How valid can anything he says be? Why on earth should he be taken seriously when he doesn’t seem to have spent any time researching the subject?

@Sunita:

If I remember 1990 correctly (a big if), it would not have been that easy to be part of a romance reading community unless you had a friendly library or used book store. There weren’t magazines, the way there were for SFF. There were excellent UBS’s, though, so you might meet people through those. And Waldenbooks and B Dalton were definitely around. BevBB undoubtedly has a better memory and more information on this.

Personally, in this context I’d be more concerned about whether the author and/or researchers mentioned collecting and collectors than I would timelines, to be honest. Because if they didn’t and only talk about readers corresponding with each other, it would show a definite lack of understanding of the concept of fans and fandoms regardless of when anything happened within the romance community.

I say that because whether we’re talking about sci-fi “fans” from the sixties with the emergence of the conventions or mystery “fans” going all the way back to the early decades of the 20th century and murder mystery weekends that sometimes got attended by the mystery authors themselves, fandoms are about collecting, both in terms of experiences and objects. Agatha Christie spoofed murder mystery weekends in at least a couple of her stories, so they were going on as early as the thirties or forties. I’d have to check my Christie compendiums to be sure but I know they started way back there. Romance as a genre may be late to the fandom game but the concept has existed almost as long as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and most definitely Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Maybe longer.

Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were very ladylike fanclubs, er, salons for a certain Jane Austin at some point or other.

And you’ll notice those are all authors that led to the current “junk” genres we have today. In a big way.

See, the more fanatical the fan, the more collecting they do. Fans collect. Readers read. It’s part of the job descriptions.

So, sure, fans get together to communicate with each other, but it’s why they get together that’s important, not simply that they’re communicating. Why?

Because they can be just as obsessive fans individually.

Miss that and reseachers are missing the entire point. Fans get together so that they can share and trade the “things” they collect. Getting together doesn’t make them fans. They already are fans.

Another thing that can never be overlooked is that information about the product of a fans obsession can also be collected, which is a huge part of the motivation for being online and becoming part of a community – instant access to both archived and current information.

I don’t know why I am telling you all this, except to let you know that I do recognize and can appreciate literature.

I also think I share all this so that you will know that while I’m not qualified to discuss symbolism or allegory within a novel, I am qualified to ask the question: How do you determine the value of a novel?

The value, to me, is of course, the story. No more, no less. Pynchon may be really smart and may fill his books with all sorts of things, but I’ve never really been able to get into his stories.

On the other hand, when my grandma was dying, I read Jennifer Crusie’s Crazy for You. It gave me a few hours of relief during some really awful weeks. It’s a more compelling story – to me.

Thank you for taking the time to share it. I was nodding along in agreement and I think many of us genre readers woudl feel the same way.

For one thing, many of us not only read across genres, but read “literatue” as well. for another, the reason those of us who read little or no literature don;t is preference, not ability.

If, as Roberts points out, the classics are introduced in K-12 and college classrooms, then, ironically, all of us have had forced on us a basic competency in the canon, while we can at least call our genre reading truly our own.

I read for the story. There is really no other consideration.

I’ve always been able to lose myself in a good story and I love the feeling when I sink into that world for a time. It’s always been that way.

If the story is compelling, I will read it. I can overlook almost anything for a compelling story – poor writing, broken rules, lying narrators, whatever.

If the story is not compelling, then it doesn’t really matter to me if the author can string words together in a beautiful pattern – I lose interest.

I think I am very lucky – I’ve rarely been compelled to read anything. Rather, I’ve been offered suggestions from time to time and I’ve taken many of them. I will try any book – and if it’s not what I want right then, I’ll try it again another time. I’ve learned to keep an open mind about these things.

I suppose I am addicted to reading; I can chart my life by what I was reading during whatever time frame.

For example, I grew up reading The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, The Black Stallion series, Black Beauty, Merrylips (I don’t understand why that’s never been republished), Little Women, all of Frances Hodgson Burnett, Mary Jane Holmes, The Five Little Peppers… I could go on and on.

My father took me to the library every Saturday morning, until I was old enough to drive myself. I like the library where I live now, but I loved that place. The librarians usually had good suggestions about what to read.

My grandmother let me read through all the books in her attic (where do you think I found all those Mary Jane Holmes?).

I loved being in her attic – sitting in an old, broken chair, opening up one of those red covers and finding the story.

When I was a 13 or so, I took up with Barbara Cartland. Yes, I know, but one of my fondest memories is staying with my aunt for a week – she’d bought me a whole box of used Barbara’s. Best vacation ever – nothing to do but lay on the couch and read all day while she worked.

The YA librarian at that time had a mailbox – you could leave her a letter and she’d leave a reply, so I also read Anne Frank, 1984, Are You There God?, It’s Me, Margaret, the Brontes, Joseph Conrad. I also started to get really into SF by then and read Asimov, Lovecraft, Heinlein, Bradbury.

I went to a kind of experimental high school, so was not exposed, as most students are, to beginning criticism and interpretation (I consider this a blessing – I was impressionable then and I might have missed some good stories).

Instead, once I’d passed all their reading and writing tests and whatnot, I spent the next 3.5 years ordering books and reading them.

I got to choose some and they chose some for me. I read them all – Vonnegut, Georgette Heyer, Dickens, John Jakes, Tolkein, Hunter S. Thompson, Herman Hesse, Rosemary Rogers, Chaucer and on and on.

It was not until college that I was exposed to the “class structure” of books. Classics are aristocrats, romance is middle class and sci-fi makes up the serfs and peasants. Westerns made up dirt or worse.

I think that may have changed in the last 20 years – romance seems to have fallen below sci-fi. Westerns are still dirt.

Still, it was a rude awakening and I had to take two classes before I could go on my way. It’s possible the problem was the profs and not the books, but it did bother me for awhile.

I did get some good authors out of it – Shirley Jackson, Faulkner, Thomas Hardy, Dante, Dumas, etc. – so it wasn’t a total loss.

I don’t know why I am telling you all this, except to let you know that I do recognize and can appreciate literature.

I also think I share all this so that you will know that while I’m not qualified to discuss symbolism or allegory within a novel, I am qualified to ask the question: How do you determine the value of a novel?

The value, to me, is of course, the story. No more, no less. Pynchon may be really smart and may fill his books with all sorts of things, but I’ve never really been able to get into his stories.

On the other hand, when my grandma was dying, I read Jennifer Crusie’s Crazy for You. It gave me a few hours of relief during some really awful weeks. It’s a more compelling story – to me.

I’ve noticed that Kurt Vonnegut has moved out of SciFi and into General Lit in the bookstores. Did his writing get better? Or is he simply more appreciated? Maybe his books will wind up being classics. Compelling stories, in any case.

Finally, while it doesn’t diminish my memories at all, I suspect they might be right about Barbara Cartland.

I don’t know about Roberts’ motivations in writing this book, but if he’s a SFF fan, maybe he’s just trying to justify what he considers slumming.

Cheers!

’m left wondering what precisely he means by these references. It doesn’t sound from your summary as though you’re clear on this either.

I’m not.

But I agree with you, that he is not just being insulting but trying to get at an aspect of the phenomenology of genre reading that to me is very present. Romance reading is comfortable for me in ways some other books are not.

I think maybe getting rid of the idea that certain kinds of intellectual activity are “higher” on some objective scale would be a good start.

For example, the chapter about ‘daydreaming’. I instinctively don’t like that remark about genre reading being ‘a haven from consciousness’ – or indeed the stuff about tired and weary minds. However, given that the overall tone of your summary indicates that Roberts is not suggesting that the genre reader is reading mindlessly or flabbily and given that he seems to admit of genre fiction having the ability to deal with complex ideas etc., I’m left wondering what precisely he means by these references. It doesn’t sound from your summary as though you’re clear on this either.

In fact, I think he may have a point. I don’t like to use words like ‘escapist’ or ‘restful’ when describing my reading matter, but the fact is that at least part of the reason I choose romance is that the world it invokes is not only ‘other’ but also predictable (in the sense that I can predict that things that ‘satisfy’ me ought to occur in the text). I suppose where I’m getting to with that is that I don’t think my brain is ‘off’ when I read romance – far from it – but it is diverted somewhere away from less pleasant distractions and in that sense, yes, perhaps it would not be unfair to call it a ‘haven’ or indeed to assume I suffer at times from a weary mind…

The stuff about the genre being “form-intensive” and the ideas around readers following the genre as a whole as much as the individual story is fascinating too. Looking forward to part 3.

@Magdalen: I am thinking of joining RWA for exactly that reason, LOL!

And Roberts reads SFF.

There is a lot of close textual analysis of, especially, SFF, the detective story, and the western, but since I am summarizing his argument, I haven’t gone over any of that. I have yet to see textual analysis of the romance but he does cite Radway a lot, especially when making a point about reader habits (like the one about reading in isolation).

My friend is an associate member of RWA and has been for probably more than 20 years. She’s never written a word of romance; joining RWA was a good way for her to meet authors and readers alike.

Jessica — Quick question (and apology if you mentioned it already and I missed it): Does Roberts say if he reads any genre fiction for pleasure and if so, which and why?

If I remember 1990 correctly (a big if), it would not have been that easy to be part of a romance reading community unless you had a friendly library or used book store. There weren’t magazines, the way there were for SFF. There were excellent UBS’s, though, so you might meet people through those. And Waldenbooks and B Dalton were definitely around. BevBB undoubtedly has a better memory and more information on this.

Thanks, Jessica!