Headbanger’s Ball

What’s this? You need an excuse to bank your head in that nice head-shaped divot on your desk? We here at SB HQ are happy to assist, as is Zumie, who sent me these excerpts from her creative writing textbook, The College Handbook of Creative Writing by Robert DeMaria.

Excerpt the first, from page 16:

“Male-female relationships have become very complex since the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s. Nowhere has the loss of tradition and structure in society caused more confusion than in the relationships between men and women. Romeo and Juliet may have had their problems, but they knew exactly where they stood and what was expected of them. Today’s proliferation of paperback romances may be an escapist reaction to the confusion, or even a simplistic way of dealing with the varieties of interpersonal problems. There are also, of course, many worthwhile literary works on the subject, most of them by women who have been writing with greater freedom in an atmosphere of liberation—writers such as Alice Walker and Cynthia Ozick.

 

But wait, there’s more! Excerpt the second, from page 20:

The broad literary spectrum ranges from the silliest kind of romance or comic book adventure to the works of such major literary figures as Herman Melville and Jane Austen. Some critics try to draw the line and create criteria for what they call true literature, as opposed to mere entertainment or downright junk. Drawing a precise line is always a bit arbitrary, and not really necessary. What we have is a continuum from the very trivial to the very important. Since the range is very wide, some of the material between these extremes can prove quite interesting without actually being worldshaking. What good fiction, poetry, or drama does for us is leave us with the feeling that our experience has been expanded vicariously and that perhaps we know something afterward that we did not know before. In other words, good literature has an impact that, in some way, changes the reader. Trivial literary entertainments such as thrills and romances and television dramas, however, cannot be dismissed with contempt. They have a role to play in the lives of many people, and many of the writers involved find such work a pleasant and profitable form of employment, though significance in such works is clearly minimal. Their aim is to thrill, chill, and titillate. Frank Lloyd Wright once described television as “chewing gum for the eyes.” It’s an excellent description of that medium and might also apply to most of our light literature. Chewing gum gives you a lot of action but no nourishment. Great literature, on the other hand, is full of emotional, spiritual, and intellectual nourishment.

I love the dancing tango of “Have I insulted you? Have I? No, how about now? How about now?” that DeMaria is playing here with that added dollop of piquant elitism. It’s not necessary to draw a line between the erudite and the junk (but romances are junk) and even romance has a role to play in the lives of their readers (ignominious fools though they are). Jesus fucknuts, what kind of self-absorbed superiority fix is this guy on in the quest to teach creative writing? Thrill, chill, and titillate in the absence of emotional, spiritual, and intellectual nourishment? MY ASS, SIR.

I bet he giggled when he typed “titillate,” too.

What an outrageous pity that this boneheaded statement is being used to instruct a venue of creative encouragement. Discouragement is more like it. Pass me a romance. Preferably a hardback. So I can aim it at his groin.

 

Categorized:

Ranty McRant

Comments are Closed

  1. Angela C says:

    Also, I wonder if this guy is bitter because no one has published his “high brow” literature.

    That’s really what it sounds like to me.  He’s reassuring himself that even though his books won’t sell, it’s not because they’re less than worthwhile; he just doesn’t pander to the trivial entertainment lobes of people who’re just looking for their next shallow fix.  “Yes, okay, take your cheap thrills… now, if I’ve embarassed you enough about your pulp fiction, might I interest you in something much more important?”

  2. Joanna S. says:

    I think it was snarkhunter who mentioned this earlier, but I’m actually more disturbed by his blanket assumption that the 1960s created problems between male/female sexual relationships and that’s what has caused the upswing in genre fiction (both writing and reading).  It’s as if our constant thinking about and with our groinal regions after women have come marching out of kitchens all over the globe is the root of what he considers bad fictions. Because, of course, no one was thinking about sex before this, nor did they realize that seduction as well as the act itself is fraught with myriad problems.

    As both a medievalist and a feminist, I’d like to tell DeMaria that he is flat. Out. Wrong.  After all, if female desire weren’t considered so gosh darn tricky, many of his literary “greats” would have had nothing to write about.  Then, in turn, he would have nothing with which to pontificate upon like the writing dilettante he reveals himself to be.

  3. Marta Acosta says:

    Okay, look at this guy’s bibliography.  He’s just churning out stuff.  He’s probably taking on jobs to get a check here and a check there and you can tell his heart isn’t in his writing because it’s so rote.

    However, a comment above said:

    It is a harder job, in my opinion to be a television or romance writer than to write the next great American novel—for it is your job to open that window on culture, to capture a moment in time, and to reveal truths about the world while masking it in pure entertainment value.

    Okay, you’re kidding, right?  Because I’ve seen “Three’s Company” and I’ve read The Sound and the Fury and there’s a difference.  Great literature is revelatory.  It is art.

    My general attitude is:  reading is good.  I don’t care if it’s Cat Fancier magazine, comic books, Stephen King novels, , or Calvin and Hobbes.  (And Calvin and Hobbes would definitely fall into the Art category.)

    There’s no reason to trash entire genres and categories.  Except for Sandra Lee’s Semi-Homemade cookbooks.  Those are the work of the devil fer sure.

  4. Teddypig says:

    Anthony Bourdain on Sandra Lee…

    “Pure evil. This frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time. She Must Be Stopped. Her death-dealing can-opening ways will cut a swath of destruction through the world if not contained. I would likely be arrested if I suggested on television that any children watching should promptly go to a wooded area with a gun and harm themselves. What’s the difference between that and Sandra suggesting we fill our mouths with Ritz Crackers, jam a can of Cheez Wiz in after and press hard? None that I can see. This is simply irresponsible programming. Its only possible use might be as a psychological warfare strategy against the resurgent Taliban—or dangerous insurgent groups. A large-racked blonde repeatedly urging Afghans and angry Iraqis to stuff themseles with fatty, processed American foods might be just the weapon we need to win the war on terror.”

  5. voodoo chile says:

    Men and Women have always had complex dealings with one another.  That’s what makes it interesting.  I hate it when someone tries to reduce the beauty of relationships into some intellectual exercise.  Sigh.

  6. The broad literary spectrum ranges from the silliest kind of romance or comic book adventure to the works of such major literary figures as Herman Melville and Jane Austen. Some critics try to draw the line and create criteria for what they call true literature, as opposed to mere entertainment or downright junk.

    As a Melville fan, I must protest… Typee and Omoo were, at heart, “comic book adventure,” and “mere entertainment,” and when it was first published, Moby-Dick was “downright junk.”

  7. Ehren says:

    and so continues my loathing for self important professors and teachers.

    I am so glad that while my creative writing teacher in highschool was weird and clearly friends with the same woman who claimed I attacked her, when all I had done was throw a binder away from me and five feet to the right from her, that she had a healthy love of all things literature from the classics to the modern to comic books. And if it was humorous or bizarre and clever in anyway, you get extra points. Even in the tardy excuse book.

    oh that was a fun time, reading off all those tardy excuses from only one boy in the entire class.

  8. Miranda says:

    I think people decide on a lot of motives of ‘literary’ writers when those writers weren’t trying to be all that literary at all. We read The Scarlet Letter in high school, and there was a HUGE discussion of the significance of Hester naming her daughter Pearl. Blah, blah, meaning, blah beyond price, blah. Later, we were going over some of Hawthorne’s own notes, and one said “Pearl, the English of Margaret. A pretty name for a girl in a story.” The end. He thought it was pretty. He wasn’t trying to tell us anything.

    Scarlet Letter is good if you don’t have teachers maundering on about symbolism they’ve invented, but the other ‘literature’ I’ve read and enjoyed (Austin, Bronte, Dickens, Eliot [Middlemarch]) all had plots, and a lot of them had romantic plots. Hemingway almost did me in. I was rooting for the fish to eat the old man in “Old Man and the Sea” and a friend said she resented being stuck for half a semester dealing with fishing. I didn’t like Faulkner either. I don’t generally find books or media to be life-changing.

    My password is schools41. One of the good things about being over 41 is no one can make you go to school 🙂

  9. Ashwinder says:

    Blah, blah, meaning, blah beyond price, blah. Later, we were going over some of Hawthorne’s own notes, and one said “Pearl, the English of Margaret. A pretty name for a girl in a story.” The end. He thought it was pretty. He wasn’t trying to tell us anything.

    I used to get the impression all the time in my high school English classes that over half the crap we used to discuss as being symbolic or meaningful or what have you wasn’t actually consciously written into the story. It was all crap made up by English teachers and literary critics and that if the authors heard about some of it they’d be all O RLY.

  10. Anon76 says:

    Me LUBS me some Anthony Bourdain!

    Such a caustic sucker.

  11. Anon76 says:

    I used to get the impression all the time in my high school English classes that over half the crap we used to discuss as being symbolic or meaningful or what have you wasn’t actually consciously written into the story. It was all crap made up by English teachers and literary critics and that if the authors heard about some of it they’d be all O RLY

    Oh, I so hear you on that, Ashwinder. All the savvy kids in our high school knew that you need only jot down the teacher’s impressions of the work to pass the quiz later presented. It didn’t matter what WE read into the work, but what the TEACHER did. LOL

  12. Bonnie Dee says:

    I have a big problem with this part:

    “chewing gum for the eyes.” It’s an excellent description of that medium

    Yes, there’s reality show crap on TV, but there are also very worthwhile dramas that are full course meals not chewing gum. Mad Men anyone?

  13. Flo says:

    Why doesn’t he even get into the fact that we all are different and what is emotionally and spiritually and intellectually fulfilling for one person may not be for another?  That’s like one of the MAIN points of literature.  That we all take away something different and that it’s a GOOD thing.  That it makes literature a living breathing art.

    UGH!  *pulls hair*

  14. megalith says:

    I used to get the impression all the time in my high school English classes that over half the crap we used to discuss as being symbolic or meaningful or what have you wasn’t actually consciously written into the story. It was all crap made up by English teachers and literary critics and that if the authors heard about some of it they’d be all O RLY

    When I was in college, this phenomenon was known among my friends and I who were English majors as “English major bullshit.” As in, “Man, I was really shoveling some English major bullshit in that essay exam today! How ‘bout you?” or “Sure, I’ll help you with your paper, you poor Chem E! It just needs some more English major bullshit.”

  15. Chrissy says:

    We used to call it “toady prose.”  I think it was Dr. Leslie English who invented it.

    As for “toady fiction” I always thought people who were quick to spit on romance and deny reading any kind of popular fiction sort of… well, the equivalent of snots who claim they “never watch television.”

    K.  Whatever.  I’d tell you what an asshat you are but Fringe is on.

  16. Marta Acosta says:

    First, heh, heh, heh, TeddyPig said “whiz.”

    Second, have you ever seen Sandra Lee’s horrific tablescapes?  They make me want to stab a bitch.

    Third, yes, there are bad lit teachers.  There are some terrible math teachers, too, but I never hear anyone saying, “Math is crap.” 
    There are also wonderful teachers who can guide and instruct you in a way that stays with you forever. 

    Fourth, there’s a disturbing pattern of anti-intellectualism here every time some academic idiot insults the romance genre.  Basically it’s:  “Romance is stupid.”  “No, everything you like is stupid!  Literature is stoopid.”

    The proper response should be:  “You’re ugly and your mama dresses you funny,” and then walk away.

    It takes nothing away from romance to give proper cred and respect to the great works.

  17. SonomaLass says:

    It takes nothing away from romance to give proper cred and respect to the great works.

    Hear, hear, Marta!

    And as for “snots who claim they ‘never watch television,’” I have to point out that there are some people who just don’t (I’m partnered with one).  I don’t think he’s a snot, though; he just isn’t interested.  He doesn’t read romance novels, either, but I figure he’s entitled to his choices, same as me.

    Some info on DeMaria that might interest people:  the scholar at Vassar is Robert DeMaria, Junior.  The author of the Handbook and the Vineyard Press fiction is Robert DeMaria, Senior.  Dr. DeMaria the scholar has never published fiction or “how-to” handbooks, just “scholarly monographs and editions.”  He also informs me that his father will be 80 years old next week.

  18. AgTigress says:

    On the general issue of critics finding symbolism and underlying themes in works of art of which the artist him/herself may not even have been aware (e.g. the Margarita= Pearl example);  the fact that the writer/painter/sculptor was not conscious of a symbolic meaning does not mean that it is not there.  One of the characteristics of creative work is that it comes from the heart as well as the head, and the author may not always be conscious of all the reasons why he/she has chosen a particular detail.  Choices are often made simply because they seem ‘right’ to the writer or painter.  He will not necessarily know the reason for the ‘rightness’, but one will exist:  there will be a personal history behind that instinctive choice, and informed external analysis may sometimes be able to identify and interpret it.

    In any case, if someone who reads or sees the work perceives that symbol, it is there, even if the creator did not know it.  A creative work has a dual existence, its existence for the creator and for the receiver.  The reader/viewer/listener is necessary to complete the existence of a work of art.  While it is seen only by the person who made it, it is incomplete.

    Critical analysis may seem pointless, but it hones the mind and the critical faculties when it is done properly, and that, in itself, pays homage to the work of art.  If a student merely parrots what she has been told by a teacher, of course it is a waste of everyone’s time, but if she uses her own critical faculties to analyse a work, whether it is a Great Novel or one of the less successful category romances, whether the reader enjoys it or detests it, it is good mental training, and it forms part of the wider influence of that work.  The fact that I heartily loathe Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is no less a valid point of view than that of the myriads who adore it.  I can explain exactly why I hate it.  Both positive and negative viewpoints testify to the power of Tolkien’s vision.

    I emphatically echo Marta’s remark about anti-intellectualism.  There are many, many different ways of enjoying fiction and all other creative endeavours, from symphonies and great paintings to crochet.  Some modes are primarily intellectual,  others are primarily instinctive and emotional, and most are a complex amalgam.  They are all of interest, and they can all be analysed with advantage.  It is wrong to dismiss the emotional pleasure of enjoying ‘light’ or popular novels, art, music or drama.  It is also wrong to dismiss the intellectual pleasure to be derived from tackling more challenging works.  For a full life, we all need both the light and the serious, the dainty sweetmeats as well as the nourishing, filling meals. 

    I agree with those who have sneered at the quotations from this daft publication on ‘creative writing’: first (as I said) because I do not believe creativity can be taught, only practised and developed, but above all because, as someone remarked above, the author cannot write well himself.  Taking writing advice from this man would be like taking advice on composing music from somebody who is tone-deaf.

  19. Alexandra says:

    This attitude is why I am not exactly fond of the creative writing emphasis of my English major.  I lucked out this semester, but I won’t be continuing because I’ve heard that the rest of the teachers only teach “literary” writing.  As it is, some people get very “Why don’t you try something new, like writing literature?” and I reply “Why don’t you try something new, like writing fantasy?” (my chosen genre).

    As it is, I’m pretty screwed in the eyes of these professors: I write romantic YA fantasy.  Three strikes, and I’m out.

  20. Wryhag says:

    It takes nothing away from romance to give proper cred and respect to the great works.

    Absolutely true.  I’ve as much had my fill of anti-intellectualism all my adult life as I’ve had of anit-populism.

    Can’t we all just get along and respect each other’s tastes?  (If you took that sentence literally, you neglected to look at my screen name.)

  21. I used to get the impression all the time in my high school English classes that over half the crap we used to discuss as being symbolic or meaningful or what have you wasn’t actually consciously written into the story. It was all crap made up by English teachers and literary critics and that if the authors heard about some of it they’d be all O RLY.

    One of the most exciting things about doing academic work on romance novels is that I’ve been able to get in touch with some of the authors I’ve written about to find out what they thought of my literary criticism of their work. I know I don’t always get things right, but some of the authors have stated that they definitely did intend there to be some of the themes/images I identified.

    At other times, rather than being “actually consciously written into the story,” the author may say that my interpretation is one which may have been present in the back of her mind and possibly came out during the process of writing without the author giving conscious thought to it. Maybe the authors who’ve said that were being kind to me, but I do think it’s quite possible for themes/images to emerge during the process of writing without the author giving conscious thought to them. Jenny Crusie’s written quite a lot about the “Girls in the Basement” and making collages, and it’s clear that for some authors a lot does emerge from the subconscious. Some may spend more time than others looking at those elements and doing their own literary criticism during the writing process (or its visual equivalent if they’ve made a collage). Anyway, I think the fact that parts of the creative process are subconscious means that a literary critic is not necessarily wrong if the author didn’t consciously write something into the story.

    People often associate certain meanings or emotions with colours, for example, and romance heroes often have names that recall powerful predators or (fallen) angels. People also have certain basic storylines that they know well and which permeate our culture, such as Cinderella and Eve in the Garden of Eden and so if someone is poor and meets and marries a rich man, it’s not unlikely that somewhere in there there will be a faint echo of Cinderella, or if a hero or heroine in a romance offers the other food then there may well be a hint of seduction/temptation. Because certain associations are so common, they may not be examined consciously by an author each and every time they make an appearance in a novel. In addition, because readers share the same background knowledge, they may absorb and understand these additional meanings and emotions subconsciously too. If you’re reading a romance and the heroine suddenly appears dressed in newly-purchased bright red lacy lingerie, for example, you’d probably automatically think something different than if she was wearing plain white cotton underwear. You might not stop to analyse each item of clothing, but I suspect that at some level you’d have worked out what they might mean.

    Anyway, to get back to this:

    we were going over some of Hawthorne’s own notes, and one said “Pearl, the English of Margaret. A pretty name for a girl in a story.” The end. He thought it was pretty. He wasn’t trying to tell us anything.

    it’s possible that, on a subconscious level, the reason Hawthorne thought that “Pearl” was a pretty name was because of its associations. Or he may have thought about them consciously but not bothered to write a long essay about them in his notes, because he took them for granted.

    I do think that literary critics should be careful to back up their suggestions with plenty of textual evidence and always remain open to the possibility of alternative explanations.

  22. Marta Acosta says:

    AgTigress, really nicely put.

    I think great fiction touches not only our minds, but our hearts and our souls.

    Many of the great works we enjoy (or not) today were popular works in their time, and some of the books now shelved as genre fiction will survive to be seen as classics.

  23. Elizabeth Wadsworth says:

    There’s no reason to trash entire genres and categories.  Except for Sandra Lee’s Semi-Homemade cookbooks.  Those are the work of the devil fer sure.

    On the other hand, I consider The Cake Mix Doctor to be art of a high nature.

  24. Marta Acosta says:

    I just looked up The Cake Mix Doctor.  I feel like such a simpleton, because I merely dump a bag of chocolate chips in cake mix batter and ignore all the other creative and artistic possibilities.  (I do sometimes put fun colored sprinkles on my cupcakes.)

    Also, if Sandra Lee is the devil’s minion,  I’m pretty sure Paula Dean is a messenger from heaven.

  25. This is Robert DeMaria?  THE Robert DeMaria?

    I actually have read a few novels by Robert DeMaria, and my God, his books are bad.  He wrote “The Empress” and “Clodia,” two especially pretentious examples of the toga porn genre.  Both books take place in ancient Rome, and feature some overwhelmingly beautiful yet depraved and incestuous woman who dominates all the weak-minded men around her.  I own both of them for the covers, but the stories themselves are laughable, not to mention repulsively misogynistic.

    It’s hard to know which deathless piece of Mr. DeMaria’s prose I should quote first.  How about this lovely sex scene from page 199 of the Jove/Harcourt paperback edition of “The Empress,” where Agrippina seduces her son Nero:

    But he was not asleep, only dreamy with wine and the magic of the moment.  His mouth sucked at her breast through the thinness of her gown.  Her nipples were erect.  With a delicate motion of her fingers she pulled away the blue material and lifted her heavy breast toward him.  He took it in his mouth, his lips and tongue suddenly alive his body stirring with animal urgency.  Against her thigh she felt his excitement and soothed him with her song and the reassuring caresses of her hand.  She touched his legs, his hips, and under his tunic, the firmness of his young manhood.  How well she knew that desire in men would not be denied.  And how she little she cared about the barriers of blood.  “We are all merely men and women,” she had once said.  And the prohibition against this sort of passion only heightened it and made it more delicious.  Besides, what harm could it possibly do, especially if no one ever knew.  The gods themselves, if there were such things as gods, were easy victims of the same delights.  These arguments and more she gave herself and urged her son to find satisfaction where so many lovers before had found theirs.  She reassured him now with whispers.  She kissed his hair.  She drew him into her now fully reclining body and freed him from the brief undergarment that contained him.  She herself wore none.  He moaned with desire and confusion and buried himself in his mother’s arms.  She embraced him, possessed him, devoured him.  And at the peak of their peculiar pleasure she felt sure he would never belong to another woman.

    Oh, my dear lord.  And this guy hates romance novels.  I’ve enjoyed thousands of romance novels a thousand times more than I enjoyed this crap.

  26. Miranda says:

    Learning to think critically and analyze material is important, of course, but one person’s great work is another person’s “I would rather gouge out my eyes than read another page of this book”. I have had the eye-gouging response across the literary spectrum from classical literature to the lightest of lightn’fluffy. If I have that response, then I’m not going to respect the work, no matter who wrote it.

  27. AgTigress says:

    ….freed him from the brief undergarment that contained him.

    Though the evidence for Roman undergarments is rather scant, it seems highly unlikely that a male of the highest social class, in Rome, and in the 1st century AD, would have worn any kind of loincloth or subligaculum under his clothing.  A little archaeological research would have been in order. 

    Oh, and the prose is fairly excruciating, too –  though, to be fair, it is almost impossible to quote a sex scene ‘cold’ and out of context without it sounding frightful.

    Are we quite sure that this is the same ‘creative writing’ Robert DeMaria?  If so, he should be ashamed of himself.

  28. AgTigress says:

    …but one person’s great work is another person’s “I would rather gouge out my eyes than read another page of this book”.

    Oh, I think we are all familiar with that feeling!  Personal taste is part of the reader’s side of the author/reader relationship that completes the creation.  It is still interesting to analyse why one detests a book so much, though.  Working it out can tell one a lot about oneself as well as about the writer.

  29. AG Tigress, through the course of “The Empress,” Mr. DeMaria makes a bunch of mistakes that are much worse than putting a loincloth on Nero.  For example, Nero belongs to a gang of young punks called… get this… “The Mohocks.”  The Roman Mohocks, to be exact.  Because, you know, folks in first century Italy knew all about the Mohowks and the Iroquois League, and the the early 18th century British hooligans who named themselves after them.

    I quoted the sex scene because it was the most outré, but here’s another example of his writing:

    Rome.  The center of the world.  Wolf-mother to millions.  Blazing with wealth.  Stinking with poverty.  Temples and palaces.  Arenas and theaters.  Marketplaces with open shops.  Tenements for the poor.  What a clanging and shouting and grinding of cartwheels.  What commerce and traffic from dawn to dusk.  Rome.  The throbbing heart of the Mediterranean, linked by arteries to all the outposts from Britain to Asia.  Administrative capital.  Seat of the emperor.  Residence of the aristocracy.  Its monstrous appetites were fed from far and near.  Metals, grain, wine, fish, marble, timber, wool, wild animals, slaves, and horses.  Goods poured into the city from Spain, Gaul, Greece, Asia and Africa.  Wherever a Roman soldier set his foot, traders and merchants followed.  And what an influx of races.  What a babble of languages and a riot of costumes.  The most thrilling and dangerous city in the world.  There was nothing in Rome that could not be bought, from a slave to a senator; from a whore to a pearl.  Gleaming white in the stifling day.  Dark and damp in the cobbled night.  A city of walls within walls, searching for society, retreating into privacy.

    I’m pretty sure that this DeMaria is the same guy who wrote the creative writing guide, since the Vineyard Press is dedicated to showcasing his work.

  30. AgTigress says:

    Oh, good lord, that passage is really dire.  I think it is easier to make an objective judgement on that kind of passage than on a sex-scene. 

    The entire paragraph appears to consist of a long, staccato series of notes, rather than coherent thought.  It is lazy, ugly writing, and the perpetrator is not a person who has any right whatever to sit in judgement on the work of others.

  31. Alex says:

    So, uh, any chance we can somehow contact this asshat and take our grievances up with him in a form he might understand—the scathing dressing-down.

    If I could make some notes, I’m sure I could pour some acid on his opinion of himself…

  32. Alex says:

    On a literary front, the “Rome” passage uses an effective technique—the little staccato descriptors and bits of imagery/sensory detail. He carries it much too far, though, and he just generally lacks grace.

    Spamword: Spirit33. This guy just hasn’t got it…

  33. Zumie says:

    I’m so, so scarred by those excerpts. EEEAAGH. Thank god we’re barely touching the book in class. *handles it with gloves to be sure* I’ll try bringing this up with my teacher and see what she says. She’s pretty reasonable.

  34. SonomaLass says:

    As I said above, this “asshat” is an elderly man, who wrote most of this stuff many years ago.  The newest edition of the Creative Writing Handbook (the third)  is more than ten years old.  Empress of Rome was published in (I think) 1978.  While I don’t agree with his assessment of the romance genre (or appreciate his efforts to contribute to it), I can’t see much point in trying to contact him or dress him down.

  35. Katherine C. says:

    “Blah, blah, meaning, blah beyond price, blah. Later, we were going over some of Hawthorne’s own notes, and one said “Pearl, the English of Margaret. A pretty name for a girl in a story.” The end. He thought it was pretty. He wasn’t trying to tell us anything. “
    “I used to get the impression all the time in my high school English classes that over half the crap we used to discuss as being symbolic or meaningful or what have you wasn’t actually consciously written into the story. It was all crap made up by English teachers and literary critics and that if the authors heard about some of it they’d be all O RLY. “

    AMEN!!!! What they said. Any time a teacher/professor started a sentence with “What the author was trying to say here is …” I would automatically tune out—you know this how? Was always one of my biggest pet peeves.
    As to DeMoron, I don’t know that I can say it any better than anyone else has already, but if this lackwit would pull his head out of his ass long enough to read some of this “inferior” mindless drivel he’d actually learn how to write something worth reading himself … Just saying.

  36. Paulina says:

    There is an article at io9.com concerning the same issues, only with science fiction books, but it really applies to all “genre” fiction. It also makes a good point about “literary fiction” being just another genre. Personally, I read fiction for escapism and entertainment; I’d rather see it well written, with interesting plot and characters, without making an impact on me beyond “hey, that was good!” than force myself to read something that’s dull and boring, only for the sake of reading something that

    leave[s] us with the feeling that our experience has been expanded vicariously and that perhaps we know something afterward that we did not know before.

  37. Katherine C. says:

    Oh, my dear lord.  And this guy hates romance novels.  I’ve enjoyed thousands of romance novels a thousand times more than I enjoyed this crap.

    Jesus, Mary and Joseph too! No wonder he’s trying to get us to stop reading anything else, he’s hoping we won’t notice how bad he is—the second excerpt reads like a string of cheesy movie trailer teasers, all he’s missing is “In a world where” … and also, EWW!! I’m certainly not in a hurry to read “The Empress” anytime soon. And hey, I learned how to quote …

  38. AgTigress says:

    On a literary front, the “Rome” passage uses an effective technique—the little staccato descriptors and bits of imagery/sensory detail. He carries it much too far, though, and he just generally lacks grace.

    I have often come across this kind of writing,  but I have never understood its alleged effectivenes.  To me, it is just extremely annoying; irritating to the point of unreadability.  Sentences, or even verbless fragments, of three or four words can occasionally work well as a focus of strong emphasis after a much longer sentence (as in ‘blah, blah, blah, long speculative sentence’; ‘He was wrong’),  but that should be used only as a very occasional technique or it completely loses its impact. 

    As used in the quoted passage, all it amounts to is really a long sentence divided up by full stops (periods) rather than the commas, semicolons or colons that would be more appropriate, and suffering from a marked dearth of verbs.  It is, at best, a naive and hackneyed way of trying to convey atmosphere, owing far too much to the excesses of advertising.  The ‘punch’ of a short, sharp phrase depends on contrast:  if the whole text is a list of short, sharp phrases, it becomes samey and boring.

    Paulina:  literary fiction being ‘just another genre’.  The very concept of ‘literary fiction’ seems to me a prime example of bad classification, because it is based on a value-judgement rather than on a formal, factual characteristic, and value-judgements are unstable and changeable.  We can all divide novels into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (and all gradations in between), but everybody’s list would be different, and every list would include both ‘literary’ and ‘genre’ novels in all categories.

    Classes like ‘romance’, ‘fantasy’, ‘science fiction’, ‘humour’ and the like are broadly based on the content and intention of the story, and even though the complexity of made-up tales means that there are a great many hybrids and blurred dividing lines, they are generally useful concepts.  ‘Literary’ really should be dropped as a concept because it is taxonomically invalid:  it cuts right across the other classifications, because it is based, not on content, but perceived merit according to a currently fashionable (and mutable) definition.  The books that win literary prizes could all be classified according to type of content, just as popular fiction can (‘poetic’, ‘dystopian’, ‘obscure’, ‘derivative’ , ‘stream of consciousness’  – as well as ‘romance’, ‘whodunnit’, ‘historical’ and all the others currently classed under popular fiction), and this would be a far more useful approach.

  39. Thank you, AG. When I first ran across the “Rome” passage in the book, my first reaction was, WTF?  Where all all the verbs?  It combines the worst excesses of bad advertising copy and a movie trailer voiceover. 

    You still haven’t told me what you think of “The Roman Mohocks,” though.  🙂

  40. AgTigress says:

    You still haven’t told me what you think of “The Roman Mohocks,” though.

    Not much!

    Going back to the identity of this author, the novelist cannot, I think, be the same man as the Vassar literature professor, who is a Robert DeMaria Jr.  The latter took his first degree in 1970, which would suggest that he was born around 1948;  the novelist (the Vineyard Press chap) published his first novel in 1961, which would surely make him at least 10 years older, and he is still writing novels:  either the academic published his first novel at the age of about 13, or he went to college as a mature student, and would now be well beyond usual retirement age:  the photo on his website (the academic DeMaria) suggests a man of around 60 at most.  The academic DeMaria’s bibliography, listed on his website, is extensive, but it does not include this ‘creative writing’ textbook (let alone any novels!)  This is somewhat surprising if he is the author of it. 

    There are other men of the same name on Google.  More research is indicated before blame can be firmly assigned.

    🙂

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