Jun 26 2008
Times UK on Why Love Lit Is in the Publishing Ghetto
Lidija Haas, columnist for the UK Times, takes a stab at interpreting the question of why romance hasn’t achieved a measure of respectability commesurate with its genre fiction counterparts like science fiction or mystery.
The genres that have made the leap — John le Carre’s spy thrillers, J. G. Ballard’s science fiction, Raymond Chandler’s detective stories — have the same sweaty, mass-market paperback past as romantic novels: churned out swiftly and regularly, repeating their familiar structures with the details changed for novelty’s sake, they have all been sneered at by the literary establishment, and devoured in great quantities by loyal addicts and bored train travellers. One thing holding popular romance back may be that it is aimed so explicitly at women.
Haas refers to it as “Love Lit” which I kind of like. Sometimes you have to rebrand things in order to make a perception change. For example, I’ve heard that chick lit is not a term to be uttered within the walls of the publishing house. It’s women’s lit with a lighter flair or young women’s lit.
They are reclaimed for seriousness; seriousness is arguably the better for it. Yet one staple of genre fiction, the sentimental, soft-focus romance novel, remains apparently beyond rescue — it is too embarrassing, too silly, too feminine to be salvageable. The comic becomes the graphic novel, science fiction becomes dystopia, thrillers become political satires, but the love story can be nothing but itself.
But Haas also believes that the romance novel has strayed from its once powerful origins. “[T]he English novel once carefully examined the feelings of young women who sought and eventually found refuge in the form of wealthy husbands. As women made social and political gains, that narrative could no longer be written in the same way, yet no new account of female experience really replaced it.” And that focusing on romantic love and relationships over everything else is a dangerous unambitious kind of myopia.
Her criticisms are valid because she displays an understanding for what makes the romance novel. “In their purest form, they are wholly instrumental, manipulating the reader’s emotions and providing reliable effects, without encouraging different interpretations.” However, she fails to note that the other genre fictions are also grounded in very reliable outcomes. Further, she decides that the genre is somewhat defined by the five books that she has chosen to review for the article, as if it is the only genre with stereotypes and conventions. I find that genre fiction is stereotypes and conventions whether it be mystery, science fiction, or romance. The question for me is whether the book can make you forget that is filled with stereotypes and well worn tropes and because even as a lover of romance novels, the overt sentimentality of some stories make me nauseous.
But Haas is challenging authors of the love lit to be more courageous in their writing and I can’t help but applaud that. Thanks to my tipster. It was a great article.
Send to Kindle
Jun 26, 2008 @ 08:55:23
But by saying that
she essentially displays how narrowly she’s read the genre – not that I think the books she talks about in the article are really romances anyway, not in the way most RWA members would define – because both paranormal and urban fantasy are rife with dark. In fact, it would be harder to find something considered “light” these days.
Jun 26, 2008 @ 09:47:15
Of course the best analogy for romance is porn. Romance is about people and love and relationships and difficulties and happy endings, and so is porn…oh, wait.
Because no horror story, thriller or mystery ever does that.
Two words – women’s work. She’s falling for the same segregationist nonsense by equating the one genre dominated by female writers with porn, and explicitly excluding two genres dominated by men – crime and thrillers – from that odious comparison.
She’s dancing around the gender divide but never coming down firmly on it. “One thing holding popular romance back may be that it is aimed so explicitly at women.” No – the real difference is that the other genres made the crossover is that they’re mainly written by men. What women do, is never taken as seriously as what men do. Women read crime, horror and every other genre under the sun, but romance is their writing stronghold. Ergo, romance must be less wonderful.
Jun 26, 2008 @ 12:12:02
Well, one could argue that the pr0n is all about the “happy ending”. For the guy anyway.
I just love this woman’s assertion that “dark, harsh, depressing, violent, power-hungry, despairing, masculine” = good fiction, whereas “love, happiness, contentment, giving, relationships, feminine” = trite garbage.
Jun 26, 2008 @ 15:27:43
I’m not at all sure about the starting assumption. I haven’t noticed fantasy (especially high fantasy), sci fi, erotica, westerns or any other traditional ‘pulp’ mass produced entertainment genre getting a huge amount of respect.
Jun 26, 2008 @ 19:10:08
It’s true that those genres don’t get much in the way of respect, but I think that romance faces a lot more bashing.
And what’s with the comeback of romance bashing, anyway? I thought (hoped) we left the worst of it behind in the 90′s!
Jun 30, 2008 @ 16:00:28
Perhaps because romance is a much bigger target, and experiencing some resurgence and expansion?