It’s The Book, Stupid!: Twitter Dos and Don’ts

A guest post by @JanetNorCal

I’ve been thinking a lot about James Carville and his motto when he was helping Bill Clinton get elected (and I know this dates me): “It’s the economy, stupid”. Ultimately an author’s books trump any and all social media.  You may love the author on Twitter, but DNF her books. You may hate the views she shares on her blog, but love her books. The bottom line is: “are her books worth reading?”

Obviously this is the merest scratch of the surface and it’s just my opinion. Many an online friend feels very differently. Without further ado, my thoughts today!

Do:


a) Share your opinions and expertise and let us know a bit of what’s behind the curtain.

b) Talk about the life of an author. I’ve read authors say I’m agonizing over which computer to buy or I’m tracking down the perfect pair of shoes before a book signing.

c) Be equally friendly to everyone, as much as you’re able. Try to exude an air of approachability.

d) Join the conversation whether it’s reality TV or a new movie or whatever is trending (just keep spoilers in mind).

e) Share your life in pictures sometimes: a great sunset, your new pet, super muffins … and make your twitter background personal and give us a glimpse into your world.

f) Have fun with twitter: make me forget you’re marketing.

g) Social media is rough and ready and no one’s grading your spelling and/or grammar. If your words are too slick, mannered or Haiku*esque, they won’t sound authentic.


Don’t:

a) Don’t constantly retweet your author (or blogger) friend’s request to get to 1,000 or 2,500 or whatever followers. So sick of those!

b) Retweeting retweeting starts to feel like spam when it’s all book and author related, again, especially if it’s your friends. If I wanted to follow them on twitter, I would.

c) WIP. Once in a while fine, all the live-long day, nope.

d) Reconsider being really really snarky and potty-mouthed. Occasionally, fine, but a steady diet of that impresses me not.

e) Don’t rip other authors a new one – this is a very subjective comment because who am I to say what anyone should say about their fellows. I can only say that even the appearance of piling on can be rather off-putting

f) When authors wear a number of different hats and share their expertise I wonder if I’m hearing from the former principal or the best seller or the hog farmer – for me it can be heavy-handed.

g) Probably no need to mention this but just in case: do not reveal plot spoilers when you have access to ARCs


If the metaphor of twitter and Facebook as the communal water cooler is a valid one, then perhaps the difference is that everything online is public rather than ephemeral. Even if one deletes a regrettable post, there’s often a record after the fact. The words of Henry Ford, quite possibly apocryphal, keep running through my head: “Never complain, never explain”. If you comment on a review that is unfortunate, if you enter into a very volatile discussion, if you talk about personal matters, you run the risk of having your words misconstrued or getting involved in a morass of back and forth that can be ultimately very unpleasant. Ultimately, it’s all a crap shoot.

Thanks Jessica, for letting me have the floor. Which is now open.

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Monday Morning Stepback: Hasty, rambling and ill advised edition

The weekly links, opinions and personal updates post. Now with 25% more opinions.

1. Links of interest

Why Girly Jobs Don’t Pay Well, from the New York Times

A Kinder Gentler Vampire, from Smart Pop Books, which offers free essays daily from their books on pop culture. In this essay,  author Vera Mazarian contends that True Blood’s Bill Compton breaks the following mold:

Because, face it,” they concluded, “He’s one of a kind, a noble, nice-guy vampire, with a Scary Dangerous Façade. But underneath, he’s controlling himself—unlike all those other amoral crazy vamps. Okay, maybe he’s a bit on edge. Maybe his psycho brakes need new pads and drums and rotors. But—just look at all that sexy willpower!

“Furthermore, he loves—truly, madly, deeply. But his love is always problematic. Even when our heroine is willing (as a rule, the leading lady fantasizes about jumping his undead bones even while putting up her own Scary Dangerous Façade), he absolutely must deny himself any pleasure. Because what better way to torture a hero than to introduce sexual repression, or even insist on abstinence?”

From Teleread, would you like a vintage book cover for your ereader?

I have been very remiss in failing to link to the excellent series of posts on Georgette Heyer over at Austenprose which is running all month long with reviews, discussions, the works.  Check out Why We Love To Read and Re-Read Georgette Heyer: A birthday Tribute.

I have also been remiss in not notifying any of you who haven’t heard that the first issue of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies is out. Laura Vivanco at Teach Me Tonight has links and other info. One neat thing is that you can read all the articles for free online as well as comment. I serve as a peer reviewer and write book reviews for the JPRS, and hope very much to submit an essay to before the year is out.

This Wilson Quarterly article has been making the rounds in my circles: America: Land of Loners?:

Americans, plugged in and on the move, are confiding in their pets, their computers, and their spouses. What they need is to rediscover the value of friendship.

Friendship has also suffered from the remorseless eroticization of human relations that was bequeathed to us by Sigmund Freud. The culture stands particularly ready to sexualize men’s friendships since the gay liberation movement mercifully swept away taboos against discussing same-sex relationships. In 2005 The New York Times laid claim to coining the term “man date” in a story—under a woman’s byline—about the anxiety two straight men supposedly experience if they brave a restaurant or museum together and run the risk that people will think they are gay. The “bromance” theme, once strictly a collegiate sport among scholars scouring the letters of passionate 19th-century friends for signs of physical intimacy, has since made its way into popular culture. The pathetic state of male friendship—and the general suspicion that men who seek close friends might be looking for something more—was captured in last year’s film I Love You, Man, in which a guy decides to get married, realizes he has no one to be his best man, and must embark on a series of “man dates” to find one.

I must be the last person in the world to hear about the Smart Chicks Kick It tour, consisting of 18 YA writers whose books feature strong capable heroines, including Melissa Marr, in September, starting in Texas and ending in Ontario (from Arts and Letters Daily). I had a long talk with my friend this weekend, who is a national expert on literacy, especially adolescent literacy, and we kept having this disconnect, where I would say “YA/girls/romance/genre/UF/SFF” and she would be talking about books I had never heard of, many with male protagonists. Clearly we were coming from two very different places. She has promised me that I can interview her for a post, so that’s forthcoming.

Lurv a La Mode is asking Where Do You stand on Rape in Fantasy and UF?

Sandy’s All About Romance column, Speaking of Audiobooks, is excellent. Check out Romance Audio Bests By Author. I am currently listening to — and loving — Jo Beverley’s The Dragon’s Bride, narrated by Simon Preble, who has the virtue of not trying to mimic female voices.

My Experiences with Disability in the Kink Community, at FWD (Feminists with Disabilities). Did you know that some people think the leather community is not as accommodating of chemical sensitivities as it could be? Or that the post author would actually have to warn commenters that this is not the place to talk about how kinky it is to have sex with people who are disabled? I didn’t until I read this post.

At Critical Mass, word of a review of a book I want to read: Bring on the Books for Everybody: how literary culture became popular culture, by Jim Collins, a professor of film and tv at Notre Dame. Here’s part of the blurb:

Bring on the Books for Everybody is an engaging assessment of the robust popular literary culture that has developed in the United States during the past two decades. Jim Collins describes how a once solitary and print-based experience has become an exuberantly social activity, enjoyed as much on the screen as on the page. Fueled by Oprah’s book club, Miramax film adaptations, superstore bookshops, and new technologies such as the Kindle digital reader, literary fiction has been transformed into bestselling, high-concept entertainment. Collins highlights the infrastructural and cultural changes that have given rise to a flourishing reading public at a time when the future of the book has been called into question. Book reading, he claims, has not become obsolete; it has become integrated into popular visual media.

The Washington Post on how writers today use transparent pesudonyms. (h/t Literary Saloon)

2. Opinions

a) Like anyone with a book blog, I get offers of free books. I usually delete these emails without comment. But the one I got today was so clueless, I had to share.

Clearly not realizing that everyone else just offers you the damn book, she writes:

I have a challenge for you. It involves writing, reading, and communicating. If you rock it you get a free book. The challenge? Check out my website. Subscribe to my blog. Email me.

You get a free book, my novel.

And how does she entice me? By telling me “you’re my friend, obviously” (I have never heard of this person), and then informing me that “this novel is not available anywhere but my hard drive”.

SOLD!!!

b) A review at All About Romance really annoyed me recently. It was a C+ review of Victoria Dahl’s historical A Little Bit Wild. Apparently the heroine likes physical pleasure. The reviewer is having none of this:

Being unapologetically lusty is bizarre enough

and

Double standard or not, I didn’t like it when she reveals she has dallied with more than a few men for no particular reason – luckily this eventually comes back to bite her in the butt.

I’m tempted to say those comments had no business being in the review, because they have little to do with the text. When I read an AAR review, because it is more of a professional website, I expect to read about the book, not the reviewer’s personal sexual ethics. On the other hand, maybe it’s just down to my distaste for the reviewer’s opinion.

c) The Linda Howard thing. After a spate of bad reviews. Linda Howard went on Facebook to say that she has been ill and that her books have suffered. I first learned of this through this discussion at Book Lovers Message Board, and then Jane at Dear Author posted about it.

Three things: (1) it is awful when anybody is sick, (2) but Howard’s claim that she is not talking about her health troubles to deflect criticism strikes me as disingenuous, and (3) the point of a review is to review books, not authors. Imagine how reviews would look if we had to take all these causal connections into account (not something Howard is suggesting we do, I realize)? “Sally Smith’s latest book really shows the effects of the fantastic sex she has been having with her new husband! Those sex scenes are hot!” or “Well, I met that author at RWA, and she’s a real asshat, so I am not surprised her heroine is a bitch.”

d) A comment in the DA thread by Devon annoyed me:

For what it’s worth, menopause can also do a number on creativity and writing style. Maybe that would explain–in part–why many of the older writers we used to love have dried up creatively?

Yeah, they shoot horses, don’t they?

On the blog this week

A guest post on Twitter dos and don’ts for authors and others (maybe I should have called this “Rant Week!!”)

Tuesday, the Dracula post, which promises to be long and unwieldy.

Then… who knows.

HAPPY WEEK!

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Review: Compromised, by Kate Noble

This is going to be a pretty critical review. You should know that most other people really liked this book, and this author:

Other reviews:

Book Smugglers, 8 out of 10

Gossamer Obsessions, high B

TGTBTU, LauraD, B

TGTBTU, Shannon C., A-

TGTBTU, Lawson, B

Amazon.com, 4 stars with 17 reviews

Goodreads, 3.7 out of 5, 117 ratings, 32 reviews

All About Romance, more on my wavelength with a C+

I had heard good things about this historical romance author and decided to read her debut, Compromised (Berkely Sensation, March 2008). Since Compromised, Noble has published Revealed (a RITA finalist this year) and Summer of You (her website with excerpts and purchasing info is here).

It’s 1829 and the Alton sisters return to London with their ambassador father and stepmother after years abroad. They will have their Season, finally, but the family’s hopes are pinned on Evangeline, demure and lovely, rather than Gail, tall, assertive, and bookish. Gail, not interested in gowns, balls or betrothals, rides out one morning and ends up in a lake after a horse crash with Maximillian, Viscount Fontaine. They clash: he’s overbearing, she’s impulsive, and each blames the other for the mishap.

They meet again during the girls’ debut ball, when Max is caught kissing Evangeline in the conservatory. Max is under pressure from his father — with whom he has a very strained relationship — to find a wife within three months or be disinherited. He ends up betrothed to Evangeline … but there’s that prickly sister to deal with.

The author is going, tone-wise, for very light and humorous, kind of Julia Quinn lite. The Alton family dynamics I think were supposed to be reminiscent of Austen’s Bennets (the beautiful, sweet sister, the brash sister, the scheming mother figure, the slightly out of touch but loving father figure), but the portrayal of the parents veered from comical to menacing and back. By the end of the book, the loving father had become stern and implacable, and the untrustworthy stepmother had somehow become the sisters’ ally and friend. This woman, who was obsessed with “good Ton” for the entire book, turns around at the end and says “gossip isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on” when the author needs a deus ex machina to help the girls escape to get married in Scotland.

I found the characterization of the hero wholly uninspired. He was so generic I can’t tell you a thing about him. I felt like the author threw in every cliched hero description and they didn’t gel: sometimes he was “steely”, sometimes he sported a “lopsided grin”, etc.. He wasn’t quite a rake, wasn’t quite troubled, wasn’t quite suave or sexy. He was not very bright, and not able to control his own life at any point in the story. He was just … there, kind of like a ghost of heroes past, leaving a wan impression on me as a reader.

I have become comfortable as a historical romance reader with a certain world I identify as “Regency”. I know it bears little resemblance to the real Regency England, but I have certain genre expectations. Some of these are that the heroine doesn’t call a strange man by his first name, say things like “bullshit”, sneak into the home and enter the bedroom of a man engaged to her sister, grab the reins of a stampeding horse, etc., etc. And a man doesn’t call a lady he has just met “Brat”. I found those things very distracting.

The writing wasn’t to my liking either. Just for fun, I did a Kindle search of the word “obviously”, and I got SEVEN pages of Kindle results. Some characters liked it so much they used it twice in one sentence!

And there are exchanges like this:

[Max:] “what do you mean, you finally received “a really good kiss’?”
Gail rolled her eyes. “I was so hoping you missed that.”

Or this:

[Gail:] “Where do I stand with you, Max? Where the hell do I stand with you?”

Putting aside that neither is the sort of thing I would expect to come out of a Regency heroine’s mouth, I don’t feel that the same person would say both those things. Sometimes, Gail sounded very YA, as in the first quotation, and other times, very contemporary, as in the second. It didn’t work for me.

Compromised just didn’t stand out from the pack for me. There are so many authors I want to read, and so many backlists I have to conquer. Unless a later book by this author gets rave reviews, I think I’ll be moving on.

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Sexuality and Same-Sex Romance: Placeholders, Power Dynamics, and the P-word

A guest post by romantic suspense author Jill Sorenson

Assuming that most romance readers aren’t familiar with all of the terms above, I’ll start with a few definitions.

  1. Same-sex romance.  In addition to the ever-popular m/m (male/male), there is also a little-known subgenre called f/f (female/female).  Same-sex romance doesn’t necessarily mean gay romance.  It refers to a sexual relationship or sexual contact/experimentation between two characters of the same sex.  These characters may or may not identify as gay or bisexual.  F/f and m/m romances are often written by straight authors.
  2. Gay or LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) romance, on the other hand, is usually written by gay or LGBT authors.  The characters identify or “come out” as LGBT.  Some authors of gay romance dislike having their books labeled m/m or f/f.
  3. Straight romance, aka heterosexual romance or m/f (male/female).
  4. Placeholders.  I believe this term was coined by Laura Kinsale.  It’s a theory about the reader’s identification with a character.  Many m/f readers “take the place of the heroine” and fall in love with the hero, for example.
  5. Sexual politics.  Macmillan defines this as “differences in the amount of power men and women have in a society or group.” Some readers are turned off by the sexual politics in m/f romance.  Or are they just turned off by the “weaker sex”?  M/m gets a lot more credit than f/f for having an equal power dynamic.
  6. The P-word.  It’s pussy, people.  This one makes so many female readers uncomfortable, I’m almost afraid to use it!

My inspiration for this blog post was a feeling of frustration towards m/m “purists” who express negative attitudes about straight romance and women.  Not all m/m readers hold these views, but there are those who think m/f romance is lame and sexist.  Others don’t want girl cooties in their smokin-hot manlove.  They certainly aren’t interested in reading about two women.

Because I write straight romance, I read f/f romance, and I’m a woman, I take offense.  In some ways, m/m seems like a rejection of female sexuality, an erasure of women.

But my self-righteous indignation is just an initial reaction.  Romance readers can be sensitive.  I get emotional.  You know how it is.  This post isn’t actually about male vs. female or “us vs. them.”  My agenda isn’t to shame m/m fans or rally around f/f.  It’s an attempt to understand why we read what we read and like what we like.

Let’s begin with placeholders.  Earlier this year, I read an interesting comment at Smart Bitches from a reader who only buys books with blond heroines, because she’s blond, and she likes to imagine herself in the heroine’s place.  This is an extreme example of place-holding, no?  Maybe it’s even “replacing.” I’ve also seen some Bitchy ads in the sidebar that feature middle-aged women fantasizing about getting it on with romance novel heroes.

Although I think the placeholder theory has merit, I don’t take my reading engagement that far.  I’ve never pictured my real-life self in the book, shoving the fictional heroine aside.  I don’t want to paste my face over hers, if that makes sense.  But I am inside her head, inhabiting her space and feeling her emotions, not just passively watching the action.  I am becoming her, rather than replacing her.  I can also slip into the role of hero, and especially enjoy sex scenes from the male perspective.

Not everyone experiences romance novels the same way I do, of course.  Obviously, there are various levels of engagement.  It may depend on the book, the reader, the situation, the sexual pairing—any number of variables.  The variable I’m most interested in is the reader’s relationship with her sexuality.

M/m creates a sexual space that’s difficult for me to get into.  I feel more like a voyeur than a participant, one step removed.  Part of this may be my unfamiliarity with the subgenre, or my general disinterest in two guys having sex.  I can also understand why some gay people feel objectified by this “eroticization of the Other.” Not that my reading of f/f sex is any less offensive, ideologically, but it feels more innocent because of my ability to lose myself in the story and connect with the characters.

For other women, the sexual space in m/m feels totally natural.  In a fantastic thread stemming from Robin/Janet’s thought-provoking piece on ethical responsibilities beyond the book, author Heidi Cullinan said:

    “Sexual identity is so hard to define. I can’t tell you why I am so at home in m/m, but I am. I’ve had it explained that this is some sort of psychology, or something, about how it’s my way of accessing my inner male, or how I wish I were male—honestly? I don’t know. I just know that I love it. Somehow it does feel like it’s about my sexual identity, but I can’t explain it. I am intellectually (and yes, often physically) attracted to gay men.”

It follows logic that some women find it easier to identify with gay men, sexually.  They aren’t just attracted to men, but attracted to the fantasy aspect of being a man, having a man’s strength and sexual power.  This is an odd concept for me because I’ve never felt that way. I love being a woman. I like sex scenes from the hero’s POV in m/f romance because I relish his enjoyment of the heroine, not because I’d fancy having a penis instead of a vagina.

But I can’t assume that all women, gay or straight, embrace femininity the way I do.  I’ve heard that some lesbians love m/m.  Say what?  Here’s a comment from another interesting thread about the differences between straight and LGBT romance at Babbling About Books:

    “It’s worth noting that a lot of GLBT sex is similar to straight sex in limited ways. It’s not as simple as one person penetrating another. If what every straight couple wants most in the bedroom is different, queer couples differ even more dramatically from each other. Just from an f/f standpoint, stone butches, often those who present as most masculine and would seem simplest to slot into the m part of the m/f trope, are so uncomfortable with their female body and experiencing female pleasure that they would rather their lover fellate a strap-on than give them direct stimulation.”  –Thursday

When I saw the above comment, I thought of a puzzling scene I’d just read in a lesbian romance.  One of the heroines wore masculine clothing and lived as a man.  She used a strap-on during sex and reacted with arousal when her lover caressed it.  I didn’t understand what could possibly be pleasurable about donning a fake penis or having it touched.  But now I get it.

Sexuality is more complicated than liking men vs. liking women.  It’s also about which sexual parts we identify with, and they may or may not match our biological parts.

I have another theory, on the opposite end of the placeholder spectrum: some readers actively seek out characters that are not like them.  They are different from the blond reader who only reads blond heroines.  Rather than inserting themselves into the novel, they want to visualize or “become” someone else.

I can understand the fantasy aspect of this tendency.  Although I have to identify with a character in order to inhabit his or her space, it feels more comfortable for me to become someone else.  I rarely make an appearance in my own fantasies, in fact.  It’s one of the reasons I started writing romance.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve created characters in my mind and imagined them making love.  To each other, not to me.

Is part of the popularity of m/m the anti-placeholder?  If it’s impossible for the reader to imagine herself in the scene, taking the man’s place, does the fantasy become sharper and more pleasurable?  A pure escape, not grounded in reality or spoiled by any of the reader’s real-life experiences, separate from the reader’s sense of self?

As an aside, I don’t mean “escape” or “fantasy” in a negative way at all.  I see these as healthy, important facets of the romance genre.  Feel free to disagree!

On to sexual politics.  Many m/m readers enjoy the lack of traditional gender roles in a romance “between equals.”

At RRR Jessica’s, I read the following comment, which I believe was made by m/m aficionada Dr. Sarah Franz.  “F/f romance doesn’t work to dispel power dynamics the way m/m does because readers are women.”

My initial reaction to this statement wasn’t positive.  It sounded like another diss on f/f, very similar to the constant criticism of all romance as “for/about women (therefore lacking value).”  Then I read it again, and realized I’d misunderstood. Now I think it means that women have been historically oppressed by men.  When we write and read about two hot guys doing it for the female gaze, it’s like taking a piece of that power back.

I still don’t know if I get this power dynamic thing, or agree with the concept that m/m “does it better.”  I do know that m/m celebrates men, and I like men.  I like open-minded readers and rainbow coalitions.  But when penis = power, are m/m writers really subverting stereotypes by championing male sexuality?

Maybe m/m isn’t pro-feminist, or even gay-affirmative in some cases, but I’ve read many comments from readers who say the subgenre has changed their views about sexuality.  They are more accepting of differences and knowledgeable about the gay experience.  This is a good thing, and I think it happens when character portrayals are authentic.  I know I’ve gained a wider perspective from reading f/f.

Which brings me to my last point.  Again, I can thank m/m readers for bringing the issue to my attention.  Why do we have such a serious aversion to the word “pussy”?

M/f authors also discuss this troublesome dilemma, on Twitter and everywhere else.  Flowery euphemisms are out, clinical terms a turn-off.  There is no “perfect word” for female genitalia. We bemoan the fact that guys get all the sexy slang terms, like cock.

The words for lady parts are so unappealing they make some readers sick.  Several m/m authors claim it’s the reason they write about men.

Oddly enough, I’ve never heard anyone complain that there’s no sexy word for anus.  Authors can’t wrap their minds around “moist channel,” but they’re hot for “rear entrance”?  What is that about?  Why are we so comfortable with cock, and uncomfortable with cunt?

Well, I’ll tell you, fine reader!  I think it’s the actual parts, rather than the representative terms, we react negatively to. I, for one, like pussy.  I’ve used it in sex scenes.  It doesn’t freak me out.  I’m not offended by cunt, unless you’re calling me one.  I can appreciate female parts just as much as male parts.  I like sexy words.

I’m not trying to tell authors what to like, or which words to use.  But I do think we devalue female sexuality when we shy away from descriptions of female genitalia.  If moist channel doesn’t get your juices flowing (ha), choose something else.  Make up new words.  Be creative.  Find your own way.

Or…write about hot man-on-man love. Just don’t do it because you hate girl cooties.

Thanks so much for reading!  Comments welcome.

Questions:

Do you have the placeholder experience while reading, or are you more of a voyeur?  Does the sexual pairing (m/m, m/f, etc.) make a difference in your engagement with the text or your enjoyment of love scenes?

How are power dynamics different in same-sex romance?  What appeals to you about m/m or f/f romance?  What turns you off?

Which slang terms do you like or dislike?

Related articles:

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Yoo hoo!! Any philosophers out there working on popular romance studies?

Do you have a PhD in philosophy? Would you be even slightly, possibly, the teeniest bit interested in contributing to an edited collection on philosophy and romance?

There is no commitment. I just need a head count. Am crossing my fingers it is higher than 1.

Can you email me at jessica@readreactreview.com?

Thanks!

What Does The Romance Genre Say About the Good Life?

I haven’t made you work in while, have I? Grab some coffee, gingko biloba, Adderall (kidding!) or do your pranayama cleansing breath, because we are going to do some philosophy today.

I gave a paper recently, the theme of which was “What is the Good?”. My contribution focused on the connection between health and the good. But on the ride home, as I was listening to my audio of Jo Goodman’s Everything I Ever Wanted (a Compass Club book — South’s story, with the actress India Parr. Review coming.) I started to think about whether there is a take or a vision of the good life that pervades the genre.

In part A of this post, I give you some background on philosophical approaches to well-being. In part B, I talk about the view of the good life found in the romance genre. If you’re pressed for time or not feeling very philosophical today, I think skipping to part B will work just fine.

A. In philosophy, there are three basic types of theories about the good life, or well-being:

1. Hedonism — a hedonist thinks there is but one thing that determines how well your life is going, and that’s pleasure. As Jeremy Bentham wrote, in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation: ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do’. Bentham tended to think of pleasure as a kind of sensation that pervades all different kinds of things we enjoy, and believed that the more pleasure we could experience, the better our lives would be.It didn’t matter much what the pleasure was. Or, as Bentham put it, “pushpin is as good as poetry.”

There are a number of problems with this view, the first being that it doesn’t feel the same when we experience different kinds of pleasurable activities. Another problem is that it seems to lead to the conclusion that the beings with the simplest lives will have the best lives, such that if you could change places with a lower life form that  — say, a clam — you should.

One solution is to claim, as John Stuart Mill did, that not all pleasures are equal. The best life is really the one with the most higher pleasures, by which he meant pleasures of the intellect. It is not true, Mill said, that people would consent to be changed into a clam or a swine, even if they knew the clam or swine had a more contented life, because most people prefer a life with the kinds of pleasures only humans an experience, like friendship, love, reading, great food, spirituality, walking, music, fulfilling work, etc. If our pursuit of the higher pleasures means we get frustrated more, or have less overall contentment, so be it. It is still a better life from a hedonist’s point of view because the pleasures we do get outweigh those elementary pleasures a swine enjoys.

Whether Mill’s version is really still hedonism is something philosophers argue about.

2. Desire theories are motivated by a seemingly insurmountable problem with hedonism, which is that if hedonism is true, it looks like you could be put into an “experience machine”, which simulated any of the experiences that give you pleasure (including the higher pleasures of which Mill wrote) and that would have to count as equally good as actually experiencing those things. That is, if your well-being is determined solely by how you feel, inside, and not by the causes of the those feelings (i.e. really writing a great novel, versus being hooked up to a virtual reality machine that makes you feel just the same) then we have no way to say the person who spends her life in an experience machine is worse off than the person who really has all those great experiences. And we want to say that, I think.

So maybe it’s not the pleasure, but the satisfaction of the desire.  And the only thing that will really satisfy your desire to be a great author is writing a great book. Taking a pill or getting into a machine that simulates the feeling will not satisfy the desire.

Desire theories say your life is going well is your desires are satisfied. A really simple version won’t work, though, because we all have desires that should not be satisfied if we really want to be happy. So, for example, satisfying the desire to punch someone in the face, or grab a stranger’s butt, or do something rash or downright tragic — like an adolescent suicide — is not a desire that should be satisfied.

So desire theorists modify the theory to say that your desires should be informed (you wouldn’t really desire that dangerous drug if you knew how addicting/harmful it is, for example, or you wouldn’t desire to go out with that cue guy if you knew he was a serial killer. Still, though, if you really hols this theory about well-being, you have to accept that any informed desire contributes to someone’s well-being, even a really odd one, like a brilliant mathematician who is not mentally ill choosing to count blades of grass all day, every day.

For a desire theory to work, the person has to desire the thing for it to contribute to her well-being. So if the brilliant mathematician is informed, and not mentally ill, and desires the grass counting, then that’s the good life for her, and there’s nothing we can say about it. We might think that her working as a mathematician would better contribute to her well-being than sitting outside the math lab counting blades of grass, buy if SHE doesn’t desire work as a mathematician, then it doesn’t contribute to her well-being, no matter what others might think.

This kind of situation makes many people question “desire theories”. And it points to a seemingly deeper problem: if I want to be a great novelist, what I think is good about that is the great novel, not my desire to write one. My feeling good at having the desire satisfied is a result of the fact that I have created or done something good. What’s “good” isn’t that my desire is satisfied. These theories view the satisfaction of the desire as what’s “good”, but for many people, what’s “good” is independent of our desires … it’s the desired thing or state of affairs itself.

3. Taking off from that insight, we have what are often called “objective list” theories. As the name implies, these theories say that our well-being consists in a list of things, and that these things are independently, objectively good, such that if someone doesn’t desire them, no matter — they still contribute to that person;s well-being.

Parenting involves a lot of objective list making. I know that eating their vegetables and brushing their teeth and limiting their time on the computer is good for my kids, regardless of what they think, prefer, or desire. These things contribute to their good, period, so I enforce them. Think also of loved ones or friends you may have thought of as making a mistake: marrying the wrong person, taking illicit drugs, quitting school, etc.  They are satisfying their own preferences and fulfilling their desires, but you try to convince them that their choices will not be good for them. Maybe you make arguments and give reasons. In such cases, you are acting like a person who believes in an objective list theory of the good.

A lot of people have a very negative reaction to this kind of theory of well-being. they say that everybody decides for themselves what contributes to their own well-being — it’s totally subjective. And besides, how can one theory fit all humans? We are all so different!

One response is that while objective list theories tend to be paint in broad strokes. You might have a list that includes things like health, friendship, justice, and happiness, but individuals can specify for themselves exactly how each good contributes to their own well-being.

Take “health”, for example: what is it? Is a gifted young runner with a progressive disease who will lose her leg eventually, who asks for an early amputation and a prosthetic so she can start training for the Olympics making a healthful decision? We have to figure this out. And autonomy is on most objective lists. So, for example, when my kids become adults, it will be a part of their well-being to feel in control of their lives, free from the undue interference of their meddling mother.  To go back to the health example, respect for autonomy is why we let patients make their own health care decisions, even those that might compromise their health. Yes, health is a value, but so is directing your own life. Finding the balance between respecting your kids’ autonomy and protecting them is one of the challenges in parenting.

Now, what goes on the list? How do we know? Well, there are a few different approaches one might take. One approach I am sympathetic to is championed by Martha Nussbaum. It’s called the capabilities approach, and it begins by asking the kind of question Aristotle would ask:  what activities typically performed by human beings are so central that they seem definitive of a truly human life?

In answer to this question, she ends up with a list that includes: a life of normal human length, bodily health and integrity, senses, imagination and thought, practical reason, affiliation, getting along with living plants and animals, and autonomy (control over your environment, both political and material). The reason she uses the term “capabilities” is to allow that some people might not choose to actualize all of these possibilities, but they should at least have the chance to. So, for example, someone can choose as an adult to never use her imagination, but a society that actively discouraged, or even failed to encourage (for example by cutting all funding for art and literature in schools and elsewhere), citizens to use their imaginations would be thwarting a basic condition of human well-being.

But, in general, the way you come up with an account of the good is via intuition, reflection, and conversation. It’s not written in the stars. And I don’t think anyone can get through life without reflecting at least occasionally on whether their life is going well. To ask yourself if your life is going well is to presuppose some account of the good. I think this asking this question about our lives is a unique and vital human capacity.

B. The vision of the good in romance novels

I’m just going to make some suggestions here, with minimal argument, and I invite you to add to them, or disagree with me.

I think, in general, we get an objective list account of the good in romance novels. Think of all those rakes that need reforming — this is not hedonism. I could be persuaded that a sophisticated desire theory fits, but the commitment to love and marriage is so strong that I can hardly think of a happily single character in romance fiction. It’s never enough that the heroine and hero end up with an HEA: we have secondary romances, and sequel after sequel in which all the brothers and sisters and cousins and friends get married. EVERYONE must be happily in love.

So, I think an objective list account fits, and I think that romance novels portray a world in which romantic love is a necessary condition for the good life. But not just fleeting romantic love: it has to be enduring, part of a very deep emotional, supportive bond. Not only that, but it has to include fantastic sex. So, it’s a very robust conception of romantic love. Love in romance novels is not just a feeling (“I’m in love love loooooove”), but a way of life.

I also think material welfare is a key component of most romance novels. And not just material comfort, but significant wealth. Pretty much the entire subgenre of historical romance is confined to the peerage (and if one partner isn’t, then s/he is either (a) elevated by the end (she was a duchess all along!), or (b) marries up. I’ve never read historical wherein the poor partner drags the rich partner down to the gutter with her. And then there’s those Harlequin Presents with all the sheiks and billionaires.

Of course, you do have the contemps, especially single titles, but also Blazes, Superromance, and other Harlequin lines, that have middle class couples. And urban fantasy tends to be populated with scavenging nothing-but-her-dagger-and-tramp-stamp-to-her-name heroines. (Someone should write a paper on the economic landscape of UF romance). But in the main, middle class (by which I mean salaried, home/condo and car owning, not pay check to paycheck living) and up is where most heroes and heroines end up.

Another key component is physical and mental health. Theoretically, this needs to be distinguished from freedom from disability, because disability can coincide with otherwise excellent health. But in practice, most heroes and heroines live both healthful and disability-free lives. Sometimes, it’s a major part of the story to bring the hero and heroine back to a state of complete health, whether it’s getting over PTSD, addiction, battle wounds, smallpox, a curse, etc. I can think of a few books in which disability persists to the last page, but none in which disease or general ill health do.

While physical beauty is not part of health in my opinion (indeed, the things we do to achieve physical beauty often have deleterious effects on our health), I’ll stick it in here, because the hero and heroine are usually good looking. At worst, they are “plain” at the start and their beauty grows in their lover’s eyes as the book progresses. But even in those cases, the reader is usually cued in to the fact that the character was good looking from the start, but the hero or heroine was unable to see it (for example, the contemporary hero usually prefers statuesque blonds, and the heroine is a curvy redhead. The reader knows that curvy redheads — and this one in particular — are quite attractive, but the hero doesn’t see it at first.

Affiliation is another one. Most heroes and heroines have loved ones, whether they are family or friends or fellow members of the Bortherhood. It’s a key component of many romances that broken relationships, especially with family, such as parents, are repaired.

Autonomy — I think this one is crucial, especially for the heroine. She may end up in quite a traditional feminine role, but it’s always presented as an informed choice — which also happens to be in her best interests.

Integrity — can you think of a hero or heroine who utterly lacks integrity? At worst, they come to have it in the end. Of course, it depends a bit on how you define integrity, but think of it as standing for something, not being a will o the wisp when it comes to your values and sense of self.

Moral virtue — There’s a bit of a debate in philosophy over whether one can have moral integrity without virtue. For example, would a person whose only goal is the accumulation of wealth, who lets no friendship, regard for justice, or anything else to get in his way, really be a person of integrity? Luckily, we don’t have to worry too much about integrity and moral virtue coming apart in romance novels because I think we almost always have both. And by moral virtue, I don’t mean sexual purity (although there is often that with regard to the heroine), but rather a good character, described as honest, just, unselfish, etc.

I can think of a few things, such as spirituality, that would be on many people’s lists of what is necessarily for their well-being which are mostly absent in romance (except the Inspiration romances, of course). And there’s little concern for the environment or nonhuman animals (the occasional domesticated pet nothwithstanding). Also, political autonomy, i.e. active democratic participation, is pretty nonexistent.

So what do you think?

Monday Morning Stepback: Contest winner, Garwood for a buck, and romance and social media

The weekly links, opinion and personal updates post

The winner of the blogversary contest is Vi. Send me an email with your choice of two books I have reviewed, and your snail mail address. Congratulations!

1. Links of Interest

Quote of the week:

Moral disapproval is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians.

Vaughn R. Walker, United States District Chief Judge

Dorchester Publishing announced that it is abandoning mass market paperbacks, effective today. Dorchester titles will be available only in digital format and print-on-demand. Or, maybe ebooks first with the trade paperbacks 6-8 months later? I guess it is still unfolding.

I’ve long felt proud of romance readers for embracing digital reading technology. Here’s how the Wall Street Journal (Registration required) sees it in their reporting on Dorchester:

Dorchester, which has been publishing mass market paperbacks since 1971, publishes 25 to 30 new titles a month, approximately 65% of which are romance works. The company launched its first mass paperback titles in 1971.

Romance fans in particular have already embraced e-books, in part because customers can read them in public without having to display the covers. In addition, type size is easily adjusted on e-readers, making titles published in the mass paperback format easier to read for older customers.

As a reader, I gained a better understanding of what the Dorchester changes mean for me from Wendy the Superlibrarian.

As for the business side of things, I found Dorchester romantic suspense author Anna DeStefano’s My Publisher Went Direct-to-Digital the most helpful.

In the meantime, via Author Scoop, Slate is saying that digital publishing has leveled the playing field for small presses. I found the comments on social media and small presses particularly interesting:

Small presses are almost like offline communities, which allows them to move more seamlessly into the digital realm than bigger houses that don’t engage audiences on an intimate level. Independent publishers literally live and die by their networks. Featherproof Books, which publishes two books per year and borrowed its 50-50 profit-sharing author model from a small record label, posts requests to buy books on Twitter and Facebook if it is having trouble making ends meet on a given month—and the audience responds. “They know where we are and we know where they are,” says co-publisher Zach Dodson of his audience.

These little entities, like many small businesses, have exchanges with readers that transcend the commercial. Like much of what transpires in the digital space, it’s personal.

This article in Business Week talks about romance and social media, in terms of micro-trends, like Amish romance and knitting romance:

Therein may lie the secret to the rise of the romantic subgenre. Twitter feeds, author blogs, and other forms of social media are providing limitless opportunities for virtual Ya-Ya Sisterhoods of like-minded readers to develop. “These authors are all masters of social networking,” says Pam Jaffee, the publicist in charge of Avon, HarperCollins’ romance imprint. Macomber boasts an e-mail list of 130,000. (By comparison, Jaffee says, most successful authors have “between 3,000 and 9,000 friends” on Facebook.) Bostwick’s fans have even formed an online quilting club. This fall, readers from 13 different states will tour her favorite places to quilt.

Devoted fans of Robyn Carr—who hit the jackpot in the military romance niche with her Virgin River series—find each other at the Jack’s Bar chat room on her site. “There are so many people out there who have a relative or a loved one who’s serving. Those people want to celebrate and honor these men and women. And they want military characters in the books they read,” says Carr, a former military wife whose son is serving in Iraq.

Speaking of Amish romance … here’s a story on it in USA today. (via @shannonstacey) Quoted are romance scholar Pam Regis, and bloggers Sarah Wendell and Jane Litte, among others.

Has there ever been a social phenomenon more anticipated and less actualized than Steampunk? I’ll do my part by linking to The Guardian’s Steampunk: an introduction.

Julie Garwood is one of those old school authors I have never been able to read. but — unless Amazon changes its mind — you can get Kindle versions of some of her books for 99 cents (Books on the Knob)

Prospect considers Self-Serving White Guilt. This is a review by Eric Kaufmann of The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism by Pascal Bruckner, trans Steven Rendall. Bruckner is a novelist whose Bitter Moon was made by Roman Polanski into one of the dumbest, most unintentionally funny movies I have ever seen. As Kaufmann sees it:

Beneath Bruckner’s eloquence is a serious message: we remain prisoners of a white guilt whose victim is its supposed beneficiary. Our guilt, he writes, is actually a means for us to retain our superiority over the non-white world, our masochism a form of sadism. After all, if everything is the fault of the west then the power to change the world lies squarely in the hands of westerners.

(via Arts and Letters Daily)

From GalleyCat, Kindle now has games. Actually, I’ve already downloaded and played one. Then again, I was on a 14 hour car trip with a dead iTouch battery.

Should women attorneys wear peep toe shoes in court? Feministe weighs in on the fashion controversy.

From Jacket Copy, Twenty Classic Works of Gay Literature. Read it for the comments. Great suggestions.

Did the NYT’s article on plagiarism in school piss anyone else off?

the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual. It is buttressed by the Western concept of intellectual property rights as secured by copyright law. But both traditions are being challenged.

I liked this bit at the end, though:

At the University of California, Davis, of the 196 plagiarism cases referred to the disciplinary office last year, a majority did not involve students ignorant of the need to credit the writing of others.

Many times, said Donald J. Dudley, who oversees the discipline office on the campus of 32,000, it was students who intentionally copied — knowing it was wrong — who were “unwilling to engage the writing process.”

“Writing is difficult, and doing it well takes time and practice,” he said.

Great discussion over at ClitLit by Jodi — a critical romance reader, and we need those — and Laura Vivanco and Victoria Janssen on the subsumed heroine.

From Feministe, a discussion of the “Afghan girl”, a National Geographic cover photo from 1985 that adorned so many of my male friends’ bedroom and dorm walls, and the more recent photo of Aisha, a disabled Afghan woman on the cover of a recent Time Magazine.

Lady Gaga proves what romance readers have known all along: the hoo ha really IS magical. Via Vanity Fair:

Lady Gaga tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Lisa Robinson that she tries to avoid having sex because she is afraid of depleting her creative energy—“I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.”

Speaking of the glittery hoo ha, I am sad that Jenny Crusie’s new book — her first solo outing in 6 years — will be $11.99 for the Kindle. Then again, my love affair with Crusie is closer to a two night stand. I am trying to listen to Agnes and the Hitman on audio and having a hard time getting through it.

2. Remember how I did a post back in April on True Vows, the new “memoir meets romance” venture of HCI books, the Chicken Soup series publishers? And I was skeptical? Well, I picked up an ARC of Judith Arnold’s Meet Me In Manhattan at RomCon back in July. And I regret to say my suspicions were justified. I DNFd the book. It read like a long version of those impersonal stories in women’s magazines. I was rarely lost in the story, which was written in a way that felt — perhaps necessarily — somewhat distant, and when I was engaged, it felt voyeuristic. Not for me. I’ll be amazed if these things sell.

3. On the blog this week:

Tomorrow: a long post on “what does the romance genre say about the good life?”

Some reviews. One very negative.

Probably — a joint post with my spouse on Dracula.

HAPPY WEEK!

Penis v. Clitoris: Romance Superior Court, County of Erotica

[Don't mind me. I'm having a bit of fun here with some trends in the description of female sex organs in romance.]

Judge’s chambers. Mediation attempt.

In attendance: Plaintiff Mr. Penis, his lawyer, Phil O. Centric, Defendant Ms. Clitoris, her lawyer Uta Russ, and the Judge.

Judge: Why don’t we start with you, Mr. P?

Mr. Penis: [agitated, upset] Sure. Ok. Here’s the deal. We used to have rules. They worked. I’m the doer, the action guy, if you know what I mean. [leans towards Ms. C] She’s not even so much in the picture. It worked great.

Then one day, she demanded concessions. So I obliged. We made the hero’s arms do things no human arms can really do: reach in there, give her attention. Contracts were drawn up, it was a done deal. Everybody wins.

Now? All bets are off. You should see what’s going on. Females. [disgusted] You give ‘em a goddamned inch…

Mr. Centric: Your Honor, what my client is trying to communicate, is that he has been more than fair in ceding territory… but he is on the verge of what might best be called identity annihilation …

Ms. C: [outraged] Identity annihilation? I’ll tell you about “identity annihilation”! How about having to keep yourself behind a hood? Unknown, secretive, quiet, passive? You don’t know what it was like! All those years I didn’t even exist in your world!

Mr. P: [angrily] No, you didn’t! Because we didn’t need you! All we needed was me and Mrs. Vi Gina. Would god she was here, because she would set your young ass straight. We fit like hand and glove. She knew her place, and it worked. I gave, she took. I plunged, she received. Everybody knew who was the man and who was the woman.

[Suddenly the door to the conference room swings open. In walks a rather slippery looking woman with protuberant lips, and an older balding man with round spectacles and a beard, clutching a cigar.]

Judge: Ms. Gina, Mr. Freud, so glad you could join us, Please, sit down.

Ms. Gina: [organizing her folds] Thank you, Judge. I’m sorry we’re late.

Judge: Perhaps you could introduce yourselves.

Ms. Gina: Yes, well, I’m Mrs. Vi Gina, formerly the star of love scenes in erotic and other romances.

Mr. Freud: I’m Sigmund Freud. And if I had my way, you would always be the star, Vi. She [Baleful look to Ms. C] doesn’t understand the importance of your work to femininity. In order for a woman to be a real woman, she needs you, Vi. She needs to stop trying to be a man.

[Vi glances uncertainly between Ms. C and Mr. Freud]

Mr. P: I don’t think any of you get it. She [He gives an angry one-eyed glare at Ms. C] is taking over my role. Do you even know what she’s been up to? Phil, tell ‘em.

Mr. Centric: [clears throat] Your Honor, what my client contends is true. Despite making several generous concessions in the new era, which we have come to know as A.B.R. [After Bodice Ripping], his territory continues to be encroached upon by the Defendant. For example, she is recently described as “swollen”, “throbbing”, “hard”, and “engorged”, all terms which had heretofore been reserved for my client. Not to mention “ejaculate”.

Mr. Freud: Sounds like a nest of unresolved complexes to me. Maybe I should propose a panel at the next RWA?

Ms. Russ: [interrupting] That’s in the books because my client is those things. My client, after suffering in silence through year after year of invisibility …  after scores of romance novels in which all the heroine needed for the O of her life was mindless plunging, with nary a minute of foreplay, now refuses to hide her true self and her real needs.

Mr. P: [outraged] Mindless?? Mindless!! That’s defamatory! It was hard work getting those virginal heroines to …  [looks at his lawyer] Do something!

Ms. Russ: The Plaintiff makes my point, Your Honor. Times have changed. In A.B.R., we often don’t have virgins, and even when we do, we have women readers who know that it takes more than mere penetration to …

Mr. Centric: Let the record show we take strong exception to the use of the word “mere”. Let us not forget what we are dealing with is usually, with all due respect to Mrs. Gina, “tight” and “small”. But Your Honor, this goes well beyond decency. We have Ms. Clit doing things like “dancing”, “craving attention”,”humming”, “twitching” … Really. [scoffs] Are those acts a tiny nub of flesh can accomplish?

Ms. C: Tiny nub of flesh? I’m not just a nub, people. I extend way back inside the body, even behind our expert witness, Mrs. Gina. And don’t get me started on Mr. Delusions of Grandeur over here: “wide as a heroine’s wrist”? Who’d you have to bribe to get that description, hmmm?

Mr. P:[splutters] I…I…

[a collective "ewwwwwww" from the table]

Mr. P: Er, sorry. Got a little carried away there.

Vi: [rolls eyes] It isn’t the first time … [sighs longingly at Ms. Clit] And I love it that you do those things!  I really really do!!! [gratefully gazes at Ms. C]

Ms. C: Vi, have you been working out? I can’t help but notice when we’re doing our scenes together how strong you’ve gotten. “Milking”, “sucking”, “grasping”… you can more than hold your own. [nods at Freud] You don’t need this guy.

Mr. Freud: [looks disapprovingly at Vi] Vi –  What’s this? We’re supposed to be witnesses for the Plaintiff! [puffs angrily on his cigar]

Ms. C: Please. I think you need to go work on that oral/phallic issue you’ve got going there.

Mr. Freud: [harrumphs] Sometimes, madam, a cigar is just a cigar. [exits room in a puff of smoke]

Ms. Russ: Back to the issue at hand … my client is correct, Your Honor. Moreover, she has more nerve endings than the Plaintiff.

Ms. C: Yeah, I do. And you know what else? I am sick of being rediscovered. For 400 years, I have been discovered, hidden, rediscovered. Well, rediscover this, haterz! [Throws her hood off. Everybody gasps in awe.]

Mr. P: [sadly, knowing it's over. ] Can’t I keep “erect”?

Ms. C and Vi togther: NO!!!!!

Mr. P: [in a plaintive voice] “Rigid?”

[Ms. C glances at the judge in exasperation.]

Judge: I think we’re done here.

[The others collect their papers, shuffling out of the room.]

Mr. P: [Not giving up] How about “Hard as a bullet?” I don’t even get proprietary rights to that?

Judge: [Gently] I think it’s clear, Mr. P, that everyone wins when we share.

Mr. P: Ok, but … [thinking fast] “silk on steel”, “velvet shaft”,  “tumescence”, “blue veined custard chucker”, “purple headed womb broom” ???? [Looks hopeful] Those are still mine, right?

Ms. C: [laughing] I wouldn’t pay you for those, P. In fact, I’ll go out on strike if they try describing my ass that way. But a word to the wise:  if my neighbor Ms. Cervix ever catches you using “womb broom”… [shudders] … I can’t vouch for your safety…

[Vi whispers to Ms. C. Together, they look over at Mr. P.] Hey, P, why don’t you join us? We’re heading over to one of our favorite bars.

Mr. P: [smiling] After you, ladies. [sotto voce] The pink torpedo at your service.

[Ms. C and Vi roll their eyes. Laughing, the three exit the room.]