advantage of providing a decent dose of moral fibre. He’s intelligent and business-like. And since you are what you read, particularly while strap-hanging…

In this context almost any sort of protest can be interpreted as over-emotional and used to reaffirm these long-held views. Kinda ironic, since Plato himself strongly espoused the status quo to the extent of having a nice line in entrenched nepotism. Of course, this was once the Utopia had been established to his design and some wise philosopher over 50 with a suitable background and really nice beard was sitting pretty at the top of the benignly-dictated-to pile. Not one for innovation, dynamism or any sort of creative flair, was old Plato. Or (Athenian) democracy for that matter.