Monday Morning Stepback: Shopping at Borders for Amazon books

Oct 18 2010 Published by under Monday Morning Stepback

The weekly links, opinion, and personal updates post

Links of Interest: Lots of romance this week.

Tumperkin’s I Only Kill Bad People explores the genre convention of allowing serial killer heroes (in vampire or other form) as long as they are targeting the right victims.

Writer Jackie Barbosa has had it with being made to feel her writing method is inadequate.

Mandi at Smexy Books has a great post on Author Websites: Good and Bad.

Mandi’s post makes me wonder why people who are trying to sell something design a storefront that repels customers. Is it the fault of web designers who are eager to demonstrate the latest gizmo, and authors who are too busy to really think it through? Authors should really go through the process of interacting with their sites from the readers’ place, or get a friend unfamiliar with the site to do it. Start where a reader would, perhaps by Googling the author’s name. Imagine the reader wants to buy your latest book, find out when the next one is coming out, see the list of a series in order, or just contact you. How easy would it be? how many steps would it take? How many distracting obstacles are in the way?

In case you haven’t seen this: The Female Character Flow Chart (thanks to reader M.). Just read across the top — so true.

Over at Alien Romances, a review and discussion of Draculas (“a novel of terror”) by Blake Crouch, Jack Kilborn, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson. I actually assigned a Wilson short story (“The Wringer”) in a course a couple of years ago (to little student appreciation, IIRC). As the reviewer puts it,

These “Draculas” have the compassion of hornets, the dentition of sharks, the voracious appetites of shrews and no respect for garlic whatsoever. If you can contemplate a rabid, blood thirsty Edward Scissorteeth in a maternity or pediatric ward, using a severed artery as a drinking straw, or lashing out among the blind… go for it, but with your eyes open.

I found this interesting, since Slate announced in 2009 that bloodsucking is so yesterday (don’t read the article. It’s essentially a combination of right wing/quasi-feminist/elitist criticism of women who write vampires).

From Book Making, a blog about self-publishing to which Mrs. Giggles introduced me via one of her blog posts a while back, A Paragraph and A Blog I Never finished Reading. In it, the author makes a judgment about an author based on a misspelling of “you’re”. I confess to deep suspicion of the writing talent of authors who make these kinds of mistakes in their blogs. I wonder if this is unfair. I certainly wouldn’t want readers to make a judgment of my academic abilities based on the writing here (unless it’s a positive one, of course). On the other hand, if I were so worried about that, perhaps I should either write under a pseudonym or do a better job writing under my own identity.

For the second week in a row, Seekerville has a post I can’t help but think about and share. It’s an Interview with Dr. Stanley Williams, The Moral Premise Guy. Williams argues that by focusing on the moral core of their story, writers will both write more engaging books, and find a way to overcome certain kinds of writers block:

Stories will be more powerful and connect with audiences and readers on a profound level when all of your characters’ decisions, actions, and resulting consequences (psychological and physical ) focus on one set of values. By “set of values” I mean two naturally opposing motivations or moral constructs—virtue and a vice—e.g. selflessness vs. selfishness.

Or, take the conflict constructed by bitterness vs. forgiveness, two psychological values that generate physical consequences and thus drama. Characters with goals start off harboring bitterness and striving with each other over the attainment of said goals. As the conflict escalates, hopefully, someone will discover the opposite to bitterness and try forgiveness. Then redeeming consequences result. But understanding that bitterness is in conflict with forgiveness is the moral core of your story.

I admit to being skeptical, but so many writers seem to love his advice, so who am I to say? I wonder if this kind of advice could be useful for genres that don’t require moral heroism and happy endings.

Kenda of Lurv a la Mode is asking whether Negative Reviews are the Blogosphere’s Redheaded Stepchild (the answer is “yes”, in case you weren’t sure). Author Marta Acosta chimes in to suggest that this is a problem in romance both because romance readers are closer to authors, and because we’re mostly all women. I’m sure there’s a lot to that, but after seeing the blowback that The Book Smugglers get for negative reviews of other genre fiction, I am starting to think the main problem is the gender issue, not the genre one. Also, it is much worse when authors perceive your review to have any influence.

Lynne Connelly wrote an interesting post at TGTBTU on the new Mills & Boon titles and covers.

My profession has a new blog, What is it like to be a woman in philosophy? I’m really glad these stories are being told. As a woman who has been in philosophy for over twenty years, they ring very true to me. A teeny, illogical part of me almost wishes we weren’t being so honest about the situation, for fear of dissuading young women from entering the profession. The bigger part of me knows, though, that the profession itself does 99.9% of the dissuading (and outright expelling) all by itself. This one just about killed me:

I was teaching a large introductory class, doing the problem of evil. Hoping to make the problem vivid, I took my example of an apparently gratuitous evil from my own life: a time when my daughter, then 2 yrs old, had to endure a bone biopsy of her shin, a procedure for which there was no effective local anesthetic. After I described the case, I asked the class the stock questions: how could my daughter’s suffering be justified? what greater good was served? what lesson was learned? — at which point a student called out: “Maybe God was trying to tell you that you need to decide whether you want to be a philosophy professor or a mother” Thanks…..

Katha Pollitt in The Nation on older and younger feminists (Feminist Mothers, Flapper Daughters?). She has her criticisms of the youngsters (“I’m tired of ‘body issues’ getting so much more emphasis than economic and political ones, and the endless fetishizing of ‘choice’ where anything a woman wants to do is sacrosanct, including stripping, prostitution and porn, which are simultaneously obscurely troubling and perfectly OK!”), but the piece is overall balanced, as here:

The fact is, these same young women (some of whom are not even so young anymore—Rebecca Walker, founder of Third Wave Foundation and famous hater of her mother, Alice, is 40!) are doing a lot of activist work. They start abortion funds and scrappy groups like Hollaback!, which protests street harassment; they volunteer at rape crisis centers; they mentor teens; they organize conferences; they write books by the dozen and blogs by the hundreds. Faludi seems to take a dim view of blogging, but the Jezebel blogger Tracie Egan, a k a Slut Machine, who made light of date rape, is hardly representative. Sure, blogging can degenerate into its own little hothouse world—but sites like Jezebel and Feministing and Pandagon and Salon’s Broadsheet have introduced a lot of young women to feminist ideas and activism too. It’s how a lot of people, including me, keep up with the news on women.

Ethical Question of the Day: Should you buy a book from Amazon while you are shopping at Borders or Barnes and Noble?

Amazon’s Bar Code Scanner Takes Impulse Buying to a New Level (CNET)

The latest version of Amazon Mobile, 1.2.8, contains a bar code scanner in its search screen. As with bar code scanners in other mobile apps, Amazon Mobile uses your iPhone‘s camera to take in a product’s zebra-striped bar code. Amazon’s servers then find a match, and after you select the item, you can sign in to your account to purchase the product on the spot.

Since I got my Kindle, I strongly prefer to buy all my books in digital format at Amazon, due to selection, cost and ease (this is not to say Amazon always beats out its competitors on cost, of course). But I do visit my local Borders fairly often.

1. I have shopped at Borders for paper books (gifts, cookbooks, children’s books), wandered into the romance or literature sections, and made a a note of a book to purchase from Amazon later. Is that wrong?

2. Would it be wrong if I went to Borders for the express purpose of finding books to purchase from Amazon?

3. Does it matter how I make the purchase (bar code versus old fashioned search)?

4. Or what format I purchase (digital to be downloaded right now or paper to arrive in the mail in three days)?

5. Would it be ok if I first compared the print price at Borders with Amazon’s print price, and only bought from Amazon if they beat Borders somehow, say, on price or availability?

I have a hard time seeing how the (a) format (bar code versus search box, for example, or paper versus e), (b) or spatio-temporality (buy while in store versus buy in parking lot outside store) matters much, except in how you might feel about doing it. I mean, how much time is the “decent” amount to wait after you have exited the store? How far from the store should you be?

Do any of these practices harm Borders? If I don’t go into Borders at all, Borders makes no sale. If I do go in, there is a chance Borders will make a sale, perhaps not a book, but maybe some coffee or a bookmark or one of the many non-book items on the shelves these days. The Twilight lunch box looks good.

On the other hand, if customers see me making a purchase from another vendor, I may influence them to adopt my ways, causing some harm in lost sales.

It feels like a kind of bad faith or at least dishonesty to walk into a Borders knowing I won’t buy from them. If I am “using” their bricks and mortar, and perhaps their staff, their restrooms, their comfortable seating, etc., without planning to give anything in return, that seems unfair. It’s why I don’t do it. It’s not the “just looking” that’s the problem, it’s that I am not usually “just looking” — I will likely buy a book, and not from Borders.

Could I obviate the bad faith by honestly telling a salesperson or manager: “Dude, I’ve got my Kindle in my purse. I am not buying anything from you guys today.” Would I be asked to leave? I doubt it. Lots of people go into Borders just to be there. Or they go in to comparison shop with other book stores. Do they have to announce their intentions, too? I return to the point that it is better from Borders’ point of view to have me in the store than not.

Perhaps things would be different if I were in a local used book store, and on friendly terms with the proprietor? I know I would feel a hundred times worse. I haven’t even worked up the courage to show my Kindle to my favorite local UBS. But bad feelings don’t necessarily indicate a moral wrong.

Is this a new ethical dilemma technology has brought us? Or more of a manners question? What do you think?

Personal

I’m heading to San Diego Wednesday to give the (only) vampire paper at the national bioethics conference. Interestingly, there are a couple of sessions on fiction and bioethics, but I am in a paper session on death. I wonder what that says? I will post a little on it later this week, I hope. This is a great conference, but it’s extremely expensive (as is anything that gives education credits to physicians), so I can only afford to go about every 3 years. My annual travel budget from the department is $700, up from $600 last year, but only because we lost a faculty member who wasn’t replaced. As you can imagine, that barely covers the flight (er– flights. It will take 3 legs to get to San Diego) to California from Maine.

HAPPY WEEK!

21 responses so far

Romance Roots: Dracula, by Bram Stoker (part 2)

Aug 18 2010 Published by under Reading Reflection, Romance Roots

(Part 1 here)

This post assumes you have read it. Here’s a cheat summary if not.

Did I enjoy Dracula? The first four chapters, when Harker is visiting Count Dracula on business in Transylvania, were terrific. Gothic, tense, absorbing. When Harker cuts himself shaving, when he looks out the window and sees Dracula scaling the castle wall like an insect … that’s great stuff. Then I noticed that Harker started doing things that were unintelligent, like breaking into locked rooms that his scary host has told him to avoid, but, remembering that as a 21st century reader I know what all of Dracula’s odd behaviors signify, while Harker doesn’t, I tried to be charitable. Another great scene is when the ship carrying Dracula, the Demeter, arrives in the midst of a great storm (the Gothic flourishes are so fun) on the English shore, with the crew is disappeared and the dead captain, clutching a crucifix, tied to the wheel. There’s a lot of great story telling here.

The novel is an epistolary one, meaning it is written as a series of letters, and sometimes news clippings (more on this below). I guess the book was originally conceived as a play with one of Stoker’s good friends as Dracula.  The effect is to mute the action, because as a reader you are never “there” when the good stuff is going down. It has already happened. I guess the fact that the letters are written from the point of view of characters who only know part of an unfolding series of events might enhance the suspense, but I found most of the vampire slayers so incompetent that it didn’t work that way for me. Surprisingly, there isn’t all that much action, perhaps because had the story been staged, complicated action sequences would have been too difficult to enact. There is talking. A LOT of talking. I would guess the ratio of talking about what to do to actually doing it is 10 to 1.

I did enjoy the book, although I was always reading it through the lens of all the other vampire stories I consumed first: Stephen King, Ann Rice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vampire romances, etc., and a lot of the time I was thinking about how this version was similar to and different from those others, as well as about big picture themes like gender and sexuality, science versus superstition, etc.

There is so, so much to say about this book. But here are a few things I wanted to talk about:

0. Writing

These people are obsessed with writing things down. I know it’s an epistolary novel, but still! They even write about writing. This journal entry from Mina is typical:

There may be a solemn duty, and if it come we must not shrink from it. I shall be prepared. I shall get my typewriter this very hour and begin transcribing. Then we shall be ready for other eyes if required.

Yes, because the typewriter is just the thing to foil the undead!

Also from ch 14:

I am so glad I have typewritten out my own journal, so that, in case he asks about Lucy, I can hand it to him.

I am sure there’s a lot to be said about the power of the written word, about publicity and privacy, about writing as exorcism, as therapy, etc. But my super intelligent reaction was “WTF”?

1. About Mina

She is strong and smart, but she’s also got that masochistic streak — and not the fun kind. After nearly being killed in a traumatic encounter with Dracula, she says:

“And oh, my God, my God, pity me! He placed his reeking lips upon my throat!” Her husband groaned again. She clasped his hand harder, and looked at him pityingly, as if he were the injured one, and went on.

She also gets kicked out of the Scooby Gang after their first meeting. It’s like Stoker changes his mind mid stream. At the end of Mina’s Journal in chapter 18 we get this muddled logic from Van Helsing:

Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man’s brain, a brain that a man should have were he much gifted, and a woman’s heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good combination. Friend John, up to now fortune has made that woman of help to us, after tonight she must not have to do with this so terrible affair. It is not good that she run a risk so great. We men are determined, nay, are we not pledged, to destroy this monster? But it is no part for a woman. Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors and hereafter she may suffer, both in waking,from her nerves, and in sleep,from her dreams. And, besides, she is young woman and not so long married, there may be other things to think of some time, if not now. You tell me she has wrote all, then she must consult with us, but tomorrow she say goodbye to this work, and we go alone.

2. TSTL

So what kind of a brains do Van Helsing and his crew posess? Hmmm…. well, Mina starts exhibiting the same symptoms Lucy had, and Dracula lives thisclose, yet nobody thinks for a second that Dracula has gotten to Mina. Is it because of her “man’s brain”? They notice she is tired, and send her to bed. Over and over. Finally, Renfield enlightens them, they arm themselves and rush to Mina’s room, where they have this exchange:

Outside the Harkers’ door we paused. Art and Quincey held back, and the latter said, “Should we disturb her?”

“We must,” said Van Helsing grimly. “If the door be locked, I shall break it in.”

“May it not frighten her terribly? It is unusual to break into a lady’s room!”

*headdesk*

3. My favorite scene

Of course, it’s when they do break in and find Mina with the Count:

His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white night-dress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare chest which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink. As we burst into the room, the Count turned his face, and the hellish look that I had heard described seemed to leap into it. His eyes flamed red with devilish passion.

How many dissertations were launched by this tableau? So many overlapping metaphors and allusions. Mina as mother giving her blood. As suckling babe. Sex kitten.

Dracula even sounds downright Biblical when he says:

And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin, my bountiful wine-press for a while, and shall be later on my companion and my helper.

4. The menages

Dracula escapes  (of course) and then there’s this weird moment between Mina, her husband, Jonathan, and Van Helsing:

Then she raised her head proudly, and held out one hand to Van Helsing who took it in his, and after stooping and kissing it reverently, held it fast. The other hand was locked in that of her husband, who held his other arm thrown round her protectingly.

Mina has already shared her literal marriage bed with Dracula. So how many people is she married to, exactly?

And that isn’t even the first suggestion of a threesome in this book. There was this exchange earlier, when Van Helsing was transfusing Lucy. He mentioned Holmwood’s notion that exchanging blood makes Lucy his bride:

Said he not that the transfusion of his blood to her veins had made her truly his bride… If so… Then this so sweet maid is a polyandrist, and me, with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by Church’s law, though no wits, all gone – even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife, am bigamist.

Everyone says Dracula is a book about transgressing boundaries — geographic, gendered, sexual, bodily, material and spiritual. So why not have three — or 4 –  people in a marriage?

5. Bloodsucking = sex, blood = semen.

I always knew that there were these linkages, but I never realized how darned obvious they would be. Then again, perhaps they are obvious to me because I am a 21st century reader. For example, this one from Mina, after her episode with the Count in her bedroom:

When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow some of the – Oh my God, my God! What have I done?”

What? Some of the WHAT? I am dying to find out what she meant, because I have NO IDEA. ! ;)

And when Van Helsing says not to tell Arthur that other men have given their blood to Lucy, it’s because he might get jealous (chapter 10)

No man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves.

6. The gang rape of Lucy

But all of this pales (heh) in comparison to the top scene for the kind of deep analyses favored by a certain type of highly educated literary critic   — the stabbing of Lucy. Lucy had been beautiful, the perfect chaste, virtuous woman, with no fewer than three suitors. But somehow — and it was never clear to me in reading the text — she was susceptible to Dracula. She had to have invited him in at least once, naughty girl. Or maybe she thought he was a homeless person in need?

Eventually, after multiple fuckings blood suckings, she is turned, and starts killing infants. This makes sense. If the perfect woman is maternal, then the opposite of the perfect woman is a baby killer. I loved it that Lucy went around killing babies and trying to seduce everyone. Terrifying stuff.

The more evil she is, the more beautiful and the more alluring. Or is that the reverse? From Chapter 16:

She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said, “Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”

There was something diabolically sweet in her tones, something of the tinkling of glass when struck, which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another.

In other words, they are all getting off. Together.

As horrible as it is to the men, several of whom are in love with her, and one of whom — Arthur — is engaged to her, they must go to her grave and kill her. Here’s how it is described:

Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercybearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it.

Whew. I need a cigarette. How about you?

7. Dracula as alpha male

Ian Holt, a Dracula authority and coauthor of a sequel, has written that:

There have been many schools of thought on why Dracula and vampires hold such sway on the masses. In my opinion, the root is that Dracula represents freedom. Dracula is not bound by the rule of law or man’s self-imposed morality. He has the strength of ten men. His powers over the human mind allow him his pick of women. These are all powerful fantasies to many an adolescent boy.

For women, Dracula represents the ultimate alpha-male. Wealth, power, will and strength define him. He exists on a higher plane than human men, appealing to the Darwinian “survival of the fittest” mentality.

Holt here assumes that female readers place themselves in female character positions in the novel. We know better than that. But does Dracula represent the alpha male? Is this a romance, with Dracula trying — but failing — to find his soul mate? I know that’s how the 1992 film adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola understood him, but I don’t see it in the book at all. While I find a lot of sex in this book (assuming a depth reading) I don’t see much romance. I was never sure what motivated Dracula, exactly (he’s upset that his former glories are former. He wants control and power, but over what, and why? Or maybe I am not supposed to ask why someone would want control and power), but it’s not love.

It is easier for me to connect Dracula with the alphhole heroes of the past in romance than with the vampire heroes of today’s romance novel. The obsession with consent and coercion, with moral and sexual purity, with control of women, was there in Old Skool romance.

Consider these passages:

With a mocking smile, he placed one hand upon my shoulder and, holding me tight, bared my throat with the other, saying as he did so, `First, a little refreshment to reward my exertions. You may as well be quiet. It is not the first time, or the second, that your veins have appeased my thirst!’

And Mina, confused about her complicity:

I was bewildered, and strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him. (chapter 21)

Women engaging in sex against their will, or their better judgment, impossibly alluring men, the attempt to find happiness with the average Joe, all of that is echoed in some ways in older romance novels I have read. And not just older ones: the idea that female sexuality is dangerous, fraught, powerful, debilitating, and in some way bad for women (and men), is still with us in many a romance novel today.

But, to get superficial for a minute, Dracula was not good looking, a prerequisite for a romance novel hero. Here is Harker’s description when he first meets him:

His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

Except for the strength and vitality, and the “cruel-looking” mouth, there’s little here to compare to romance heroes of today or yore. But Dracula is the strongest, the most free, the most alluring and intense. And that’s who the hero is in most romance novels.

There’s so much more that could be said about this book. For example, I was very interested in Van Helsing as physician/researcher, and of course in Dr. Seward and his patient in the asylum, Renfield. I think I am going to use Renfield as a case study the next time I give a hospital talk on waxing and waning decisional capacity! But this is long enough.

Have you read Dracula? What did you think?

13 responses so far

Romance Roots: Dracula, by Bram Stoker (part 1)

Aug 18 2010 Published by under Reading Reflection, Reviews, Romance Roots

An interview with my spouse, Stephen M. Miller, Ph.D., F.R. Hist. S.. He’s a historian specializing in the British Empire (the “F.R. Hist S.” is the Royal Historical Society to which Stephen was elected a couple of years ago. I swear he doesn’t normally use it, although he may or may not have asked me to shout it during intimate moments).

Before we start, he wants me to say that he has absolutely no expert knowledge of Victorian fiction and is being dragooned into this. Also, we’re assuming you have read it. If your recollection is rusty, here’s a character list.

In this interview, we talk history. In my next post (coming later today), I talk Dracula as fiction and relate it to romance.

Jessica: Is this an imperial novel? What about the theory that Dracula represents the Other in that political sense?

Stephen: Well, I would say yes and no. There were lots of improvements in transportation in late Victorian Britain, among them the introduction of electric trains in the London underground system in the early 1890s. Railroad expansion is occurring rapidly throughout Britain and most of the continent.  Remember when they are trying to catch up with Dracula, he says there are three ways they can go after him, land, sea, and railroad?  That was a bit odd because Eastern Europe was well behind the north and the west in linking its cities via rail.  But of course there were some lines, and Stoker mentions the Orient Express whose service was about ten-fifteen years old when he wrote the book.  These improvements made it easier not just for Britain to go out to the rest of the world and subdue large tracts of it but it also made it easier  for the rest of the world to come to Great Britain, and that was a  very scary notion, albeit it opened up exciting possibilities as well. All in all, the world seems smaller, and thanks to improvements in communication (telegraph, submarine cables), it got smaller still.  Technology — like electricity, lighting, use of gas — would have been on people’s minds at the time, but there was little of that in the book.

But I think Stoker uses these advances as a device to set up the book, and then kind of leaves it.

Although there are some references to empire, and it’s written in an era in which empire would have been in the minds of the British public, it is not, in my opinion, an overt book about the empire. To read it that way assumes a level of subtlety in Stoker’s writing which in my opinion he doesn’t possess. One of the things Stoker often does is repeat for emphasis any point he is trying to make. If he is trying to say something, the reader knows it.

So, for example, to speak of Eastern Europe … they only meet one Jew in the book. If it’s about Eastern Europeans, there are few if any references to them in London, but there would have been many recent immigrants about. Although there are references to gypsies in Dracula, and references to Slovaks, there’s very little about their culture. If someone was really interested in the Other coming, they would talk more about that. So to me, it is more of a setting.  This is not Joseph Conrad or even Haggard writing about setting, for example, in which the setting takes precedence regardless of the author’s intent.  This is Stoker re-telling a well known tale, and the road to Transylvania was well-worn before 1897.

There are a few references to India, which suggests that Stoker had some knowledge about the empire. There are no references to Africa. In late Victorian Britain, the British army was engaged on the average in two to three wars a year. Most of those were fought along India’s frontiers and in Africa. Some of the other big events going on would be the French threatening British interests in Egypt, which would bring Britain to war in the Sudan against an Islamic theocracy (again). Stoker was writing at a time when Islam would have been feared, yet there is no mention in the book. The British public held certain beliefs about the followers of Islam, most of which today we would consider prejudicial and inaccurate. Yet war and religion do not appear in the book.

J: Yeah, why don’t they get a priest? Why are no characters going to church? Wouldn’t the church have been important to Londoners at that time?

S: Those are good questions. There is no doubt that the Church of England’s influence over British society is in decline, but it is still a force, especially among the respectibility-seeking middle class.

J:  I found it really interesting that the person in the book who seemed the most religious was the one who worshiped Dracula, Renfield. He has the ecstasies, blind unselfish devotion, all the hallmarks of a kind of intense religious experience. While Van Helsing and the gang use religious artifacts like the host, they do so in a very detached, scientific way, almost draining all the spirituality out of them.

What do you make of Van Helsing’s nationality, by the way? Van Helsing is the one who realizes that natural science alone will not defeat the enemy. He is open to supernatural possibilities.

S: That is a mystery to me. The British viewed the continent as very different, but the border is pretty open. The British elite travel throughout Europe. Many speak French, German. The British and German royal families are closely connected. From the 1870s especially (until the buildup of the German navy around the time Stoker is writing), there is a strong interest in all things German and much sympathy.

J: Does Van Helsing have to be from the Continent to recognize what Dracula is? Is Stoker trying to say the British are of such pure mind they can’t even contemplate a Dracula?

S: Maybe*, but the problem with that theory is Morris, an American, doesn’t recognize Dracula. Stoker praises Quincy Morris for his “American” traits, like his spirit. So perhaps he is trying to say that Dracula represents the old Europe. They do talk about a few of the old battles that Dracula participated in. Oddly, those were battles in which Dracula fought Muslims, so in that way he would be viewed as a protector against Islam. So we don’t want to read too much into this … because in my view it doesn’t all cohere on this level of analysis.

*You have to hear how he says this. It sounds like “maaaaaaaaaay -bee and he’s always looking down when he says it. I have been married to this man for almost 15 years. “Maybe” is his way of saying “God you are clueless.”

J: How about economics?

S: The Great Depression (not what most people in the US think of, but one that affected industrial Europe from 1873-1896) was coming to an end. It had been caused by excess capital and led to a decline in interest rates, causing investors to look for new sources overseas, rather than investing at home. Economically, though, things in Britain were fairly good at the time. That said, the landed class are not as wealthy as they once were. The reason to include the elite character — Arthur Holmwood (later Lord Godalming) — is not so much for his money, but for what he represents. In a way it’s like a throwback — the Christian gentleman. Arthur has to help them, by bankrolling the vampire hunt, but his title is just important, as is his moral fiber. He’s the one who ends up freeing Lucy’s soul.

In 1897 London, it would have made more sense to have an industrialist, a banker or merchant in that role, but in this book money is portrayed as kind of negative.  Dracula pursues and talks about money in away Stoker seems to criticize, to find ungentlemanly.  There is no Dickensian condemnation of utilitarian middle class virtues, but more of a praising of the virtues of the upper class.

J: So when we look at the Scooby Gang: in Harker and Seward he has science, in Van Helsing, a kind of spiritual openness, in Arthur, a pure knight of Old England, and in Morris, a fresh fighting innovative spirit from the New World. Now what about Mina? Is she a kind of ideal in Stoker’s view?

S: Maybe, but Mina is much too strong a character to represent the ideal Victorian woman, She would have to be seen as a new ideal, an ideal for a very small educated class of women, that ten years later will be the ones that take to the streets to fight for the vote. She’s almost like a Florence Nightingale. I don’t think of that as an ideal for Victorian women.

J: I think we disagree about Mina, but thanks a bunch! You are the sweetiest.

S: Wait don’t you want to hear about what I have to say about guns and why all the men know how to use them though none are in the army?

J:  NO!

S: O.K.  Now you have to read Graham Greene’s The Human Factor.

J: Er — I have to wash the cat.

S: You promised!

J: *sigh*

Marriage, compromise, you know the drill.

Part 2 here.

14 responses so far

Monday Morning Stepback: Hasty, rambling and ill advised edition

Aug 16 2010 Published by under Monday Morning Stepback

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!

19 responses so far

PCA Romance Panel 7: Romancing Vampires: Toothsome Heroes and Happy Endings

Apr 03 2010 Published by under Pop Culture Association 2010, Vampires

IMPORTANT NOTE:  I have disabled comments on this post deliberately.

Romance VII: Romancing Vampires: Toothsome Heroes and Happy Endings
Session Chair: Sarah S. G. Frantz, Fayetteville State University

“Sexual Exchange and Submission in Dracula: A Precursor to Gay Erotica Romance”‖ Haley Stokes

Homoerotic sexual exchange in Dracula as precursor to paranormal romance

Hard to fulfill genre requirements with two men. Tendency to write chicks with dicks, due to need for binary opposition between partners.

Conservative ideals of the genre – one partner, one true love, lifetime satisfaction with one partner  – pose unique  challenges for m/m romance.

Heteronormative space is still what is being negotiated.

Close textual analysis of Dracula, emphasizing homoeroticism of Dracula.

Story of Harker as story of bondage, homoerotic desire (cites several studies)

Dynamic of Harker and Dracula’s relationship does not require penetration, even if he wants to be bitten.

It’s about submission. Everything that happens to him in Dracula’s castle depends on the fact of his submission and his willingness/desire to submit.

Harker and Dracula experience a parody of married life that Harker is resisting. Harker cooks. Shared clothing. Etc.

Texts demonstrate a series of power exchanges stand in for sexual acts. Today, romance writers don’t have to do this.

Read Dracula as early attempt at sexual negotiation, creating a couple where the familiar binary does not exist.

“Twilight and Romeo And Juliet: The Portrayal of Love and Narrative Perspective”‖ Brent Gibson, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

Language of Twilight puts it in tradition of the religion of love, a phrase coined by CS Lewis. Language of Christianity transferred to courtly love.

Escape v. rivalry

Escapism is fine, but if values of Christianity are taken seriously within story, love and God are rivals. One has to be subordinated to the other.

Talks about how battle between Godly and courtly love is worked out in literature of the medieval period, such as Tristan and Isolde, Troilus and Cressida, Paolo and Francesca

Continues through Renaissance, this battle between the two religions, Christianity and love.

Romeo and Juliet. This one’s a little different. They get married before consummating their love which suggests a proper subordination of religion of love to religion of God. But in other ways increases tension between two sets of values. Audience would have seen suicide as sending the victim to hell, yet they are pictured as entering paradise of lovers.

Twilight. One of many romances influenced by Romeo and Juliet and exemplifies another alteration in this tradition. Both religions are taken seriously. Not kept separate nor kept in tension. Two lovers literally idolize on another, language is very clear on this. Ex. Edward saying his lie to Bella in New Moon was “blackest kind of blasphemy”.

Meyer brings in actual religion. Edward says he is going to hell, the literal hell of Christian theology. Later he states he believes in a creator. We are told Carlyle is a Christian, he believes in God.

In Twilight, romance is elevated above religion in inversion of Medieval tactic. Ex. In Eclipse Edward agrees to make love to Bella prior to marriage, despite his earlier claim that he wouldn’t because it was the one Commandment he didn’t break. See also his views on Bella’s soul and making her a vampire.

Basically his Godly love goes out the window when Bella wants something.

Interesting that within the world of the story religion is taken seriously, and Meyer herself takes it seriously, but it is still subordinated to romance.

[A good comment on this from Margaret Toscano, Angela’s mom, who knows what she is talking about, the issue of Mormonism, and how in the Mormon version of heaven you have a big loving family,inclusive of romantic love, such that for a Mormon writer like Meyer, these two kinds of love are not so much in tension.]

“Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing: Christine Feehan’sCarpathian Heroes:”‖ Kat Schroeder, University of Washington

She wrote this paper for a class on gender studies in the media.

Who is reading the books? Younger and younger, girls as young as 10.

By age 14 reading adult series romance fiction.

Children consume media as a method to develop own views of intimate relationships in lieu of parental models.

Feehan claims all her heroines are “strong women”

CS defines strong in comparison to their male counterparts.

She focuses on full length novels where heroine started as human or believed themselves ot be human.

She describes Carpathians. Race of “not vampires”—turn into vampires unless they find their “light”, their mates.

Research Question 1 – do they reflect a relative parity of romance partners?

–age, maturity level, finances, career, sexual experience, general maturity

Research Question 11—DO novels give actual equivalent voice and agency to both the hero and heroines. Does one partner have power over the other?

Results:

Age – men much older (very funny chart here). Men b/t ages of 600-2000, women b/t age 23-27

Wealth – All but one of the women are either destitute or unemployed or the narrative doesn’t tell us; all of the men are vastly wealthy

Childhoods – all heroines had profoundly troubled childhoods while men, except one, were treasured

Sexual experience – only 3 not virgins, 2 excused by rape, 1 was widow but had marriage to a man with whom she didn’t enjoy sex

Her voice leads to his agency. Ex. She is upset, he seduces her, sometimes with force. She is angrym, he laughs.

Also TSTL heroines. Describes one heroine as being brilliant (surgeon at 18) but they aren’t (the surgeon has all the signd of being a vampire and has no idea what is happenign to her, for example. Also she jumps out a window instead of seeking help.)

Control dynamics:

–homicidal jealousy as a measure for love

–possessive controlling behaviors

                Naming convention (enfant, bebe, little one, diminutizing to a profound degree, unlike “dear”)

                In one book, Darius renames heroine, was called Rusty, he renames her Tempest. From that point forward, Feehan writes heroine from point of view of hero’s idealized version of her “Tempest”.

[Audience member notes in discussion that all of this is true in JR Ward’s BDB as well, and asks “what do we get from this?”.]

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