On Sunday I was sitting in the movie theater watching the wonderful Star Trek for the second time, and I was thinking about the science in sci fi movies. McCoy says something like, “if we crash, our blood will boil in 12 seconds.” This is wrong, and a lot of the “science” in Star Trek is wrong. Not just over simplified, but dead wrong. The same is true of many “historical” movies, regardless of the time period, from 300 to Braveheart.
I was thinking about the purpose of these pop cultural products, which is not to convey scientific or historical truths, but to entertain, often by hitting certain emotional buzzers. I’m not a die hard Trekkie by any means, nor am I generally bloodthirsty, but I let out a whoop with everyone in the audience when Kirk said to the Romulan who is holding him over a cliff by his neck, “I’ve got your gun” and blows him to smithereens.
Romance gets criticized for its fantasy elements, and for its reliance on emotional triggers to entertain (that there is a perfect person in the world for each of us who will love us unconditionally, that love is everlasting, that the HEA solves all problems, the sexual fantasies), while we overlook or indeed praise the very same elements in other pop genres, like historical or sci fi films. I’m not the first person to say that it must be the content, especially the feminine content, which seems to invite derision. When women produce cultural content that is not gender coded feminine, even if the majority of their readers are women, they do get more respect. I’m thinking of authors like JK Rowling and Charlaine Harris.
I subscribe to The New Yorker (you get a lifetime subscription when you get your PhD in the humanities. It’s a secret bonus few know about.) and I cannot recall once in the ten years I’ve been getting it, a review of a Nora Roberts novel — or indeed any romance. I checked The New Yorker online database and again found no critical notice of any of Roberts’ books (I could be wrong here. Correct me if so.). Yet, they did a very long Profiles article on Roberts in June (you need a subscription to read it). It’s odd that a magazine which has never seen fit to review any of Roberts’ hundreds of books wanted to devote so much space to her career as an author. Then I read the article, and, like most articles about romance in literary venues, it engages more with her lifestyle and number of books sold — the “La Nora Phenomenon” — than her craft.
But Collins does point to strengths in Roberts’ writing, which is what made it truly shocking to this long time New Yorker reader.
EDITED TO ADD: Like here,
“Smark-alecks [like NR] make bad pupils but excellent students of human nature. Roberts is good at what she does not only because she is prolific but also because she can write zingy dialogue and portray scrappy but sincere characters”
“She is known for particularly believable heroes…”
“Her female characters frequently possess an entrepreneurial streak, and they are more independent than many of their peers, and certainly of their predecessors, even if some among them still have a propensity for crumpling like tissues at the sight of bodily fluids.”
“Roberts’ colloquial style can be inelegant, but it deflates the more vaporous of her scenes.”
“A self-taught writer, and an irreverent one…”
“Reading a Roberts novel is like watching a game of tennis between two very good players: it is not so much the outcome of the match but the back-and-forth between commensurate opponents that elicits the spectator’s pleasure.”
“When Roberts writes a book, she assembles a community piece by piece, a train-set village of her own invention.”
“Roberts would have made a keen satirist, were she not without condescension, or cruelty.”
“Hers are not Carrie Bradshaw fantasies.”
“Like campfire stories, Roberts’ books rely on verve and familiarity rather than on any particular polish or originality.”
“Roberts may be the most intuitive writer since Noel (Hot Lead) Loomis, who wrote several dozen Westerns straight onto a Linotype machine he kept in his house.”
“Roberts’s influences are myriad, and mostly popular.”
“Roberts’ writing, by her own estimation, had improved markedly since her early novels, which feature a lot of passive constructions and thesaurus words.”
“Compared with Nora Roberts, J. D. Robb is slightly more staccato and noirish, but Roberts says the voices are essentially the same. In both incarnations, she is spare, catchy and impressionistic. Her sentences are often clipped and she has a habit of turning nouns into verbs (‘two canine forms bulletted out’ the door). Her figurative language can be clever (‘Dobby’s face reminded Cilla of a piece of thin brown paper that had been balled tight, then carelessly smoothed out’) or it can be clumsy (‘They meshed like butter on popcorn, both lively and entertaining.’).
“Almost everyone I spoke with praised Roberts’ storytelling, her incantatory ability to engage the reader. ‘Storytelling’ also suggests a quasi-extemporaneous quality, the privileging of the thrust of the narrative over its details, and while Roberts’s narratives have momentum, they are not always painstakingly crafted”
“Another pitfall, when you’ve written almost 200 books, is repetitiveness.”
“The spunky-heroine voice that Roberts favors is winning, but it can seem like a fallback. … At other times, her characters … seem to hail from the Nixon era.”
“There is a kitchen-table quality to sex in romance novels which distinguishes them from pornography. … Fine, strapping fellows as the men are, they might not always be recognized by their human counterparts.”
“In Roberts’ early books, the sex could be rough and spastic.”
“The hallmark of Roberts’ sex scenes is narrative continuity — the hero and the heroine sleep together, and they don’t suddenly turn into wildly different people.”
The New Yorker reviews lots of popular films (and anyone who thinks snark in romance reviews makes them different from “professional” reviews has clearly never read Anthony Lane) and popular music (Sasha Frere-Jones regularly reviews such popular musicians as Kelly Clarkson and Lady Gaga). Heck, in this week’s issue there’s a story about a “dry cleaner to the stars”. It hit me as I was sitting in the theater watching Star Trek, a movie The New Yorker reviewed, glowingly, that this isn’t a divide between different publications. It’s a divide within the very same magazine. If the magazine can review the gamut of films, from Bergman retrospectives to the latest Judd Apatow and Ben Stiller, and the gamut of music, from Wagner to Madonna, and if it can recognize, in its Profiles section, that a romance novelist has real writing talent, then why isn’t there space to review a wider range of fiction?
Related posts:
- Academic Talks on Nora Roberts, Mary Stewart, Laura Kinsale, and Grace Livingston Hill More summaries from the April 2009 Pop Culture Association Conference, this time a romance panel featuring some of the bloggers...
- DNF Reflection: Gratuitous Violence and Desire Unchained Note: This review contains material not suitable for minors. Harrell’s take on violence in literature: My students and I read...
- If Romance Novels are Neither High Culture nor Pop Culture, What the Hell Are They? In which the dismissal of romance gets personal. After the Popular Culture Association meeting in April, I approached editors for...
- DNF Reflection: The Palace of Varieties, by James Lear *Note: This reviews contains material that is not suitable for minors. This book was recommended to me. It was one...
- Notes on An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction (part 3 of 3) A book discussion of John Roberts’ An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction (Athens, GA; University of Georgia Press), 1990. Click here...
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#1 by Ana on July 6, 2009 - 8:17 am
Please let me know when you find an answer to the question. Ta muchly. ; )
#2 by Kwana on July 6, 2009 - 8:31 am
Excellent question and post. Something to think about there and to sent to The New Yorker.
#3 by ev on July 6, 2009 - 9:26 am
I, too, think that this should be sent to The New Yorker. It stated what many of us have said and thought, but in such a way they really would have a difficult time defending themselves against it.
As a long time Trekker and a reader of romance, I never really thought about the similarities of the button pushing- and why it is ok for everything but romance to do that-without the snark.
Thanks
#4 by Victoria Janssen on July 6, 2009 - 9:44 am
I suspect it has to do with the New Yorker’s ideas of their readership (I assume they have a good idea of who buys their magazine, and where, and possibly even why). I would guess their book reviews are aimed at that audience, and perhaps romance readers among the New Yorker readers, or readers of genre fiction in general, aren’t vocal about it, so they might as well not exist, or maybe there aren’t enough to them to make a difference in the vast sea of New Yorker subscribers; or those genre publishers don’t buy ads in the magazine, either, not seeing it as a place where they could find readers and sell more books.
Perhaps the magazine has just never hired a reviewer who thinks of genre fiction as something to be reviewed. Perhaps romance publishers don’t submit their books TO the New Yorker to be reviewed, so not being reviewed is a self-fulfilling prophecy. A magazine like the New Yorker doesn’t go searching for books to review. They get quite enough w/o even trying.
As a side note, the only major reviewer I know of who’s reviewed a lot of genre work is Michael Dirda (Washington Post).
As for why the article on Nora Roberts in New Yorker, people are interested in reading about successful people and how they achieved that success, so an article about “La Nora” the personality would be of general interest to people who have never touched a genre book of any stripe, or who might not read books at all. It’s a different thing than talking about her books.
Also, haven’t book reviews in major print magazines and newspapers been declining everywhere in the last few years?
#5 by Carolyn Crane on July 6, 2009 - 11:11 am
Yessss! Great points. I become doubly depressed when I contemplate that whole sentiment you sometimes see in literary circles that one ought not to focus on an author’s life and personality and all that, but to focus on the work, to let her work speak for her. (I know people who feel the author’s photo and bio should never even appear in a book.)
But it’s like, Nora isn’t even a real author, so go ahead and not only ignore her work but focus on her lifestyle. Really, the bias is so hugely fascinating! Is it really about gender? I sometimes think about that whole quilting thing for the art world, like quilting not being accepted because it’s a woman’s art, but the analogy doesn’t seem apt to me. Because romance is such a huge, even life-sustaining force for publishing.
#6 by katiebabs on July 6, 2009 - 11:23 am
I cannot figure out why mainstream print publications like the New Yorker and NY Times treat the roomance genre like the redheaded stepchild.
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#7 by ReacherFan on July 6, 2009 - 1:56 pm
Fascinating. Romance really doesn’t get any respect. Over at PaperbackSwap a member of the Mystey and Thriller forum felt she had to post to explain all the romance novels on her available list didn’t belong to her. I replied with that I read all kinds of romance as well as mysteries, thrillers and many other genres, plus non-fiction. Another romance reader responded she wouldn’t hold it against her for not reading romance.
I guess I just passed the age where I apologize for the books I read – though I can sill remember when a colleague moved away from me and sat elsewhere when I pulled out the book I was reading. It was Craig Shaw Gardner’s Slaves of the Volcano Gods.
Man did my rep as a tough b!tch take a hit with that.
#8 by Janine on July 6, 2009 - 2:01 pm
Like Victoria Janssen, I suspect it has to do with The New Yorker’s readership. I have a good friend who subscribes to The New Yorker and she reads literary fiction and nonfiction almost exclusively. I suspect there are many subscribers like her. If you look at the short fiction that is occasionally published in The New Yorker, it would seem to indicate the same.
I wonder how many romance readers there are among The New Yorker’s readership who are open about being romance readers. The New Yorker shares a certain kind of social cachet with literary fiction. They both come across as “highbrow” whereas many people consider romances “lowbrow.” I’m sure there are others like you, Jessica, who openly read both, but I suspect that you are in the minority.
I do wonder though why other mainstream publications, which don’t have that kind of highbrow image and which have a mostly female audience, such as for example women’s magazines, don’t review romances. I don’t know if these magazines have done market research on romance reviews.
I am pleased to hear that The New Yorker article pointed out strengths in Nora’s writing. That is a big step forward. Can you quote that section of the article, Jessica?
#9 by Jessica on July 6, 2009 - 2:16 pm
Ana, I am all about the questions
Kwana and Ev, good idea, I will write them.
Victoria, you give a lot of good explanations. I think you are right.
Recherfan, since I am still new to romance, this discrepancy between romance and thrillers and susepnse still shocks the hell out of me.
Janine, I was too lazy to quote the relevant part, and I thank you for encouraging me to do it. I added it to the post.
#10 by Janine on July 6, 2009 - 2:53 pm
Thanks, Jessica! I’m curious now, was the writer of the article male or female?
#11 by Heloise on July 6, 2009 - 5:23 pm
Interesting. I recently looked at the NYT bestseller lists (never done that before, can you imagine) and discovered that there is a separate list for trade paperbacks and mass market paperbacks. I didn’t feel romance was being slighted as much as I wondered whether there are just too damn many mass market paperbacks that sell like hotcakes….:)
How this thought relates… maybe there is too much genre fiction to realistically review. I know I struggle?
#12 by Jessica on July 6, 2009 - 5:33 pm
It’s funny, Janine, that you ask. The author is Lauren Collins, an under-30 staffer at New Yorker who started writing for the Talk of the Town feature a few years ago. This is one of her first longer articles (in my memory), and I am not surprised she talks about Smart Bitches Trashy Books in it. I think she is revealing a new, nuanced take on romance. Let’s hope her editors listen!
#13 by Kaetrin on July 7, 2009 - 3:17 am
I can see that on the one hand, there is a perception that subsribers to the New Yorker may not read romance novels but, given the vast volume of romance novel sales, surely there would be some that subscribe and read romances? Is it possible that we are buying into to the “romance reader stereotype” that Beyond Heaving Bosoms (Smart Bitches) describes?
Besides, shouldn’t the New Yorker review books on the New York Times Bestseller List (I know they are not the same publication but surely there is some ‘cachet’ in being on top of the NYT Bestseller List in which (I understand) La Nora has featured many times)?
#14 by Meredith Duran on July 7, 2009 - 9:40 am
I have a couple of disjointed thoughts on why the New Yorker editorial staff might consider a profile on a romance author to be perfectly compatible with their policy of not reviewing romance. (I doubt it’s so explicit as a policy — more likely the idea seems so far-fetched that it never gets discussed.)
First, I think there are two biases at work here in removing romance from the reviewers’ radar — the first obviously being the specific bias against romance, and the second being bias against the mass market format. The second possibility had never occurred to me before a friend admitted he had never read a mass market by choice (unless delayed at an airport and desperately bored) before he decided to take the plunge and read one of my romances. (Yeah, brave guy — not even a stop at mystery; he just jumped straight into the fire, there.) Baffled, I asked why he might have this policy. Answer: “I like good writing, and everyone knows — sorry; everyone thinks — that mass market fiction is about entertainment, not good writing. If the writing’s good, it gets a hardcover.”
I’d never encountered this belief before and I found myself very skeptical about its prevalence, so I started asking people. To my surprise, I can now state that at least in my circles (okay, so that’s mostly academe, but still), this is a pretty common opinion, even among avid fiction readers: mass markets are for schlock and potboilers. If you find good writing there, it’s a total fluke (and isn’t it a shame for the poor author that their good writing got such shoddy treatment, and didn’t receive a more respectable format — i.e., hardcover followed by trade).
(By the way, this revelation has me viewing recent posts on literary fic blogs (about the emerging trend to skip the hardcover release and bring out new lit fic in trade paperback) in a different way. If a lot of people view the format as an indication of the quality of the content, then I can see why savvy lit fic writers would be concerned that a debut in trade might harm their novel’s success.)
If I recall correctly — I read the New Yorker sporadically — they have occasionally reviewed mass markets, but for the most part the MMs they’ve reviewed come from genres that have a less “mass market” identity. Dan Brown’s books start in hardcover. Mystery novels don’t show up at my local Rite Aid. I guess I need to do another survey, and ask people which genre comes to mind first when I ask them to think about mass market fiction. I suspect the answer will usually be romance.
Moving on, my second observation directly concerns the apparent conundrum of a lengthy profile on a romance novelist in a magazine that doesn’t review the genre. I think the reason is loosely connected to another phenomenon, in evidence today in the USA Today article that’s making the rounds, as well as in all the other articles about romance which emphasize the academic credentials and/or intelligence of the romance genre’s novelists. (Again, though, this is based on purely anecdotal evidence, namely, the huge amount of titillated fascination my second career seems to draw from folks in that profession who would never, ever read a romance — many of whom probably believe there’s very little good writing to be had in our genre. After all, as I was told, good writing “isn’t the point of a mass market, is it?”).
Because the romance genre attracts so many jokes, myths, and misconceptions, there appears to be something particularly fascinating about actually meeting someone who not only likes but chooses to spend their time writing in this genre. Personally speaking, I suspect people in my little world (and the New Yorker subscribers’ world) think they don’t know anyone who’s the sort of person to actually write this stuff (much less read it. That reminds me, I found out recently that someone in my doctoral program has been a “closet romance reader” for years, but keeps it such a highly-guarded secret that only two of her friends know the truth!). And so there’s something fascinating about meeting one.
This gels with my observation that many of the articles I read about romance novelists have a certain gawking tone to them, as though the fact that Julia Quinn dropped out of Yale Med School –or that Eloisa James is a professor at NYU — is, inherently, surprising. (They never mention Madeline Hunter’s creds – I’m waiting for an article about that.) Can you imagine a similar tone of surprise marking an article about a mystery novelist? I really can’t. And often the explicit theme is something like, “Today’s romances aren’t by or for dumb or oppressed women!”–which in itself I find a really troubling proposition (after all, I started reading romance in 1993.
. That this slant is adopted so often only makes sense if the unspoken assumption is that everyone thought romances were for dumb, backward women until they read this fantastic and educational article. I don’t blame the journalists, because apparently the contradiction sells. But if it’s good copy, that’s only because people DO have very fixed ideas about the genre, and learning otherwise is titillating.
So. With the titillation factor in mind, I think it very likely that the New Yorker staff feels completely comfortable with writing about a romance novelist while maintaining silence on the books themselves, because what seems to interest people is, as I said above, the apparent contradiction between expectations and reality. That is, their subscribers will be interested in reading about a romance *writer* even if their subscribers have no interest in reading a romance *novel.* In fact, the NYer’s confidence in the success of the Nora profile probably rests on the fact that they believe the romance genre is viewed negatively by a good deal of their readership.
Finally, the third reason is probably very simple: romance dominates the market, and it’s not considered quality fiction. Certain magazines see themselves as the guardians, champions, and defenders of endangered fiction — good fiction — experimental fiction, literary fiction, intellectual fiction. Allotting space to the best-selling genre when there’s a brilliant book out there that might die on the shelf? Not very heroic, in these magazines’ view.
Okay, this is getting way long. Thus ends my daily session of pure speculation.
#15 by katiebabs on July 7, 2009 - 10:00 am
Meredith, I also know many who would not pick up a mass market book for the same reasons you have mentioned. For some reason the public thinks when a book is in hardcover or trade, it is better quality.
I was once guilty of the same thing, especially with it came to Zebra books. I would think they were lesser quality because of the lower price. I quickly changed my opinion.
And I think it is great that the latest USA Today article that just came out is all about how wonderful the romance genre and the people who write it, but why did they have to specify that such authors have MBA’s and a great higher education? The article seems that it is trying to hard to show that it is okay that women with incredible educational degrees love to write romance. Because these women are so educated, it is now acceptable to read it.
#16 by Meredith Duran on July 7, 2009 - 10:19 am
Yeah, don’t get me wrong — I loved the USA Today article; it was fantastically positive and respectful, and the journalist interviewed some wonderful movers and shakers who’ve done a great deal for the genre. All in all, that article is great news; I have nothing but good things to say about it. I just mentioned it because I think, when viewed in tandem with other articles and the Nora Roberts piece, it’s part of a larger trend in which reporters “discover” that readers and writers of this genre ARE smart (and yay for that! It’sa revelation that’s long past due!). And I think that “surprising” discovery might be connected to why the New Yorker feels comfortable running a profile on Nora while ignoring her books.
PS I’ve decided to give all my friends mass markets for Christmas.;)
#17 by madeline on July 7, 2009 - 11:26 am
It’s because MEN brought to our culture a new form of non-leadership in the form of the slacker. ”Yeah, I enjoy stupid pop culture, so sue me” attitudes that have opened the flood gates to these ‘lower’ forms of entertainment culture being recognized by the NYorker snobs. The women at the New Yorker, (except maybe for Nancy Franklin) are too busy fighting off the constant low level gender-issue radiation of being taken as seriously as the men to embrace a more female slacker ’so I read romances, so sue me’ attitude.
#18 by Meredith Duran on July 7, 2009 - 11:52 am
Wow, that’s a *very* interesting theory, Madeline. It puts me in mind of a recent piece over at Jezebel about the burgeoning genre of “female confessional journalism.” From that piece alone, it seems that (at least some) female journalists have to contend with different pressures and expectations by virtue of being female. And with all the negative connotations levied against readers and writers of romance (“lonely,” “unsatisfied,” “bored,” “vapid”), I also can see how championing (or being seen to champion) the genre might create problems for women working in certain contexts. (I guess that’s why the USA Today article and its ilk are so important.)
#19 by Jessica on July 7, 2009 - 12:40 pm
Meredith, thanks for your visit and wonderfully illuminating comments. The “mass market” thing hadn’t occurred to me, but it makes a lot of sense. Same for the point about the old guard and the maintenance of literary boundaries.
I’m feeling a lot more confident about my own romance reading, but it’s not something my colleagues know about, although my academic friends do. They all tell me I am having a mid life crisis ( I just turned 40). If so, I never want it to end!
And I agree on the gawking tone of all of the recent romance articles, although the Roberts profile was the most muted in that sense, and did engage with the writing in a way others did not.
The “surprise! Smart women read it!” factor answers Katiebabs’ question. If the focus of the article is on how surprising it is that non-stupid people read romance, and if an advanced or Ivy League degree is the thing in our culture that signals high intelligence, that would explain the focus on Quinn’s and Bly’s pedigrees (although seriously, how much mileage is Quinn going to get out of “almost” getting a medical degree?).
Like you, I found myself asking this morning if all the “wow, they aren’t dumb” articles was actually doing more to shore up the myth than anything else. A few days ago I ran across some press coverage of last year’s RWA which contended that the RWA has served its constituency so well by basically ignoring the naysayers and carrying on unapologetically. I know a lot of the recent romance press has been generated by the economic issues, which have no relevance to literary quality or respect, and to a lesser extent by the publication of Beyond Heaving Bosoms, the whole premise of which is basically that smart women can read romance. But I for one am looking forward to the time when we can skip this part of the conversation!
#20 by Sherry Thomas on July 7, 2009 - 1:10 pm
I have in my long-range plans to write a Work of Literature.
And then shrug and say, “Really, it’s not that hard. Just prose and a non-happy ending. Good romances are much tougher to pull off.”
#21 by Janine on July 7, 2009 - 1:23 pm
Jessica,
“It’s funny, Janine, that you ask. The author is Lauren Collins, an under-30 staffer at New Yorker who started writing for the Talk of the Town feature a few years ago. This is one of her first longer articles (in my memory), and I am not surprised she talks about Smart Bitches Trashy Books in it. I think she is revealing a new, nuanced take on romance. Let’s hope her editors listen!”
I asked because I was wondering if the author of the article reads romance. Not that gender is a foolproof way to answer the question, but had a man written the article, it would have seemed less likely. From your quotes, it certainly sounds like the writer reads Nora Roberts’ books.
Katerin,
“I can see that on the one hand, there is a perception that subsribers to the New Yorker may not read romance novels but, given the vast volume of romance novel sales, surely there would be some that subscribe and read romances? Is it possible that we are buying into to the ‘romance reader stereotype’ that Beyond Heaving Bosoms (Smart Bitches) describes?”
I’m sure there are some who do subscribe to The New Yorker and read romances too, but what I question is how many of them admit to doing so. It’s not that I’m buying into the stereotype — I know too many smart, smart women who read romances to do so. It is more that I think much of society buys into the stereotype, which makes it harder for people to be proud of their romance reading, and to tell the world about it.
I also think there are some people who subscribe to The New Yorker not so much because they love reading it, but because in their circles, it is expected, or because they think it will make them seem literate and well-read.
In other words, I think there is a class issue at work here too. The perception of The New Yorker is that it is a kind of upper class, high brow reading material. The perception (but not, in many cases, the reality!) of romances runs counter to that. I think The New Yorker’s editors are smart enough to understand the image their magazine has, and to realize that this image makes their magazine a kind of status symbol for some subscribers. Therefore they probably don’t want to change that image in a way that will alienate the more image-conscious among their readers.
#22 by Kate on July 8, 2009 - 12:42 am
Oh, just going to throw my lot in here before I go to bed. I had several thoughts whilst reading through the comments.
First, I think Meredith Duran makes a good point about the mass/trade paperback dichotemy, and it’s not something I’ve ever thought about in great depth although I have to admit that my passive mind tends to think of trade papers as more “literary.” Am I a book racist?
No, I think it’s something that the publishing industry perhaps propagates in their marketing and something that romance is dabbling in now – Kate Noble’s two books have both been in trade format, and Nora Roberts’ new one is as well. I thought of both of those authors as having some crossover appeal, hence the trade instead of the mass format – didn’t consider much more than that. But Ms Duran (I think) raises a good point on the perceived differences between simple types of publications. This is a complete longshot, but I wonder if the publication of Vision in White as well as Ms Roberts’ many hardback publications do raise the attention of the non-romance-reading crowd. (I should probably mention here that I have absolutely personal or professional attachment to fiction publishing, so this is all speculation on my part.)
Madeline also raised an interesting point, sort of tangential to something I was considering. It somehow seems more “acceptable” to read sci-fi, mystery, fantasy, detective stories, etc. Now, I know there’s plenty a Trekker that took some ribbing at some point – I’m included – but there seems to be a difference in perception in the relative “coolness” of the different genres. Or at least I think I personally know more people who are a-ok and proud of reading a lot of Joe Pike novels but very few readers who are publicly a-ok and proud of their romance novels. Not necessarily a gender thing, maybe, but I’m seeing it in sort of a public level of acceptance of a genre in terms of how the genre is presented by its readers – like Madeline’s “Yeah, I enjoy stupid pop culture, so sue me”. Much in the same way that one can say, “Never seen Welles but love Apatow!” with perfect social acceptance, why is it surprising to some or outright not all right to others to say, “Not a big fan of Austen but adore Quinn!”? Of course this is a theory entirely non-quantifiable, but only something I’ve observed from my friends both men and women. (And here I’m crossing a gender line by considering what my men friends would say about pop culture and what my women friends would, since I have no women friends who read Joe Pike novels and no men friends who read romances. Are we thinking it’s the emotive qualities of romances that make them more socially difficult to accept?) (Off note, I’ve always been fine with reading my romances and completely unapologetic about it. Recently I’ve made my friends read ones I thought were the great ones, and they were all surprised that good stories can come in romance novels. And these were all feministic late-twenty-something women.)
#23 by Jessica on July 8, 2009 - 6:41 am
Sherry Thomas wrote:
Did you see what Roberts said about literary writers in the article? It was very funny.
Janine wrote:
I agree with this completely, although it’s clear to me that over the years, the magazine has begun featuring more and more reviews and articles on pop culture.
I guess literature, of all the forms of art and entertainment, seems to be the cradle of that highbrow image (although, the visual arts too. I can’t recall seeing many crafting articles!).
@ Kate:
I agree with everything you say. The difference in perception of romance versus other genre readers continues to be one of the most shocking, yet, on reflection unsurprising things I have discovered since I began reading romance. I think gender explains a lot of it — the gender of the producers, consumers, and content of the “product”.
#24 by Victoria Janssen on July 8, 2009 - 9:10 am
Certain magazines see themselves as the guardians, champions, and defenders of endangered fiction — good fiction — experimental fiction, literary fiction, intellectual fiction. Allotting space to the best-selling genre when there’s a brilliant book out there that might die on the shelf? Not very heroic, in these magazines’ view.
Excellent point, Meredith. Also about views of hardcover versus mass market.
it’s part of a larger trend in which reporters “discover” that readers and writers of this genre ARE smart
The exact same thing occurs regularly in articles about media fanfiction and slash, along with the “discovery” that women “are doing this.”
Here’s an example of that kind of article about slash with similar rhetoric:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650072/Slashing-through-the-undercult.html
Madeline wrote: The women at the New Yorker, (except maybe for Nancy Franklin) are too busy fighting off the constant low level gender-issue radiation of being taken as seriously as the men to embrace a more female slacker ’so I read romances, so sue me’ attitude.
I can totally believe that!
#25 by Sherry Thomas on July 8, 2009 - 9:55 am
Alas, no. I don’t have a Ph.D, therefore no lifetime subscription to the New Yorker.
#26 by Carolyn Crane on July 8, 2009 - 12:33 pm
So true about the mass market bias! And it’s also the way they are merchandised.
When I told my mom my novel would come out in mass market only, she was horrified. She was like, you mean it would be sold at the SUPERMARKET? Like that would be the worst fate imaginable. And I was like, if my novel is ever sold at a supermarket, I’ll fall on my knees and weep with joy.
And hold on, that wasn’t a joke about the Ph.Ds and lifetime subscriptions? I can’t tell! Oh, I feel so dense.
#27 by Carolyn Crane on July 8, 2009 - 12:45 pm
OH, never mind, scratch that last comment. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m helping a fellow in Nigeria liberate his family money from a bank.
#28 by SarahT on July 8, 2009 - 5:04 pm
Excellent post, Jessica.
Meredith Duran makes a pertinent point regarding Madeline Hunter. When Eloisa James “came out” a few years ago, I was baffled by all the fuss. Madeline Hunter has never made any secret of the fact that she’s a professor of Art History. I’m not sure if she’s still teaching there, but I think she said it was Penn State.
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#29 by Edie on July 9, 2009 - 5:46 am
I want a front row on Sherri’s interview after the release of her literary fiction.. lol
Also want to know what Nora said about Literary in the article!
Is it really the written by women for women thing that holds romance back?
I was actually thinking earlier when reading through SarahT’s blog, that the same distinction isn’t made on movies, comedies get reviewed on the the same page as the high brow movies.. and realistically what is it that separates romance from the other genre fictions that do get reviewed and not bagged as much?
Sorry I am a bit rambly..
But also wanted to say thanks to the person who mentioned that a lot of the women’s mags don’t even review romance.. though they will do chick lit? This is something that bugs me a fair bit.
#30 by SarahT on July 9, 2009 - 5:58 am
@ Edie: The chick lit issue annoys me. I have several friends who freely admit to reading chick lit but are disparaging of romance novels. Why is chick lit seen as being more acceptable than romance?
#31 by heidenkind on July 9, 2009 - 6:02 pm
Excellent post as usual, Jessica! I don’t get the NYT and had no idea that didn’t review romances.
@ SarahT:
Probably because it’s not a given that the heroine will fall in love and live HEA in chick lit. I don’t read that much of it because it depresses me for some reason; but of the ones I have read, they rarely conclude with a marriage proposal or vow of eternal love, etc.
#32 by Edie on July 10, 2009 - 3:42 am
Must admit the few chick lit titles I have read – have happy endings.. normally all about the H getting a bloke.. but that could just be the authors that I have read..
The friend I borrowed them off didn’t appreciate me pointing out that I didn’t see much difference between them and a romance novel.. lol
#33 by Amateur on July 27, 2009 - 2:18 pm
@ Victoria Janssen:
The readership may be narrow b/c they don’t choose to appeal to a broader audience.
I don’t subscribe to New Yorker, but I did purchase a copy just to read the article. In addition, they could choose to enrich their readership by what they choose to publish. That’s how they increase their market.
However, each publication has to decide what market they wish to target, and they would seem to be the case with the New Yorker, as well.