crash course part 2: what's wrong with romance novels?

These are the posts that make me cringe.  What the hell am I doing?  I'm no expert on this stuff.  I've had three semesters of theory.  But I get these ideas and they knock around in my head, and they want to come out.  Y'all put up with a lot.

Anyway.  You already know I read romance novels.  This is the other side of the story from my previous post, and if you're going to be an intelligent reader of romance novels, you should think about this.  (and just where did that soapbox come from?)  

Simply stated, recent literary theory has been about examining our cultural assumptions, which is why it has come to be called cultural theory, or cultural studies.  We generally take for granted that certain words carry a loose definition that we all get:  male, female, straight, gay, white, Hispanic, African American.  Women are nurturing and like to gossip; gays love Barbra Streisand and interior decorating; African Americans are good at dancing and sports.  But first of all, there are exceptions to all of these.  You don't have to work in an office environment very long to find out that men like to gossip just as much as women do (which may or may not be very much at all).  There are straight men who are good at choosing paint colors.  There are black people who can't dance.

You all know that.  If it were that simple, there would be no problem with this.  Of course everyone knows that there are exceptions to every rule.  But unfortunately, not only do we have these loosely held definitions, we attach them to other religious or moral or traditional beliefs that make them take on a life of their own.  The idea that women were maternal creatures who were better suited to life as homemakers took on a revered, almost holy status in the 1950s.  It wasn't just that there was a tendency to think that most women wanted to be wives and mothers, but the idea took on a life of its own, so that advertising, magazines, movies, TV shows, and any number of other venues promulgated this idea of women as saintly madonnas, creating a haven in the home for their husbands and children.  There was no escaping it.  You could do your own thing, and doubtless many women did act in ways that were counter to the stereotype, but those were seen as deviant, unnatural behaviors.  Sometimes harmless, but not natural.  Abnormal.  A generation of women downed valium to fit in.

It's not hard to see how that applies to ideas about race and sexual orientation.  We all know that Asian Americans are good at math.  Homophobia is so much a part of our current cultural mindset that we think it's creepy for a 4-year-old boy to wear pink overalls.  And even if you're aware of how silly it is, you still don't feel like you can put your son in pink overalls, because then he, the little 4-year-old, would have to deal with the reactions he'd get from the people around him.  Which would probably be subtle and not overt, but 4-year-olds are excellent at picking up on subtle cues.  My point being that these cultural ideas take on religious significance, even when clearly there is nothing there but a cultural prejudice.

So how does this apply to romance novels?  Well, with the exception of some of the best ones, romance novels for the most part reinforce all these cultural stereotypes that we would be better off without, and that many of us actively try to undermine in our non-reading moments.  If there are gay characters, they are the loyal sidekicks.  There are almost never non-white characters.  The main character is almost never a servant or a member of the lower class.   All of those reinforce the idea that the straight, white, middle-to-upper class point of view is the "real" point of view.  

Other ideas enforced as "normal" by the entire genre of romance fiction, although they may be rare occurrences in real life:
-that a man and a woman can find completion and even transcendence in each other.
- In historical novels, servants are always loyal and happy to be of service to the people in the big house.  If the steward is not happily loyal, then he ends up being the villain.  The idea that servants might be good, honest people and also resent like hell the foibles of their employers practically never shows up in a historical romance.
-that a man should "take care" of a woman, which involves everything from the ubiquitous "Just lie back and let me take care of you" during intimacy to him being financially solvent--I think I've read two romances in the past two years where the man wasn't at the least in better economic circumstances than the woman, and usually he is flat out wealthy.  (There is a way in which this "taking care" is true, of course, as long as it is mutual, and in the better romance novels, it is.)
-men that are taller, handsomer, and more physically fit are more valuable than short, dumpy, unathletic men.  I can think of one hero that is even about the same height as the heroine (Summer to Remember), let alone shorter than her.
-there are no gradations of sexual orientation in the main characters, even though studies have shown that there are few human beings who are entirely gay or straight.   

I'm not going to argue that you shouldn't read romance novels.  You know that, if you've been following along.  They're great escapism and fun entertainment, and even the most dedicated romance novel reader knows that they are just fantasies.  No one (I hope) expects their real-life partner to never have any emotional needs of their own, which is what you'd think if all you knew were romance heroes.  For me, part of the appeal of reading a romance novel is being able to let down my guard of trying to be vigilant and looking for all the ways that our culture is a bitch.  They're a vacation from reality.

I don't even necessarily think that romance novelists should try to become crusaders for cultural change.  (Historical novelists can often pull this off, because their 18th century characters can act like people from the 21st century and thus seem to be feminist or whatever.)  that's part of the tradition and appeal of the genre.

I just think we should be aware of the implications of what we're reading.

There is so much more that could be said on this topic, and maybe some of you will help me out by saying intelligent things.  And also pointing out romance novels that are exceptions to my generalizations.  There's one more point to make here--about happy endings--but I think it's getting its own post.  Probably not till next week, though.

Why I read romance novels

This has been a topic on several blogs recently, so I thought I would chime in with my two cents.  As most of you know, I read romance novels.  Usually 2-3 out of the 8-10 books I read monthly, more if we're on vacation.  That's mixed in with literary fiction, mysteries, suspense, non-fiction, and classics, but they're in there.  I'll even say they're often the ones I enjoy the most. 

What has irritated me about the recent discussion, what makes me just roll my eyes, are the very serious, very caring men who weigh in with a great deal of gravitas that it is unhealthy for women to read romance novels since it gives them unrealistic expectations of men and harms their ability to deal with real relationships.  Really?  Really? 

pause.

shake head.

OK, seriously.  So men are going to stop looking at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue because it gives them unrealistic expectations of what women should be like?  We're going to stop using well-endowed, scantily clad women to sell cars, cigarettes, booze, tractors, tools, lumber, boats, and hunting gear? Because if that's your objection, that we shouldn't objectify or idealize the opposite sex because it makes it difficult to deal with a real person in a real relationship, then hell, yeah, let's get after it.  Let's change that.  You guys go first.

OK.  I just had to get that out of my system because I've heard it just one or two times too often in the last couple of months.

Here are the reasons why I read romance novels.  Although first of all, I would like to say that there is a difference between an intelligently written romance novel and a run-of-the-mill one, and I'm not saying that all romance novels are worth reading--any more than I would say that all mysteries or even all "literary" fiction is worth reading.  But many of them are well worth the time.

1.  They're fun.  They remind you what it's like to be in love, and that--contrary to what the male pundits predict--actually reminds you why you fell in love with your partner, and makes you forget about how mad you are that they put all the coolers up on the top shelf in the garage where you can't reach them without a ladder.  Not that anyone would do that around here.  Of course not.

2.  You get great relationship advice.  I'm a much better partner for having read romance novels.  There are some pretty wise women out there writing about what it's like to be in a relationship with a member of the opposite sex-- and the advice goes both ways.  I know a few men who could stand to read a romance novel or two and get a clue, as we used to say in the 80s.

3.  Satisfying ending.  Reading a good romance novel is like listening to discordant music that resolves at the end.  It's fundamentally satisfying, because things work out.  It may be unrealistic, but it's not any more unrealistic than thinking that things never work out, that no one ever has a happy time period in their life.

4.  They're about the feminine side of the world.  The side that gets shunted aside and ignored in our culture as unimportant, trivial, icing on the cake.  It's not what's real, it's not what matters, the anti-romance folks will tell you.  Well, according to who?  I think you could make a case-- let's even say evolutionarily speaking-- that there's nothing that matters more.

Why do romance novels get so much guff?  I honestly can't figure it out.  The sneering condescension goes way beyond anything rational.  Remember Jonathan Franzen and his disdainful comments about "women's fiction" ten years ago?  Or how about Michael Chabon, who valiantly defends genre fiction like mysteries and science fiction in Maps and Legends, but doesn't even mention romance?   I think it has mostly to do with #4, but maybe it's the cheesy covers.  Or the steamy sex, which is de rigueur with some authors.   You could say it's the formulaic plots, but mysteries and suspense novels have formulaic plots, too, and even literary critics will admit to reading a good suspense novel on the plane. 

So which romance novels would I recommend to convince you if you're a skeptic?  I've thought about this quite a bit.  I think for intelligently written, with biting-but-funny things to say about the state of male/female relationships in our world, I'd go with Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie, or maybe Anyone But You or Agnes and the Hitman, also by Crusie.  Joanna Bourne's spy series is really good, and the most recent one, Black Hawk, was maybe the best of the lot. For just a good, funny romantic story, I might hand you Lord Perfect (Loretta Chase), whose hero reminded me so much of my spouse that I gave it to him to read, or Agnes and the Hitman, also by Crusie.  Any other suggestions? 

You know, for reasons that are already escaping me, I signed up for a creative writing class this semester. I think I already mentioned (didn't I?) that I'm not driving to the state unversity this semester, so this is just at our local community college. It (the writing class) is making me a little crazy. Nothing makes me as neurotic as trying to write fiction.

Well, OK, I admit my spouse might be able to come up with a few things that make me more neurotic than that. But we're not going there right now.

So, anyway, I am feeling the need to apologize for obsessing about this genre fiction vs. literary fiction argument that I keep coming back to, because I know that I'm the only one that's interested in it (well, and maybe cheery-O occasionally). But I can't help it. Because I have to hash it out to figure out how to write. My writing style isn't like genre fiction writing. And I don't necessarily mean that my writing style is "better"-- I can only dream of being able to write like P.D. James, for example. I just don't write that way. But I really really don't want to write boring depressing stuff, which is what literary fiction often is. So I'm having to duke this out in my own brain, which is why I keep writing about it here. And I guess that tells you everything you need to know about me: that my brain considers the distinction between literary and genre fiction something that needs to be duked out.

The good news is that I'm discovering that the distinction between the two is less prominent in reality than as it exists in my head. The class I'm taking has a definite bias toward literary fiction, and we read a story last week that could have been a sort of off-beat romance story if it had had a happily ever after ending. And I read bits of an article about Raymond Carver that said his editor had to be always on the watch to make sure he didn't succumb to creeping sentimentalism. RAYMOND CARVER. That practically made my jaw drop--it's like saying Picasso had to watch to make sure he wasn't letting photorealism into his work.

the bad news is that in the academic world, it has become almost an article of religious faith to eschew genre fiction. It seems far more pronounced to me than it did twenty years ago, when it was bad enough. From my limited viewpoint, anyway.

so. unfortunately I don't think I'm done with this, but I'll try to post about other stuff, too.

AB

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has been reading this blog for awhile that I am a fan of genre fiction. ("Genre" fiction being novels which fall into one of the genres--science fiction, fantasy, mystery, romance, etc-- as opposed to "literary" fiction, which I am in no position to define, but is generally regarding as being of higher quality and greater literary value than genre fiction.) I love all of it. In spite of being impossibly geeky, I survived junior high relatively unscathed because what was happening between the covers of the books I was reading was more important to me than what was happening at school. And the books I was reading were science fiction--Asimov, Bradbury, Andre Norton, Ben Bova. I devoured them, sometimes reading a new one every day. And I've had a lifelong fascination with fantasy, starting with the fairy tales of childhood and continuing on with Narnia, Ursula LeGuin and Edward Eager in grade school, Stephen Donaldson in college, and Guy Gavriel Kay and Tolkein in grad school. I spent nearly two years after the birth of my son reading nothing but mystery novels, in spite of having read barely a handful of mysteries before. And I've already confessed to my sudden obsession with romance novels last summer.

I like to think it's because I enjoy stories, and genre fiction tends to have good stories. Of course I've read dozens of literary novels that were terrifically good, but I've also read more than a few where nothing ever happens. Those books tend to be all about the writing, the Art, the construction of beautiful prose, but I keep waiting for a plot. At its best, literary fiction gives you that moment of recognition, that feeling of "I've had exactly that experience" but here it is so beautifully worded that it is both uplifting and appeals to one's inner sense of beauty, of things done/said exactly right. (And might I add that my own power of words --such as it is-- is escaping me as I'm trying to describe the experience.) But at its worst, it's downright boring.

Sometimes I just want to escape from my own boring life, or to be entertained, and if escape is what I'm after, I want a really good story in which to lose myself. One where you're turning the pages to find out what happens. I don't necessarily think that having a good story precludes good writing, or realism in the details of character development and experience. But the tidy endings and neat resolutions of most genre fiction are perhaps something that not many of us experience in real life, and maybe that's exactly what I enjoy, especially when I'm just reading for fun.

The book I read on our last vacation-- Maps and Legends, which is non-fiction-- has a number of essays in it that amount to a defense of genre fiction, so I've been thinking about this a fair amount recently. It seems to me that there are two levels of really good genre fiction: books that are the "best of" their genre but that probably still wouldn't appeal to anyone who isn't a fan of the genre, and then a very few that transcend their genre, that are just flat out good novels. In the "best of" category, it's easy to just list my favorite authors. In mysteries, P.D. James, Rick Riordan and Martha Grimes come to mind; in science fiction, the authors mentioned above plus Dan Simmons and Neal Stephenson; in romance, Jennifer Crusie, Loretta Chase, Elizabeth Hoyt and her alter ego Julia Harper. I should say here by way of apology that though I love genre fiction, I haven't read it very widely, and there are almost certainly other authors that should be on this list that I've never tried (particularly in mysteries).

But the list of genre novels that "transcend" their genre is really short, if you ask me. Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons' masterpiece (published as two separate novels but really one book), would absolutely be in that category. I remember thinking at the end of one of Grimes' Richard Jury novels, "wow, that was just a good book," although I can't remember which one it was at the moment-- probably the fourth or fifth in the series (which seems to be where all series peak and where nearly all of them begin to fall off, if you ask me, although maybe that should be a separate post). And after months of reading romance novels, I've read only one that comes anywhere close to that level, Crusie's Fast Women, which reads like one of the British comedies of manners (Oliver Goldsmith, maybe? or even Oscar Wilde? It's been so long since I've read any of them I'm not sure which one is apt) with its witty dialogue, elements of farce, and snide, complex commentary on the manners and mores of the age. Though based on the reviews on Amazon, I'm not certain many other readers would agree--it has one of the least likable heroines of any romance novel I've read.

I've also started to think that young adult fiction (YA) is really its own genre, which brings me around to what prompted me to write out all these ideas after having them knock around in my head for several months now. I've been re-reading the 6th Harry Potter book before the movie comes out in a couple of weeks, and finding it somewhat disappointing. Of course, I'm only about a hundred pages into it at the moment, and it is well over 600 pages long, so maybe I'm just being impatient. But previously I would have included the Harry Potter novels in the list of books that transcend their genre-- books that could be read and enjoyed by anyone with enough of an open mind to give them a try. But now I'm not so sure. Maybe they are just good examples of the genre, but still unlikely to be appreciated by someone who isn't already a fan of YA lit. When we were reading and re-reading the series as they came out, I think I was at least partly enthralled by the ongoing mystery of what was going to happen, how all the little details were going to work out. Now that the 7th book is out and has been for some time, that bit of magic is no longer part of the equation, and I'm finding the series is a little flat. Partly because I found the 7th book to be a little disappointing-- it did a more than adequate job of tying up all the loose ends, but what can you say about a seven-novel denouement where the two main participants spend several pages circling each other and explaining in detail the magical theory behind what is happening? shouldn't we already know that? (I should definitely save this for another post, after I've read the 7th one more recently, which should be later in the summer.)

So what would I consider to be YA books that transcend the genre? "Best of" but not transcend is easy-- Tiffany Aching, Percy Jackson, and Harry, among recently published books. Of course there are dozens if you're going back over the years. Transcend?? I'll have to think about it, but I'm not sure Harry makes it.

AB

I used to regularly post reviews of the books I'd read. But last spring I realized that my taste in books was going further and further downhill, and that my book reviews probably weren't particularly interesting anymore. And it's only gotten worse since. To prove my point: I spent the last half of the summer reading trashy romance novels. And you know what? I'm not even sorry. I loved it. I hadn't read one in more than twenty years,* and -- while I wouldn't exactly recommend any of them-- I have to say that they are light-years better than they used to be. It was fun. But now my conscience is telling me that summer is over and I should stop with the brain candy and start reading stuff that I don't have to be embarrassed to be seen with.

Well, OK. Just as soon as I finish Three Nights of Sin. (no, I'm not kidding, there really is a novel with that name-- but I haven't read it. Yet.)

Anyway, just to further show you how low I've slunk, I'll tell you the story of my reading list for this summer. Those of you who've been around for awhile will remember that about once a year, I assign myself a reading project-- several books that are related in some way-- and push myself to read through the whole list. One year, I read Reading Lolita in Tehran, plus most of the books her class studies. Another year, I read a collection of the letters of Maxwell Perkins and novels by his three most famous authors--Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Wolfe. Then there were Merton, O'Connor, Walker Percy and Dorothy Day another year. (full disclosure: I've never actually managed to read every book on any of my reading project lists. But I give it a pretty good shot, anyway.)

So this year, at the beginning of the summer, I decided that I was going to read Chaucer and Spenser. I'm dead serious. I really thought I was going to spend the summer sitting out at the lake with the Faerie Queene in my lap. Oh, 'tis galling the things we must admit to online. I got online and ordered a modernized Chaucer to go with the original version I still have from college, and also got the recommended edition of FQ.

As you can probably guess, I made it through the Prologue and the Wife of Bath's tale before my attention wandered. I think it's actually a little impressive that I made it that far. Although at the moment I can't remember what the segue was, for some reason I went from that to reading the Satanic Verses, the famous book that sent Salman Rushdie into hiding for (seven? eight?) years. It is brilliant, and beautifully written-- if I remember, I'll put a paragraph or two in the comments to this post-- but it doesn't exactly move quickly. Sections of it are very absorbing, but then there are long sections that are.... well, maybe not boring, but slow.

So enter my daughter with Twilight in hand. I'm blaming the whole romance novel obsession on her. In case you've been locked away in a closet for the past six months, Twilight is the first book in a series about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. It's written and marketed for teenagers, but once you know the characters' names, you'll overhear a surprising number of competent-looking adults gossiping away about Edward and Bella as if they lived down the street. There is very little plot or characterization outside the two main characters' obsessive love for each other, but you know-- you just can't put them down. I'm snobbish enough that I have to say that I didn't really read them, I just skimmed through them. But I did, in the space of about two weeks, get through all four books, each of them well over 500 pages. After spending over a month getting through Satanic Verses.

Why am I admitting this publicly?? Oh, the shame.

But it gets worse. So then, realizing that it had been a very long time since I'd read a good bodice ripper-- at least twenty years, and probably more like twenty-five*-- I started combing through used books and picking them up. I bet I've read twenty since mid-August. Not kidding. Last week I decided I would let myself keep going until October 1st, which would be tomorrow. I've got one more to finish tonight and them I'm quitting cold turkey. Promise. Higher quality reading suggestions welcome, reply here.

AB

* I'm making a distinction here between just regular old romance novels (hard to write a good story without someone falling in love, imo) and trashy romance novels, aka bodice rippers, which have such steamy love scenes that they should carry ratings on the cover. Oh, my. .... After re-reading this, to be fair I should say that the Twilight series is not explicit, but it has enough of the conventions of a trashy romance novel that I was reminded of them.