MyRomanceStory Blog

The Big Deal about Epublishing and the RWA

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:32:00 +0000

The RWA is the Romance Writers of America, a 10,000-member-strong writers organization that maternally tries to look out for the welfare of its members. When epublishing started out, only a few years ago, the ethics, business behavior, and capital backing of some epublishers were shaky—to say the least. Some epublishers were downright crooks, soaking writers enormous fees for supposed editorial or production costs. Others were merely incompetents, who couldn’t figure out how to publish a professional product or make a profit, and left writers with their rights tied up in bankruptcy courts. Still others were run by individuals who looked upon the writers as belonging to them, body and soul. They practiced the tactics of harassment, shaming, and Internet flaming to keep their writers hewing to the party line. And the only epublished authors making significant money seemed to be the ones writing erotica.

In this atmosphere, it was no wonder that the RWA took a dim view of epublishers. That dim view was warranted, and still is in the case of some epublishers. But a lot has happened in the past year or so to change the face of publishing.

It is a lot easier to sell erotica or any other kind of romance on the Internet than in a bricks-and-mortar bookstore. I can remember the scorn with which I was treated years ago when I bought some mild Regency romances at Charles Scribner’s upper-crust bookstore on 5th Avenue in New York. (Not too upper crust to sell such things, you’ll note.) The clerk, a young man of my generation, wrote on the charge slip that I had bought three books and two romances. As if a romance was not legitimately a book. (I’ve told this story before, so please excuse me if the number of books and romances has changed. The effect of the experience remains the same.) You can bet that a woman who wants to buy erotica does not want to subject herself to the modern version of that same scornful attitude. We want to read the books, not be judged for our tastes. The Internet makes a perfect marketplace for whatever we want to read: we get no attitude from an etailer. Then there is the privacy issue. Printed books bought online still get delivered by the postman or the UPS lady, and neighbors or the family may see them. An ebook is downloaded directly to a reading device or a computer. The reader thus has complete privacy about her reading tastes and the frequency with which she indulges them. This is the number one reason that erotica sells so well to women on the Internet. But so do many other kinds of books.

Once the inevitable failures in epublishing made their glaring errors, other epublishers arose who took note of them and did not follow in their lame, corrupt, or unprofessional footsteps. We now have epublishers who have been in the conventional publishing game for years, and know the ethics of the business, and follow them. We also have epublishers who have weathered the storm of the first shakeouts in this new field. The successful epublishing programs of some companies have given newcomers a paradigm they can follow for success. And now there are more epublishers around whose focus is not limited to erotica, who in fact publish a broad range of romance-oriented novels.

Has epublishing finally become respectable? Almost. The plain fact is that in the past year or so, conventional media have been dying. Newspapers as we know them are on their last legs, dying from lack of circulation, not just lack of ads. Magazines (except Oprah and Brides) have been losing ad revenue, their lifeblood. Have you noticed how thin most magazines are today? Network television is on the ropes, competing with cable stations for a smaller and smaller audience. Who gets their news from ABC, NBC, or CBS at dinnertime anymore? And people in Japan are reading manga and novels on their cell phones.

But sales of romances are way, way up. Print romances. But ebooks, too. As a generation of romance readers who grew up with computers and the Internet starts to have buying power, more and more, they are turning almost exclusively to the Internet for their entertainment, just as they turn to it for everything else in their day. It won’t be long before the vast majority of us who like to stay near the cutting edge of technology carry the kind of phone that is directly linked to the Internet, whether an iPhone or a BlackBerry, or whatever. Police detective Dick Tracy’s wristwatch radio, that marvel of early 20th century fantasy, is almost a reality. I’m not the first one to note this.

Meanwhile, the RWA, being a very large organization that has always been heavily into bureaucracy, is finding it hard to change with the times. More and more of the members want the RWA to help them decide what constitutes legitimate, trustworthy epublishing. But that is hard to do since the RWA has taken a complicated stance on epublishers that essentially blocks startups from coming to RWA national conferences and pitching their programs. And blocks RWA members from educating themselves about new publishers by meeting them and seeing what they have to say at a writers conference. HarperCollins or Harlequin is free to come and announce a new epublishing program and be subjected to instant scrutiny by the members, but Jill Nobody from Peoria is not.

Here we get into the nitty gritty. A major brouhaha has developed because of this post by Diedre Knight, which drew many responses from writers, plus this post by RWA president Diane Pershing in reply. Now a survey is floating around various romance-writing-oriented sites and RWA local chapter e-mail loops. The RWA has issued a stern notice that this is not an official survey, since just anybody could answer multiple times. Meanwhile, within the RWA, since their annual meeting is in two weeks, a proxy fight is happening. Votes are being gathered by individuals who want to make the RWA change its position on who is and who is not an RWA-recognized epublisher. I won’t go into the mind-numbing details. Follow the links and you can find out for yourself.

As much as this might seem like a tempest in a teapot, it’s not. It’s the kettle boiling over because the face of publishing is changing, dramatically and very quickly. Many new writers are not even considering submitting their work to any kind of publisher. They are going straight to self-publishing, through the many Internet printers such as iUniverse and Lulu. And then they self-promote their novels via their web sites, blogs, Facebook, or Twitter. Meanwhile, others are starting up their own mini-publishing companies, using the Print on Demand (POD) paradigm so they don’t need significant capital. MyRomanceStory.com has turned its graphic romance novellas into ebooks downloadable to the iPhone, and is also publishing paperbacks. And there are many other versions of publishing being developed even as I speak. We are fast reaching the stage of publishing becoming a free-for-all. Meanwhile, the RWA, a slowly moving ocean liner that can’t adjust its course easily, has to somehow navigate its way through all the flotsam and jetsam of this crazy ocean of new publishing possibilities. The problem seems to be that the RWA leadership is so conservative that it may not even notice the big icebergs ahead.

It Isn't Fair

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:27:00 +0000

It isn’t fair. The most interesting and romantic book covers these days are not on romances at all. They’re on science fiction and fantasy novels.

Take The Dark Reaches, for instance, by Kristin Landon. There’s a hunky guy on the cover, wearing a long leather coat, a subdued ponytail, and a stalwart expression. He’s got muscles, but he’s not showing them off. He’s even allowing the heroine to put a cautionary hand on his arm. Or is it a touch to reassure herself that she has backup? Or is she holding him back from striking out at an enemy they both need to scope out first? And is she’s going to do the analyzing? I don’t know, but I do know he’s hot. Alas, this is not a romance. The spine says science fiction, and the inside front and back cover descriptions leave no doubt that this is a space thriller. Sure, there’s some love involved, but the main story is about intersteller something-or-other. Not romance. Sigh.

Or what about this one, Red Gold Bridge by Patrice Sarath? It’s billed as fantasy, but it has a cover worthy of an old Gothic novel. There’s a menacing-looking castle in the background, some mist rising, and a heroine with a horse, another totem often found in historical Gothics. There’s love in this story, too, but again, it takes a back seat to the adventure on another world in another society. Wah.

Maybe I’m lazy, but my idea of escapist fiction does not include learning a bunch of newly made up words that describe some other world where Things Aren’t Going Well. That’s adventure, not romance. I’d rather have the romance. But it seems as if these days half of the romance covers feature women whose clothing is in imminent danger of falling off, and the other half are some bland woman with a bland guy. Examples of same: After the Kiss, by Suzanne Enoch, and Dancing in the Moonlight, by Raeanne Thayne. You might think these last two are very different, but try switching the titles with the art, and you’ll see that they’re simply two sides of the same coin.

What frustrates me is that the best romance covers are on science fiction and fantasy books. The most meticulous attention to illustrative detail, the most romantic settings, the most achingly beautiful colors in the skies, the most intriguing—they’re all being painted in the service of stories that are not romances. These stories may have some romantic relationships, but the romance is not front and center. Meanwhile, romance covers are simply generic. Historical: half-dressed. Contemporary: Wholesome everywoman. On the one hand, it’s good to know what you’re buying. But on the other, isn’t it better to wonder a little? To be intrigued?

In Defense of Women

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:49:00 +0000

In Defense of Women is a sly polemic written by H. L. Mencken almost 100 years ago, basically accusing women of trapping men into marriage because, according to him, we are much smarter than men but they are our economic main chance. Okay, simmer down. Times have changed since 1918. Women did get the vote. We did permeate the public world and are still pressing on to make further gains in government, the sciences, and other previously male-only or male-centric realms. We routinely work outside the home, and we no longer have to marry to assure ourselves of a secure economic future.

But such was not the case nearly 100 years ago, although Mencken points out that by then the situation had improved from 100 years prior to his time. He claimed that previously, a woman “could imagine nothing more favorable to her than marriage; even marriage with a fifth-rate man was better than no marriage at all.” And isn’t that exactly what Charlotte Lucas says to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, written about 100 years before Mencken’s book? Charlotte marries the idiotic toady, Mr. Collins, rather than remain a spinster. Perhaps our modern love affair with Jane Austen persists in part because Elizabeth, speaking for Austen, is so disapproving of this marriage of economic convenience. As was Mencken 100 years later, when such marriages were already going out of fashion. And as are we today, when women who marry for money are despised as gold-diggers.

Still, it stings to read his claim that women were intent on trapping men into matrimony for the sole purpose of attaining economic security. Was the accusation true? Yes and no. It was probably as true as the counter-accusation that men married women just to have someone to cook and clean for them and produce offspring. Even 100 years ago, most men and women in our society married in the belief that they loved or admired the other person. Romantic novels had already existed for over 100 years by then. (The first English novel was a romance, remember.) Further, 100 years ago there were artistic archetypes in magazines of handsome young men and women to dream about. There were romantic songs. Movies existed and matinee idols were just around the corner. Even more significantly, marriage no longer involved a dowry from the bride’s family. Most men married for the woman herself, not for the money or land she would bring him. Did women marry for the man himself, or for the economic security? Sadly, because men had more economic options than women did, there’s a good chance that some women settled, as Charlotte Lucas did a century before. But even Charlotte Lucas acknowledged that a marriage based on true affinity would have been preferable. The problem with settling was that in an era in which divorce was uncommon and created a heavy social stigma, marriage was for life, and there doubtless were some unhappy surprises after the vows had been said.

Nearly 100 years after Mencken wrote In Defense of Women, many changes have occurred. Women don’t need to marry for economic security; they can create it themselves. Men don’t need to marry to have children; they can just live with a girlfriend who is willing to have babies without marrying. The microwave and commercially prepared meals mean that no one has to know how to cook. In between then and now, women and men spent nearly 100 years lightly chaperoned and going on dates that were essentially chaste in intent. A party or a dance. Dinner and a movie. Not so today, if the reports in the media are to be believed. If people like each other at all, they may end up in bed almost immediately. Only afterwards do they begin to decide if their relationship has any future. Or even if it’s a romantic relationship at all. Ironically, there is nothing new about this. It mimics the common situation of the past (whether 100 or 1,000 years ago) in which men and women courted formally or perhaps did not even meet before the wedding. Only after the marriage ceremony did they begin to learn about the real character of the new spouse. The relationship began once the wedding feast was over.

How, then, are we to judge Mencken’s dispatch from the past? Is the marriage of entrapment, made for economic purposes, dead and gone? Yes. Mencken’s outrage appears pointless in these days of men and women who live together without ever marrying, and households supported by the woman’s income, not the man’s. In fact, the conditions that Mencken observed appear to have been merely a stop along the way towards what we have today. Social mores quickly evolved even during his lifetime, and the carefully chaperoned young woman who tricked a man into marriage by putting on a demure act simply disappeared. Men and women dated freely throughout the twentieth century. More and more, they married entirely to please themselves, even crossing ethnic, social, and religious boundaries, to say nothing of not judging a potential spouse by economic standards. Of course there still are people willing to marry for money, both men and women, and even those willing to trap someone into marriage. But these instances are rare in our society today.

Is there anything to be learned from Mencken’s opinion of women? Yes, but probably not what he intended. What Mencken reveals by condemning women while seeming to admire them is that men also chafed under the old system. Modern courtship may be confusing, infuriating, and messy. But there is more freedom and honesty on both sides. Marriage has not been discarded as an ideal, but its main purpose today is seen as romantic, not material. People today look to marry their true love or soul mate, not a good provider or a good cook or baby maker. That nobody has to write supposed defenses of women anymore is proof that we’ve come a long way. But “He’s Just Not That Into You” and the current Jane Austen mania suggest that we’d like the courtship dance to be even more clear cut than it presently is. If that’s possible.

Confused About Paranormal Romances? Me, Too

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:47:00 +0000

Paranormal romances are big sellers these days. But it’s hard to know what is and what is not a paranormal romance, especially because there seems to be a fine line between that definition and urban fantasy, another very hot subgenre. For instance, Lara Adrian’s Ashes of Midnight is published by Dell as a paranormal romance (it says so on the spine). It’s got a bad marriage and a lot of vampires and other beasts doing vast amounts of killing. But it does end with a male and a female happy together. Humans? Not exactly.

Moon Burn, by Alisa Sheckley (who has also written comic books and some chick lit novels as Alisa Kwitney) does not indicate that it is a paranormal romance. It is from the Del Ray imprint from Ballantine Books, which is generally considered a fantasy and science fiction line. It seems to be a straightforward, character-driven werewolf story, and again, it ends with a male and a female happy together. So why isn’t it labeled a paranormal romance?

Eve of Darkness by S. J. Day has been categorized as urban fantasy by Tor on its spine. The heroine starts off surrounded by Satan’s minions, and things go downhill from there. But by the end, she and her lover are going on a date. Hmm...does this qualify as paranormal romance?

And then there is Norse Code by Greg van Eekhout, which is another Ballantine book, but this time from its Spectra line, which used to be a Bantam imprint. (I love that title, by the way; it’s genius.) Norse Code takes Norse mythology and runs a straight fantasy with it, starring a heroine who looks just like the other heroines from these books. But, as is common in a story written by a man, it starts with a man’s point of view in a prologue, and only then begins the heroine’s journey. So, always, there is the sense that no matter what she does, she is clueless about the true significance of her actions. There’s a very good chance she is a mere puppet in the hands of experienced schemers.

As you can see, the covers of three out of the four books are remarkably similar. They’ve each got the same dark-haired girl showing a lot of flesh—but not cleavage. Ashes of Midnight has a clinch cover, a little bit of scrollwork, and a completely boring, empty street. It’s the only one that visually advertises a romance element.

Here’s something different, just to conuse me even more. Night’s Rose, by Annaliese Evans, is billed on its spine as a historical paranormal romance, but on the author’s web site, she calls it a historical urban fantasy. And the first page deals with ogres who eat people, bones and all. Lovely introduction to a romance. Lots of supernatural creatures and violence despite the soft-looking blonde (with a sword) in the red velvet gown on the cover. Is this a paranormal romance?

And the final entries are from Sherrilyn Kenyon, who has achieved bestseller status. Her two recent releases from St. Martin’s Paperbacks are labeled novels. Not paranormal romance, not urban fantasy, and not fantasy. Once genre novelists hit the bigtime, their books never carry a genre label on their spine, nor are they typically shelved in bookstores with other genre novels. But as you can see, the cover of Dream Warrior has the typical dark-haired young woman with a skimpy black dress. And a cemetery for good measure. But even though there is a strong heroine, the back cover blurb reads as if this is fantasy starring the usual somewhat accursed hero type. (There is a manga version of Kenyon’s Dark-Hunter series beginning that might be a shortcut to comprehending the story arc.) Kenyon’s second recent title, Acheron, is a hefty 806 pages of backstory and current adventures of a character from her previous continuity. This one has a nonrepresentational cover, to align it with other hefty novels that a man might not be ashamed to be seen reading. Acheron starts like any historical novel, except that it’s a fantasy novel that is in her Dream-Hunter series. It ends with happily ever after. Is it a romance or not? Has anybody ever counted the kisses (I’m cleaning things up here) versus the number of demons burned, vampires impaled, and so on? I thought not.

In addition to my confusion about which, if any, of these paranormal romance/urban fantasy/fantasy/novels would offer me the story closest to a pure romance, I’ve got another issue. The world building. Each author has carefully created a new reality, and within it, new hierarchies of power, new creatures, and new methods of attaining power and of attacking others, and more. And the authors usually create some related political or power struggle between opposing supernatural forces, the more labyrinthine the better. It’s a lot of work to buy into each new world, because although the rules of vampire bites might seem common in all, for instance, that is not guaranteed. When I read for pleasure, I don’t want to learn a lot of new details about an imaginary system of demonic forces. To me, that’s not relaxing. But given how popular these books are right now, lots of people do like all the world building. Or just put up with it, because they like all the creature-slaying, demon-burning, etc.

I still haven’t solved the basic question, which is, how do I figure out which of these novels might have the strongest romance elements? There is no way to tell from the covers, other than the Lara Adrian one. The back cover blurbs and first page excerpts don’t help. In fact, none of these titles has a first page excerpt. Most of them feature praise from reviewers. I remember when I was a kid and I was trying to figure out what a book might be like, and I would read these kinds of reviews. (If they said “bold and lusty” I knew to stay away. I was just a kid, after all.) The trouble is, when a reviewer of fantasy says a story is erotic, the reviewer might mean that there is a hot romance, but there might be some sexual behavior that does not constitute romance at all. I read something recently in which the devil (yes, Himself) wants to have sex with the heroine. Erotic? Maybe. Romantic? I don’t think so.

I’m still confused about where the romance is, and to be honest, I’m not sure I want to wade through all the demon-slaying and ogre-crunching to find it. Next stop, Amish romance. I can’t go wrong with an oil crust homemade pie and a hunky Amish carpenter.

My Hero, My Yard Man

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:06:00 +0000

There are a million reasons women read romances. Here’s another: In romances, heroes do all the rotten, complicated, difficult, and annoying chores that heroines put off for lack of funds, lack of strength, or lack of will. And heroes do them Without Being Asked.

Oh, boy, that’s a big one. Sitting as I am currently with a broken ankle and very limited mobility, I have to ask my own home hero for lots of help all day long. And just as with parenting issues, I have learned to make a stand--bad phrase--to persevere only about the important ones. After all, nobody else can do everything you need to do yourself. Even if, for the moment, you can’t do anything at all.

Real life is filled with mundane chores and vexatious decisions, and, for most of us, lack of ability to resolve them all. We don’t live perfect lives. Everybody has a long list of repairs and improvements needed around the house, or to the car, or whatever. Reasonable women know that their loved ones can’t do them all. But they keep hoping. Hence, the infamous HoneyDo list. Real men chafe at this list, because it is a challenge to their free time and to their free will. But romance heroes fix stuff and solve problems Without Being Asked.

The romance hero saves the heroine from all the mundane work of life. If her car breaks down, not only does he rescue her, but he has someone else drive it to the service station. And then bring it to her home. If he moves in, she suddenly finds that, Without Being Asked, he fixes all her broken latches and poked-out screens, tunes up and oils all her rusting power tools, and, again, Without Being Asked, trims the bushes that no one has touched in months or years. If she lives in a tumbledown shack, he either shores it up or takes her to live on his ranch or in his mansion or up in his 24th story city penthouse. He handles all the picayune details of life’s little troubles. And big ones, too, like fighting off murderers and terrorists and soul-sucking relatives. The romance hero does it all, and again, Without Being Asked.

A lot of women don’t do yard work, so in romances, the hero typically does some manly outdoor chore. Sure, sometimes he cooks a great dinner, too. Multitasking. But we can always call for takeout; a nice meal is thoughtful, but only impressive to the woman who doesn’t cook or who is too busy to cook. But we can’t always find someone to fix that wobbly step down from the porch. And the application of strong manly muscles to some impressively difficult outdoor task—well, that’s a thrill to see. Photos of some handsome hunks are sprinkled throughout this page. I wonder if any of them ever performs heroic mundane chores? Probably. Hopefully, bare-chested.

Yep, that’s my current romance fantasy. Right about now, I could use a man with movie-star muscles and romance hero initiative, a manly man who would like to mow my lawn, Without Being Asked.

On a Marriage, Finally

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:43:00 +0000

I don’t usually comment on celebrity doings on this blog. Or much of anywhere else, for that matter, because, really who cares? But a recent event got me thinking about a classic romance situation: David Letterman finally married the woman he’s been living with for over 20 years, Regina Lasko, a woman who bore him a child five years ago. A woman who used to work for him and who does not have either a significant fortune or career, or as far as I know, any independent life aside from him.

Maybe this woman is a strong, self-respecting person who does not need a marriage certificate to be confident in her man’s love for her and for her child. Maybe he has been asking her and asking her, and she finally agreed. But I don’t think the power dynamic works that way. Not when the man is very famous and rich, and the woman is not. No, the power has been entirely in his hands. I don’t consider this a happy romantic situation. I consider it a depressing story that at best metes out justice to the wronged woman.

How can I be a card-carrying feminist and still talk about a wronged woman? Aren’t women independent and capable and so on? Of course. But I am a realist, and men still hold most of the power in our society, as they do in most other cultures. Letterman by his own account was the one who has held out and held out. Which means that there is a good chance that she’s just another doormat, who has waited and waited to be officially valued, like Patient Griselda.

Never heard of Patient Griselda? The tale is from Boccaccio, and before him, Petrarch. An aristocrat marries a girl of lesser status (sound familiar?), and treats her like dirt for years, heaping more and more indignities upon her, and even taking her children away from her. She does nothing. (Well, realistically, what can she do? He has all the power.) She doesn’t complain. Finally, after many years of this, he rewards her by at last acknowledging that all of his tests of her have proven her merit, and he gives her the status their marriage entitles her to. Granted, there is something about being a martyr to which most women are conditioned to respond. I’ve talked about it before. The martyr story is some kind of working out of women’s inferior strength or power vis-a-vis men. It’s weakness taken to the nth degree, until weakness itself becomes a strength. Many men have been baffled and defeated by women’s weakness, by our ability to take it and take it, and survive anyway. Even so, when I see it played out as a modern, real-life story, I am not happy.

Marriage is a public commitment. Between a man and a woman, it's a public proclamation of the man’s respect for the woman. And it’s an acknowledgment that she is actually a major part of his life and not just some convenience for his sexual or procreative urges. A woman who lives with a man and has a child by him and has no other career has already made her commitment. Marrying him is not a major leap for her. It’s a major deal for him. And that’s why, call me old-fashioned if you will, I believe that marriage is essential between men and women. Because, given that the woman is already committed, so the man should be also. If a man doesn’t value you enough to marry you, why be with him? And what kind of message does it send to a child when the father won’t even marry the mother?

Yeah, yeah, so maybe they took secret vows before a Buddhist shrine 20 years ago. Or they went to a park and stood under a tree and recited promises they’d made up. It’s not the same as saying it in public for the whole community to know. It’s not the same as making it legal, which still has significance if one person is ill or injured, and the other person needs access or decision-making authority. And there is the matter of inheritance, too, although with Americans spending more than we earn, maybe many people won’t have much to leave as estates. Letterman will. Regardless, a spouse has rights that a non-spouse does not. Why else are gays struggling to gain the right to marry? They know that being married is better than not being married. Unlike a lot of people in our culture who are in denial.

So, I’m happy that David Letterman finally did right by the woman he apparently loves, and the son he very publicly loves. Now, would the rest of you who are in long-term, seriously committed relationships please get married? I promise you, I won’t ask when you’re going to have babies, or why the wife isn’t changing her last name to the husband’s, or why one of you isn’t converting to the other’s religion. Or any of the other awkward questions from strangers and the demands from family that get put upon people who do marry. I’ll just congratulate you.

Believe in Me

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:12:00 +0000

Okay, here’s a silly romance plot: The heroine is found asleep in the wrong man’s bed. She’s a sleepwalker, thus not responsible for her behavior. But the hero, her fiancé, does not know that, so he thinks she has betrayed him. She doesn’t know she’s a sleepwalker either, so she’s utterly confused. But she knows she didn’t betray the man she loves. She tries to convince the hero of her faithfulness. He rejects her, based entirely on the circumstantial evidence. He even plans to marry another woman that very day. But wait. The other man declares her innocence. And then the poor heroine, exhausted and brokenhearted from trying to convince her fiancé of her chastity, falls asleep and sleepwalks again. The hero sees and finally believes. He wakes her up, says he’s sorry, and they get married after all. (You’ve guessed it. I just described the plot of La Sonnambula, a 19th century opera currently being sung by two hot—and talented—singers at the Met, Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez.)

Isn’t this a classic, old-style romantic situation? Circumstances make the heroine seem bad, lots of suffering ensues, and then finally, her good name is restored and the hero takes her back. In our culture today, we reject that romance dynamic. Oh, maybe teenagers, who live in the claustrophobic equivalent of a 19th century village, still make their decisions based on gossip and externals. But adults mostly don’t in our society. A woman is supposed to be valued for who she is, not her reputation in the community for virginity. Moreover, a man is supposed to believe in the heroine, and not get caught up in external valuations of her to such a degree that he can’t see her true worth.

Still, this old-fashioned dynamic is alive and well in many other countries today, and, arguably, in any small, rigid community that still exists in our own. And we have to ask, well, what happens to this woman in five years, if people gossip about the mailman staying too long at the house? In what does the hero really place his faith? Not in the heroine, alas.

Lucky us, though. We’re not living in tiny 19th century villages where corrosive gossip can ruin our lives. And because romance novels mirror current romance ideals and standards, we expect a lively give-and-take between the heroine and the hero in our romance novels today, not a tragic melodrama of misunderstandings. Our romance characters act out—sometimes very strongly—behaviors associated with the principles of free will. The proof is visible on the covers of the popular urban fantasy novels of today, in which strong-willed and eerily-talented, feisty, independent women (whew!) fend off impending calamities and fight outsize battles that decide the fate of the universe. While also developing romantic relationships with vampires, demons, werewolves, or whoever. These heroines are not worrying about their reputations; they’ve got mort important things to do.

Yet it wasn’t so long ago that the conviction-by-circumstance situation was a common romance plot, and heroines were a bit more passive. Or passive aggressive. And this kind of story still is being published. Considering that in its more melodramatic versions, it often required rather dramatic proof of virginity, we wonder, why would we put up with them? For some reason, a very old Harlequin Romance by Anne Mather, Lord of Zaracus, published in 1972, sticks in my mind. This one is laid out as a clash in cultures. The heroine, an American or a Brit, I forget which, visits Mexico and butts up against the prejudices of an autocratic, aristocratic, and melodramatic (!) hero. He assumes that she has the low morals of someone from a trashy American movie, and he listens to the poisonous lies of a catty Mexican girl in his household. Our poor heroine is too prideful to defend herself well. Or maybe just at a loss for words when everybody behaves so badly. Eventually, after various melodramatic events, the guy decides she’s a good girl after all. Thanks for nothing, fellow.

But there’s something about the sinned-against heroine plot that is appealing. Because even though it’s a story about circumstantial evidence, it’s also a story about trust and respect. And though such plots aren't as common as they used to be, they're still around. In La Sonnambula, the hero hurts the heroine with his lack of belief in her side of the story. She’s not judgmental; she doesn’t despise him for lacking faith in her. She’s wounded. Of course, he’s wounded, too, or he wouldn’t lash out. But he’s also not listening to her and hearing the truth. He's not respecting or trusting her. Neither one of them is happy, and they can’t fix things because the problem is circumstantial and was never of their own making to begin with. Some other person or event has to provide the proof that will make them happy again.

Here’s one possibility to account for the seeming incongruity of these kinds of stories still being around long after our society has appeared to give women an equal place. For a lot of women, there is still the feeling that we are not valued in the world as we deserve to be. It hurts. Living through a version of this in fiction, and then being rescued from the misery and brought to a place of honor, or restored to it (and especially by a man who is romantically in love, which makes it very personal), is a kind of salve to the wound of being not-quite-equal in a supposedly equal society. Not sufficiently respected. Not listened to. Not believed. Fighting fictional demons may be the answer for some female personality types. But for others, the answer is the hero who finally realizes he has made a mistake—however that realization is brought about—and says he is sorry. That now, he believes.

The Romance of Historical Novels

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0000

I just read a copy of Vanora Bennett’s second novel, Figures in Silk, which is about a City of London silkwoman who gets caught up in the turmoil of the last years of the Wars of the Roses, between 1471 and 1485. I’m not giving anything away by saying that the heroine has a long-term love affair with King Richard III and also meets other members of the glamorous royal Plantagenet family.

Those were turbulent and exciting times, but I have sometimes wondered why novelists keep revisiting them. We are currently enjoying a long-overdue revival of the historical novel, which is distinct from an historical romance. An historical novel is chiefly about real historical figures, not about sexy trysts between made-up characters living in dashing prior times. Philippa Gregory’s series about the Tudors arguably started this movement, and now many new historical novels are being published and some solid old ones are being reprinted. I don’t think it is an accident that I, and numerous other readers, continue to be fascinated by the re-imaginings of what is already a very well-explained period of English history.

It’s not as if I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Of course I do. Richard III loses his horse and his life at Bosworth Field. The Princes in the Tower are never seen again. Henry Tudor starts a new dynasty and his son, Henry VIII, can’t sustain it. Because of his desperation, Catherine of Aragon is shamefully divorced against her will, Henry VIII wrenches the entire practice of religion in England into a church of his own making, and Anne Boleyn is queen for a thousand days. Henry VIII’s children by three of his six wives each get to rule England, but only Elizabeth retains the throne for a significant length of time. I know all this. Yet I can read about it over and over and over. Why?

Maybe, because what creating a fictional heroine who gets involved with an enigmatic, real-life historical figure does is bring the reader close to a celebrity. But instead of the banal truths of the real lives of today’s celebrities, or even the shocking truths that we have yet to learn, readers are brought to a world in which the stakes are much higher and clearer, even though the story is intimate. These people made history. A friend of mine insists that Henry VIII was a minor historical figure, and that economic events determine history. I think my friend underestimates the power and influence that one man can wield. The continued fascination over hundreds of years with the personal lives of these historical figures proves their importance.

In one sense, an historical novel is a safe read. We know the outlines of the conflicts in advance, even the details. We know that the princes will end up in the Tower. That no deus ex machina will appear to save Anne Boleyn from being beheaded. That Elizabeth Tudor won’t marry anyone, ever. Deceit, treachery, and raw ambition will rule, and clothing will be costumes. If anything, these stories get more glamorous because of the distance of time. Strangely, these replayings of old stories come across as intensely romantic. So much more was at stake back then. Today’s celebrities’ marital mistakes can soon be mended with divorces, and their career disasters can be overcome with star turns in new productions. Their drug abuse can be apologized for, and they can be rehabilitated. As for other world figures such as politicians, well, there is quite a lot of latitude for their behavior today. And as interesting as the stories of recent martyrs are, we are aware that the full truth hasn’t yet come out—if it ever will—about such relatively modern shockers as JFK’s assassination. Ironically, the tragic real-life modern story of Princess Diana struck such a nerve because it played out as if it had happened a couple of centuries ago. If one ignored all the sordid details that the tabloids were so eager to provide.

By contrast, we know very little about the far past, and yet we know a surprising amount. Many scholars over the intervening centuries have correlated historical accounts and ferreted out facts that were not known at the time. But much of the truth is forever lost. We still don’t know who murdered the Princes in the Tower, for instance, or even if they were murdered. That may be another reason why we can keep reading about these people over and over. We’re still looking for clues.

How can a romance exist in such circumstances? Easily enough. We already know that there are only two outcomes to a romance: a happy ending, or an unhappy ending. Once real historical figures become the major characters, the writers are constrained to tell the truth about the outcome. But it doesn’t really matter to the reader, because, as with any romance, the pleasure is in the journey. We also know that some romances occur between people whose motives are at cross purposes, or who are wrong for each other, or who simply are unlucky. So the idea that an historical novel is going to serve up a tale of an ill-fated romance isn’t necessarily off-putting. The pleasures of being drawn in close to these glamorous characters usually outweigh the sadness of the story’s ending. And again, it’s the journey, not the destination, that makes a romance satisfying.

And by the way, art directors in the US are imitating each other by putting similar covers on these recently-published historical novels. Note how The Other Boleyn Girl does not show the heroine’s face on the cover. Nor does Figures in Silk. The rest of her face is on the spine. Brief Gaudy Hour, written many years ago and now reissued, also follows this new style, as do many other books published recently that may or may not be historical novels.

Ambushed, Bushwhacked, and Entertained by Romance

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:47:00 +0000

I was going to write about free romances available on the Internet. After all, MyRomanceStory.com offers free romances (in case you came to this page without visiting our home page, check it out), but we aren't the only ones. I just downloaded a batch from Harlequin as part of its 60th anniversary celebration. If you go to http://www.harlequincelebrates.com/ you can download 16 different recently-published romances, one each from their many category lines. Then I got to thinking that there probably were lots of romances available free on the Internet. Sure, I already knew about Project Gutenberg, which has tons of public domain novels, but I went to visit it. The oeuvre of Jeffery Farnol, the Regency romance author who wrote before Georgette Heyer, is there. So are potboilers by Edgar Wallace, a thriller writer of 100 years ago. And lots more. Very tempting. Then I found another public domain site, the Ebook Nook at http://www.ebooknook.com/eromance.html and I got ambushed by a romance. Not by one of the new romances, which were by authors I’d never head of. Mingling with them on the list were novels by familiar names, including Jane Austen. I saw a novel by Wilkie Collins, a mid-Victorian writer who is famous for The Moonstone. I’ve heard that some literary heavyweights think his The Woman in White is one of the best books ever written. His The New Magdalen was on the site, so I dipped into it. And I got caught. I had to read the whole thing. It was that interesting.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The New Magdalen. But I’ll be honest: it was complete melodrama. Soap opera. Victorian sentimentality meets the socialist movement, and the result is a very talky, innately silly romance. And I couldn’t stop reading it. I was absolutely ambushed. I love this stuff. I don’t care how absurd the plot is, I love the poses of nobility that the characters strike, and the scenes in the mansions of the wealthy, and the arrogant behavior of the social elite. Not to mention the judgment by progressives against the mean-spiritedness of those with pretensions to blue blood. Even in 1873, when this novel was published, and which certainly could be taken as a high Victorian period, there were people in England who looked askance at the social order in all its injustice. (Sometimes we don't know or forget that social movements take decades to succeed.)

I stayed up past my bedtime to read this book. I absolutely could not resist it. What was going to happen to the heroine? What kind of woman would she prove herself to be? And isn’t it amazing that her big problem simply is not a problem anymore in Western society? And what was her problem? Those of you familiar with organized Christian religion know of course that Mary Magdalene has been variously called a saint and a prostitute who followed Jesus. (Although Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, thinks she married Jesus and had kids, too.) The heroine of The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins is a fallen woman. What the heck is a fallen woman? A woman who has had sex outside of marriage. Possibly for pay, but possibly as an adulteress. We don’t even know the concept in the United States anymore. In Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz, the author, David Seaman, points out that Paris Hilton had money, was a member of the social elite, and beauty, too. But she didn’t have international fame until she leaked a sex tape of herself. What a different world we inhabit from the standard world of less progressive nations or of other times. The heroine of The New Magdalen is a woman who has lost her chastity, and as such has lost her reputation and any chance of mingling with ordinary society. Just as today there are shelters for abused women, in 1873 England there apparently were refuges for fallen women. In her case, her sin was poverty, and she was victimized and forced into prostitution. Eventually, she escaped to a refuge and was rehabilitated. But her past wouldn’t let her go. No matter what job she held, and what friends she made, eventually, the truth of her past would come out, and she would be tossed out onto the streets. Being a fallen woman back then was social death and economic death, too. A clean reputation was all. Not so today in our world.

The heroine of The New Magdalen is so desperate for another chance at respectability as this novel opens that she decides to assume the identity of a woman who has just died. (Or so she thinks.) Taking on another woman’s life, along with her relationships and social status, is a common theme in romances. Sometimes, it’s because of a chance meeting with a doppelganger, a double. Other times, it’s a twin doing her very different sister a favor. Still other times, it’s a case of amnesia and mistaken identity. Playing with identity, and thus with other people’s expectations of us, is a popular romance plotline. Often it’s a shy heroine who suddenly inhabits the life of a hottie. But sometimes, as in Barbara Cartland’s very similar romance, Stolen Halo, it’s a woman who has led a degraded life, who seizes a chance to start fresh. Usually the writer figures out a way to make the heroine blameless for the mistaken identity situation. She was pressured by her evil sister. She was unconscious when somebody else mis-identified her. She had amnesia.

Not so in The New Magdalen. Mercy Merrick deliberately steals the identity of Grace Roseberry, in order to start her life afresh. She knows it’s wrong. And Wilkie Collins does not let her get away with it. As I said, it’s a soap opera. There is a lot of lecturing by a charismatic and handsome preacher. There is a lot of posturing and melodrama. And there is a happy ending of a sort, the kind that the author of the Saint novels, Leslie Charteris, so cleverly elucidated in one of his Simon Templar adventures: When faced with an either/or situation in which neither choice is desirable, pick a third action. That’s what happens in The New Magdalen, and it’s pretty interesting to realize that the answer, even nearly 140 years ago, was to go to the American west. Frontier society was famously not inclined to judge people about their pasts.

I knew the writer had to come up with a happy ending. He’d created a dilemma and he had to resolve it. Because, after all, this was a romance, and in a romance, a happy ending is a foregone conclusion. It’s how the heroine gets to it that’s the fun. I was ambushed, bushwhacked, and completely entertained by this antique romance. And now that I have experienced how easy it is to find an interesting romance to read free on the Internet, well, now I’m in big trouble. Free romance novels, 24/7. Yikes.

Don’t Cry for Me

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:52:00 +0000

What’s the difference between a romance and real life? The tears. There are tears in real life, over many things. They often are about life’s common tragedies—the loss of a relative, the death of a pet, a divorce, a maiming injury, a dread disease, etc. Sometimes the tears are over petty issues that nonetheless mean a lot to us momentarily. These are the painful tears that life makes us shed, not the pleasure-pain tears of having one’s heart involved with another. In real life, tears are not so pretty. But in a romance, the tears are shed over a romantic relationship that appears not to be working out, but of course will turn into a happy ending. In a romance, the heroine’s tears will always be dried. And so will the reader’s.

Carly Simon’s “Haven’t Got Time for the Pain” an iconic song of the early 1970s, aptly describes the period in a young girl or woman’s life in which she dreams of romance and sighs over the romantic angst of other people. Generally this is when she herself is not yet in love, but wants to be, or is between loves but ready to love again. (Most women in the hating stage aren’t interested in reading romance.) What happens when a romantic young woman yearns for romance and immerses herself in romance novels? She suffers along with the heroine. If things don’t go right, she cries for her. And then she sighs happily when the heroine and her hero reunite and are finally poised to enjoy a happy future.

But why do this? Why not read books on world economics? Well, possibly because books on economics are wish-fulfillment fiction, too, but the real reason is that at some stages in our lives we have a lot of emotion and nowhere to put it. Oh sure, we can spread love and joy around by being good to our family and remembering others and reaching out to strangers. We can visit elderly folks or do volunteer work. But the need for a close emotional connection is not always fully assuaged by these socially appropriate behaviors. So women who are in between (of all ages and conditions) seek that emotion in romance novels.

Additionally, what some women are doing by reading romance is modeling. They see how making different choices produces different effects. The heroine who struggles to grow and change and find herself is different from book to book, and so is the hero who fights for her. Romance readers take on various roles, sometimes roles they hope one day to play in a real romance, and sometimes not. They experience the heroine’s ups and downs and try on different types of relationships, all of which end happily, for fit. Is the Type A domineering workaholic appealing? Or is the sensitive, artistic man who quotes poetry and compares the heroine to the moon more her style? Do meek heroines annoy her? Can she relate to feisty, self-reliant heroines? Is it possible to become one? Or is the perfect man someone else, someone she already is married to? And is she already a mature woman, but she enjoys pretending to make a choice all over again? Plenty of romance readers are long married, happily. But they like getting involved in the drama and tears all over again in a book.

A romance novel is a far safer place to put strong emotions than a singles bar or Internet chat room (not that anybody goes to them anymore), or an extramarital affair. There are times in every woman’s life when she yearns for something different from what she has. Maybe something different from the endless round of diapers and dinners. Or the meetings and projects. Or even the premieres and the paparazzi. Whether life is wonderful or mundane, women find in romances a comfortable, private place to let their emotions out safely. When life is tough, confusing, empty, or whatever, a romance is a good escape from the pain. When life is perfect, a romance is a good reinforcement of the pleasure. Yes, there is pain in romances, but it is limited, controlled, and guaranteed to end in happiness.

So don’t cry for all of us women supposedly wasting our time reading romances. We know what we’re doing. Sometimes we’re dreaming for the future. Sometimes we’re escaping the present. Sometimes we’re indulging in mind-blowing sex with a man who not only will call the next day but declares his love and immediately proposes. If we shed some tears as our heroines struggle to find and hold onto true love, we’re okay with it. We know the tears are only temporary. Unlike in real life, romantic tears always end happily.

Women Ruin Everything

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:23:00 +0000

I just saw a classic opera (Orfeo ed Euridice, by Gluck) that reminded me of many, many romances I’ve read in which the female character—our heroine, mind you—is an irrational, demanding, needy person who spoils everything. In this case, Orpheus is so brokenhearted over the death of his beloved wife, Eurydice, that he braves hell itself to rescue her. The gods declare that he can take her back to the land of the living, but there’s a catch. He’s not allowed to look at her (which kind of makes it impossible to kiss her), and he’s not to explain anything. He promises. So fine, he goes down to hell and reunites with Eurydice without looking at her or telling her the deal. Then he tries to hurry her along the path home. But she balks. She wants him to look at her, to reassure her that her beauty, the reason he loved her before, is still intact. She also wants an explanation for his odd behavior. She wants his reassurance that the life to which she is returning will not be painful. Being kept in ignorance is painful. So is being rejected. Orpheus tries to get her to stop asking questions, and just trust him and move along the path out of hell. But instead, he finally gives in to her pleas and looks at Eurydice. And of course, then the deal is off. The woman, with her silly, emotional demands, destroys the man’s plan.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a version of that situation, especially in a historical romance. The hero is trying to master some precarious political situation, but the heroine whines, begs, and nags him into agreeing to some action that—however kindly her motives—tips the scales against him. Or there’s the sex thing. The hero has to leave now; the heroine, not aware of other concerns or not caring, seduces him, thus delaying him. The bad guys capture the castle. And the hero. Uh-oh. Complications ensue.

Many of these romances were written by women. We are so used to being outside the direct flow of the work—or the struggle—of the world that even in our own wish-fulfillment fiction, we often paint ourselves as screw-ups and spoilers. I believe that’s because until recently women were not dealt in on the major work of the world. A woman’s sphere was necessarily personal, and she was neither trained nor allowed to contemplate the wider results of her actions. Which is not to say that some women throughout history haven’t figured things out anyway. But still, the classical philosophers don’t include women in the mainstream of their thought. They posit or describe a world in which men make all the decisions and wander happily through groves talking about high-flown ideas, while women’s role is to support this vision as minor characters who are only slightly more important than children.

That’s the classical world to which the Orpheus and Eurydice story belongs. Orpheus loves Eurydice, but he’s the main actor in their story, and her role is only to obey. But art, for all its exaggerations, is more in tune with real life than philosophy is. So Eurydice doesn’t blindly obey. And Orpheus loves her enough to break his promise to the gods, and give in to her pleading and look at her. In fact, his love is so great that it impresses the gods, and they forgive him (and obviously, Eurydice, too), and let him take her back to the land of the living anyway. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice has been told repeatedly by men, some of whom claim it’s not about men and women at all, but about the power of music (Orpheus is a musician) to move people.

How strange that men don’t want to admit that this story is about the power of love itself. A love so strong that responding to the beloved’s immediate needs becomes more important than any long-term plan. I guess one could say that love makes us all stupid, except that in most of these incarnations, the woman gets blamed for screwing up the deal. I don’t like the way that most of the time in literature women are portrayed as importunate fools, self-absorbed and vain, and incapable of seeing beyond their petty concerns. Except that love isn’t a petty concern. Eurydice doesn’t want to live again if she won’t have her husband’s love. And that’s why Orpheus turns and looks at her. Because he won’t deny her. So, yes, women ruin everything. We’ve got our own agenda and it’s not the same as that of men. But men don’t want to live without us.

Writers of the Purple Prose

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:22:00 +0000

Romances are always being accused of purple prose. But all fiction used to be purple prose. I just checked out an antique novel that is an excellent example of purple prose, and it’s not strictly speaking a romance although there is a romance a the core of it. A Heart of Flame, by Charles Fleming Embree, was published in 1901. It’s a tale of Santa Fe, in which the power of the Roman Catholic church and dislike of the church embroil the main characters in turmoil that leads to several deaths. The characters mostly have Mexican names, but some are not Mexican despite that, following the hypocritical 19th century custom of the main characters being of the elite no matter what (in this case, of the ethnic elite, but in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, of the social elite). Everybody gives long, passionate speeches. This is serious purple prose.

Or is it merely Victorian prose? The difference between purple prose and Victorian flowing periods is indistinguishable. As far as I can tell, the one style just naturally followed the other. But by 1900, there was a noticeable split in styles. Some books, such as Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda, were compactly written, even though their ideals were described in the style typical of the day. In other words, Anthony Hope managed to tell a lot of story without a lot of fluff while still giving a stylistic nod to traditional values. Zane Grey, the American western writer, specialized in very realistic, even terse dialogue, but his descriptive passages were as romantic and effusive as those we associate with romances or with Victorian writers. Then there were others, such as E. Phillips Oppenheim, whose pompous, overwritten potboilers (such as The Great Impersonation, 1920) about international intrigue were the spiritual grandfathers to Dan Brown’s vastly popular modern potboiler, The Da Vinci Code.

Yet at the same time, there were strains of newer thought informing writers’ styles. Although Stephen Crane certainly was a modernist and he wrote before Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway rightly gets credit for popularizing a no-frills, direct writing style that revolutionized fiction in the 20th century. Even so, romances and other kinds of novels were still being written in the purple prose manner during most of Hemingway’s career. The Baroness Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1903, but kept writing in that same style until her death decades later in 1940. Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche became a bestseller in 1921, but his oeuvre of dashing, romantic novels of gallantry and romance were written during the period stretching from 1900 to 1950. Zane Grey’s westerns, including Riders of the Purple Sage, were written from the early 1900s through to his death in 1939, and he was frequently accused of purple prose. And Georgette Heyer, the doyenne of the Regency romance, started writing in the mid-1920s and continued until just prior to her death in 1974, always using the roundabout style of the language of the prior century. This was happening at the very same time that Hemingway was writing his spare, almost terse novels and Mickey Spillane was doing his tough guy genre version of the same in titles such as My Gun is Quick. At the same time, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler were writing near poetry as novels. Yes, they had serious stories to tell. But their use of language was more elaborate than Hemingway’s even as they tried to tell their stories in a spare style.

There isn’t just one strain of writing style at any given time, and it seems clear to me that the purple prose of which romances are accused is simply the direct descendant of the popular Victorian style. Most of us don’t get to read the third-rate fiction of the Victorian age, but it’s available in some used bookstores, and it’s a revelation. Cheesy, overwritten, and saccharine all come to mind as adjectives to describe one strain of popular writing back then. Given that, it’s not surprising that well over 100 years later, we still have some popular writing that is similarly overwrought.

Are today’s romances purple prose? Most writers have dropped off their heavy descriptions of scenery (which are unnecessary in a visual age; we all know what an elephant looks like), and the 19th century preoccupation with dialects (radio and other media can tell us how people’s accents sound). But in romances, there can be very detailed scenery descriptions, and sexually descriptive passages have been well-upholstered and embroidered. Erotica and romantica, both of which feature extremely detailed sex scenes, are among the most popular subgenres of women’s fiction today. But then, so are inspirational romances that have no sex whatsoever and that specifically do not embroider any sensual or sexual descriptions (e.g., a kiss is just a kiss, no details). And at the very same time, we have various paranormals and urban fantasy stories, many of which are categorized as romance by their publishers. Some are into lots of descriptive detail, and others are not.

Thus it is hard to make a flat statement of fact without hedging it with exceptions. Is romance writing by definition purple prose? Possibly. But then, all dramatic writing may be equally defined as such. If I never read another literary novel that’s a coming-of-age story about a poor-but-plucky young person who suffers amazing abuse, I’ll be glad. In fact, I intend to avoid all such novels. We choose our poison, as they say. Mine is romance, whether purple, pink, or whatever.

List Mania

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 03:34:00 +0000

Someone I know just completed viewing all of the movies on acclaimed critic Roger Ebert’s list of the best movies ever. At my library book club, each year the librarian gives us copies of nationally compiled lists of the best books to read. And at this time of the year, most magazines, newspapers, e-zines, blogs, and more will trot out lists of the latest items we should know about, buy, watch, experience, etc. In that spirit, I’d like to contribute a list of the top romances every romance fan should read.

But I am not going to. Why not? Because everybody’s lists are skewed. Either they’re skewed towards too much new material, for instance, listing 25 vampire-and-werewolf paranormals in a list of 100 all-time best romances (!), or they’re skewed in an old hat direction, giving Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, and Margaret Mitchell far too much prominence. Not only that, but fans of historicals tend to want to overpopulate the list of romances with historicals. And the same with fans of contemporaries. It’s not just us, though. I was looking at two different lists of the top ten popular songs of the year and I did not recognize any of the titles or artists. Even though I compulsively listen to the radio and switch channels constantly to find new and different music. Everybody is in their own little world, it seems, and it doesn’t often intersect with mine.

So my list, if I ever compile one, is going to include my picks for the most influential romances, not the “best.” This might mean that the bestselling romance by an author does not get on the list because an earlier book by her was more influential. A good example would be the Gothic novel by Victoria Holt, Mistress of Mellyn. This book was a bestseller when it came out in 1960, and it continued to sell well for many years. It might even be in print today somewhere, although its author, Eleanor Hibbert, is long dead. She published many more novels under other names, and some of her Jean Plaidy historicals are now back in print because of the resurgence of interest in the Tudors. I don’t know which of her books sold the most copies and I certainly can’t predict which will eventually sell the most, given the current reprinting program. But Mistress of Mellyn was the influential classic that brought the Gothic novel to stardom.

Similarly, although Shanna, by Kathleen Woodiwiss, was a landmark book in 1977 because it was the very first trade paperback historical romance and was an enormous bestseller, her previous book, The Flame and the Flower, published in 1972, was the breakthrough, the book that started the bodice-ripping (for once the phrase is apt!) historical romance trend. Also ran Rosemary Rogers, who wrote Sweet Savage Love, published in 1974 (which had even more bodice ripping), likely sold more copies of her second and third novels, too, but nobody even remembers their titles anymore.

And the definition of what is a romance keeps shifting, too. Suspense elements okay? Or not? Comedy okay? Or not? Additionally, there’s the issue of determining whether a romance was influential as a romance, or as a work of literature, or more. Take the romance classics of literature, for instance. Most of these will be mentioned in college if you take any English Lit courses. But I can’t recommend them as best all-time romances. For instance, Pamela, by Samuel Richardson, published in 1740. It’s considered the first English novel, but it is a weird, lascivious, morally bankrupt tease of a poor-girl-holds-out-for-the-ring story that today is only worth reading because it’s so way over the top. And because it elucidates 18th century British morals and lack thereof, which is more of historical interest than romantic. After you’ve gotten the initial flavor, feel free to skim to the end. Just don’t miss the good part when the lecherous master gets pretty Pamela to spend time in bed with him on some pretext or other, and the spunky gal has to Fight for Her Virtue. A hoot.

And what about all those lovely Jane Austen novels? Yes, they’re romances, but they are also comedies of manners. We’re in a period of Austen imitators that owes very little to verisimilitude to the truth of her times, or to comedy of manners, and much to a kind of prurient interest in Darcy’s sex life. Like most fan fiction, these novels are destined for obscurity. Meanwhile, should all of Austen’s novels be on the list? Or just Pride and Prejudice (1813), the one that is preeminently a romance? Some lists trot them all out.

Georgette Heyer was in part an Austen imitator, though she actually started off owing more to Jeffery Farnol (The Broad Highway, 1910) and the Baroness Orczy (The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1905) than she did to Austen. Without both strains of influence, though, we wouldn’t have had the wonderful The Grand Sophy (1950), Heyer’s romantic comedy of manners par excellence. So, surely Heyer rates. But which of her dozens of books is the epitome of romance versus comedy of manners? Or should there be a distinction drawn?

The Sheik, by Edith Hull, is a “forcible seduction” (aka rape) saga from 1919 that started an entire popular romance trend and was the basis for Rudolph Valentino’s movie career as the first American heartthrob. Many writers rushed to imitate this kidnapped-and-raped-by-a-sheik story, and most sheik stories today still involve an alpha male who holds a western woman captive, even if forced sex is no longer part of the standard plot. A very influential book even though most romance readers of today, myself included, have not read it. It should be on the list, for sure.

Would my list include any recent romances? Yes, but here things get trickier. It’s almost impossible to be sure of how influential, and thus how classic and important, a novel is until it has aged a while. Outlander, for instance, by Diana Gabaldon (1991), was not written as a romance and author Gabaldon has specifically denied that it is one. But romance fans found the book and call it one anyway. But is it? See if it keeps showing up on lists 20 years from now.

Which paranormal vampire romance is the breakout book? Which werewolf romance is the one every other writer imitates? MaryJanice Davidson’s humorous vampire tales, such as Undead and Unwed (2004), have spawned imitators. But nobody would call Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) a romance. Where’s the intermediate novel that pushed this into a major subgenre?

Does Anne Rice get credit for the erotica subgenre? She wrote erotica as A.N. Roquelaure. Or should it be Laurell K. Hamilton’s Guilty Pleasures (1993), introducing her Anita Blake series? But Anita Blake doesn’t get to experience any sex until the sixth novel in the series, according to my buddy, Wikipedia. So is this series paranormal or erotica? Or paranormal turned erotica?

Or is it current fave J. R. Ward, who writes paranormal erotic romances (it says so on her own website)? Lots of people in the romance world are talking about her hunky vampire heroes and hot storylines. Right now, anyway.

And the jury is still out on how influential the vast number of evangelical Christian romances may be. Does anyone consider them part of the main stream of romance? Or are they just an offshoot that goes nowhere? Who is writing the romance that is influenced by an inspirational but that is not an inspirational?

You see why I couldn’t compile a list. I know too much about the past, and I can’t tell the future.

On the cusp of the change from this year to the next, we all try to make peace with the one and look forward to the other. If a list helps, make your own, or read somebody else’s. But don’t sweat the choices. The only books that should be on your list of influential romances are the novels that mean a lot to you.

Why Do I Read Romances, and What the Heck is a Romance, Anyway?

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:34:00 +0000

Despite a complete lack of encouragement from my family, or from my social and educational milieu, I was drawn to romance novels in my early teens. My acquaintances were reading serious literature. Really, they were. I had more than a passing familiarity with serious literature and high culture, but I was drawn to stories about girls and women. And most stories about girls and women, beyond children’s books, had romantic elements. Although they often were in disguise. Then one day I saw a novel that did not take me on a pirate adventure on the high seas. It did not solve a Gothic mystery in an old mansion. It did not educate me about some notable figure in history. It was simply about a young man and a young woman who met and fell in love, and encountered obstacles before they came to a happy ending, including a marriage proposal. I loved it. I sought out all similar books. Eventually, I discovered that most romances never got near a public library. But they had a long publishing history and were flourishing as paperback originals. Thus the beginning of my huge personal library of paperback books. Even when I eventually found some romances in hardcover, I preferred to own them in paperback, to match what I already had.

Why was I drawn to romances? Maybe because they always had a happy ending. Which was ironic because the major romance I knew about was Romeo and Juliet, a story that ends with everybody dead. And what’s so darn special about romance, anyway? Start with the basic premise: The heroine meets someone whom she comes to value, who excites her because he represents new possibilities in life, who inspires her to emulate his courage, and more. And then the heroine must overcome obstacles to be with this person, and grow in the process. Finally, the heroine’s quest is successful. The man she thought would never look at her loves her, the man who scorned her has come to admire her and admit he cares, the man at her side in a battle, or on the other side, has proved his worth to be by her side the rest of her life. I think of this as a very uplifting storyline.

I like romances even though today our view of romantic behavior is not the simple one of a teen age virgin marrying and having babies (and dying young) as the be-all of her existence, as life so commonly was in the past. Many of us have serial romances, getting deeply involved with several people before we commit to one indefinitely. Or, losing a committed relationship through death or divorce, and seeking a new one. And we often have complex careers, or complex problems to overcome; women are more and more the actors in their own lives, not mere reactors. But the notion of true love persists, even though the likelihood of spending one’s entire adult life with one person in wedded bliss with no problems at all is small. I still like it. The romantic ideal still appeals to me. And so I read romances.

Oh, and there’s the optimism thing. Romances don’t typically end with dead bodies, or the main characters going to prison, or people falling into depraved and self-destructive habits. They don’t end with the bad guys winning. They don’t end with a question mark, as if the writer has simply given up on trying to find a solution to all the problems besetting the characters. Romances might start with negativity, but they inevitably vector to the positive. I like that. A romance doesn’t focus on the decay of a heroine, but on her striving to become a better, happier person, sometimes by fighting others, and sometimes by fighting herself. When a romance is written honestly, it’s impossible not to root for the heroine and hero, and be happy that by the end they find happiness together.

But after a long period of there being lots of straightforward romances, we have entered another confusing stage in publishing. There still are plenty of romances being published. But now there is a wide range of novels with female protagonists that may or may not have strong romantic elements. Plus, the definition of what is a romance is ever shifting to accommodate new trends.

For instance, The Touch of Twilight, an urban fantasy novel by Vicki Pettersson. Is it a romance? It doesn’t look like one, and there’s nothing to suggest a romance in the back cover blurb. But who knows? There might be some romance inside. We can see from the cover that it stars a female. Who has a knife in her hand. Cool. Then there’s Veil of Midnight, by Lara Adrian. Similar kind of title, but this one is called a paranormal romance on the spine, and a man and woman are embracing on the cover, which is a universal signal that this story contains romance. But how much romance? On the other hand, Cursed, by Jamie Leigh Hansen, just has a man on the cover. But it too is billed as a paranormal romance. Which of these three books from three different publishers is the most romantic? We’ll have to read all three to find out.

Or, what about 8 Sandpiper Way, by Debbie Macomber, which is billed simply as a novel, a nod to her bestseller status? The blurb at least suggests that the story is about some marital concerns and includes a reunion for another romantic pair. Is it a romance? I’m not sure. Is No Good Girls, by Jean Marie Pierson, a romance or chick lit, in other words, a quest story involving several young urban women? And what about Unlacing Lilly, by Gail Ranstrom? It contains a strong skullduggery plot in period costume, and at one point, the hero gives the heroine the 19th century version of the Vulcan nerve pinch. There’s sex in this book and a happy ever after, but is it a romance? And so it goes. I’m back to sifting my way through novels again, looking for the romantic themes that interest me.

But the good stuff is out there. And bottom line, all romances are inspirational. They show that a woman can find the person who is right for her, as well as solve big problems or win a battle against difficult odds. Or just get lucky. Romances end happily. Although there is a well-defined school of social thought that claims that in real life most stories end in failure, romances presume success. In a nation whose byword is success, it makes sense that these novels are popular. Romances are book-length affirmations that goodness exists, that true love exists, that evil can be defeated, and more. Read a romance today. Or whatever it’s being billed as by the publisher. It might help you find the strength to make a positive difference in your world.

Laughing at the Classics

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:40:00 +0000

Romance comics were invented in the 1940s and hit their peak in the early 1950s. They continued to sell well into the 1960s but died a miserable death in the early 1970s when the majority of young women in America simply did not want to think of themselves as anguishing over a date, or a first kiss, or a marriage proposal the same way they had been just ten years before. Of course they still anguished. But doing so was not fashionable. Especially as the women’s movement had revved up. There was some serious fronting.

Romance comics could be silly, but in the early days at least, they often dealt with real problems. Whether to stay in a dead-end job in a dead-end town, for instance. What to do about that pesky sister or best friend who kept stealing your boyfriends. Whether to risk an office romance, when maybe you were being conned by some married coworker who didn’t wear his wedding ring. Chances of that happening weren’t good in a small town where everybody knew everybody. But in a big city, it often happened. It still happens today, but women have a new line of defense: they can check guys out on the Internet. They read their Facebook or MySpace pages, or their blogs. They Google the guys to see if old girlfriends have written unflattering reports, or accused them of being players.

Of course the biggest lies told in a romantic relationship are the lies you tell yourself. Sometimes, you just have to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Or else you’ll cry. Or smash something. And that’s when laughing at romance comics is a welcome idea.

It is easy to laugh at old romance comics because they became a cliché. They were drawn in a very distinctive, lush style and often were overwritten and thus extremely emotional. I’ve complained before in this blog that dissing these romance comics is like shooting fish in a barrel. Too easy, and basically a cheap trick. Dated material that you read with no sympathy always comes across as stupid.

While reading these comics, I’ve often wondered if real girls and women ever behaved this way. Since the stories were 99.9% written by men, and long before I was around to see the same world they did, the jury is out on that speculation. The writers may have been accurately describing what they saw. They may have been far off base. They may have been copying what they saw was popular in other media, such as in romantic movies or romance novels. Who’s to know for sure? Robert Kanigher, for instance, wrote many issues of many comics, Wonder Woman chief among them. And even though he was responsible for some of the silliest Wonder Woman comics—the ones that defied science or logic because they featured three iterations of Wonder Woman at once: herself as an adult, herself as Wonder Girl, and herself as Wonder Tot, all together in adventures with “their” mother, Queen Hippolyta—well, even though Robert Kanigher perpetrated these on the world, I loved them when I first read them. And I still love them. Kanigher had tapped into a genuine female family dynamic. He had a family of his own to draw ideas from, of course. You don’t have to be a woman to write credibly about the women you have known, including your own wife, daughter, or sister.

That said, I was attracted to Truer than True Romance, published in 2001, a romance comic spoof, because the wiseacre text that replaces the original text was written by a woman, not a man. And the project had the full cooperation of DC Comics, which opened its vault to provide the original art that allowed author Jeanne Martinet to make mock of the romance comic genre.

Although there are some hilarious moments, this concept is better in snapshot form than in story form. Individual panels can be totally killing, for instance, the one about the girl with the very short haircut who is having an extreme bad hair day. Entire stories, stuck with the visual continuity of a straight romance from the past, tend to come across as bizarre. Martinet tries her best to write new text that takes advantage of the excesses of this old genre. But the whole isn’t bigger than the parts most of the time. Except when the heroine of one story, now titled “Loving Gay Men,” apparently has a psychotic episode and imagines a happy ending love scene with a swan. Now that was weird enough to be interesting. The woman with the fetish about not checking her luggage on an airplane was kinda neat, too. Surreal and funny. But 15 pages about a girl who is very pretty yet empty inside dating a guy who is the same? It was hardly a hoot on the first page and it never got any better. And of course, that’s the problem. These rewritten romances are bad romances to begin with. Try rewriting a good one. That might be very interesting.

With the technology available even on cheap PCs today, we all can rewrite any old comic to our heart’s content. We can even snatch panels from other comics and create our own pastiches that have the romantic moments for which we often wait in vain, comic books being what they are today. Imagine taking a romantic moment from an old comic and just dropping it into the middle of a new one. You don’t have to draw to make comics anymore. (Just don’t publish them. Art is subject to copyright.)

I’m looking forward to the day when I can make this happen with movies, too. The movie makers already can. But I want to do it at home for fun. I’d make Han Solo tell Princess Leia that he adores her. Maybe even in the first Star Wars movie. Definitely in the second.

Yes, He’s Hot

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:51:00 +0000

There are many reasons for women to watch James Bond movies. The pleasure of seeing things blow up. Car chases. Guns. Gorgeous scenery. But the best reason has always been James Bond.

A girl has to have someone to dream about, and it has been a long time since real princes have conjured up the amount of glamor that a movie star does. The exception would be the current young heartthrob in England, Prince William. Modern European princes are mostly descendants of Queen Victoria and various German princelings, and most have undistinguished looks. But Princess Diana brought striking height and handsomeness to the Windsor line. A few Continental princes are shaping up as handsomely as Prince William, but they don’t get much exposure in America. According to VIP Gossip, Prince William tops the list of world’s hottest royals. He has youth and health, imposing height, regular features, and blond hair all going for him. Not to mention the inheritance of the glamor crown of Europe. Why shouldn’t he be deemed the hottest royal in the world?

But my favorite on the list is Andrea Casiraghi, a son of Princess Caroline of Monaco, and thus a grandson of another supremely beautiful woman, Princess Grace. Who was a movie star. Maybe it’s just the hair and the air of youth. Health and happiness also play a part in how appealing a person is. Modern princes don’t have a tremendous physical advantage over the rest of us. These days, they don’t get to dress in gold and furs and jewels all the time to impress. About the most they’re allowed are some snazzy Victorian-era military uniforms, or maybe a few orders and medals. Thus today the visual difference between a king and some ordinary joe isn’t very much, at least, not in a country where many people enjoy good health, good dentistry, and good hygiene. There are lots of surfer dudes in California and Australia who are on a par of handsomeness with any royal. And with any movie star. Princes no longer impress crowds by being the tallest, the healthiest, or the cleanest person these pathetic peasants have ever seen. (Nor is everyone else covered in s**t, as the Monty Python movie joke goes.)

So, yes, if you want to dream about a prince, it’s still possible. But we get more exposure to and exposure from movie stars. Movie stars don’t get to be stars unless they have photographic charisma, a kind of chemistry with the camera that makes photos of them stunning regardless of how ordinary they may look in real life. They also often take off their clothes in the course of a role, and let’s be honest, sex appeal is lodged in the body. If we get to see the body, we are more likely to be attracted than if we see the person clothed. And movie stars today make sure their bodies look great. Yes, there’s a lot of plastic surgery done in Hollywood (and other moviemaking meccas), but that’s not enough anymore. Movie stars are likely to work as hard as athletes with personal trainers to obtain their stunningly buff bodies. Today’s stars are very conscious of how competitive they must look if and when their shirts—or other clothes—come off. A good haircut and the right angle from the camera help, but being buff is achieved through long, hard work in the gym. It’s kind of interesting that we now are very aware that movie stars actually work to attain their visual impact. We used to think it was all a gift of nature. (Princes don’t have to be as buff, and it shows.)

The Washington Post introduced me to this photo of Daniel Craig as James Bond, with the caption “We don’t have any real reason for running this photo except, jeez, look at this guy.” I agree, and he’s not even gorgeous in a pretty way. He’s gorgeous in a dirty, tired, dripping blood, I’ll handle-whatever-comes-next way. My hero.

I ran out to the see the first showing of the new Bond movie, “Quantum of Solace” because I like car chases and seeing things blow up and pretty scenery. But the real reason was James Bond as portrayed by Daniel Craig. I liked him a lot in the previous Bond movie. I had hopes this one would please me, too. And it did, although now I am wishing there had been more intimate moments in the plot and maybe one less car chase. But, jeez, look at this guy. Hot.

Masquerades

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:48:00 +0000

Costumes are a big part of Halloween, which is a favorite American autumn pseudo holiday. I say pseudo because it’s not a legal holiday and no one gets the day off from their job. Well, wait. I know of at least one exception. I once worked with a woman who called herself a witch. The good kind, of course. She insisted on taking Halloween off, but would not take other, more common religious holidays. Management let her. You go, Paty.

As I was saying. Halloween is a favorite American day and night of silly costumes, rustling in the dark, parties, and candy. Little children parade around in costumes at school, teachers dress up, and everywhere you go that day, you’ll find people doing their usual jobs wearing a costume. Or at least a silly hat. I myself am wearing my royal crown today. (No, I didn’t get it at Burger King. Mine is plastic, not paper.) Then there’s the trick or treating, where young children go door to door to have their costumes admired and receive candy. And finally, there are the parties. Bobbing for apples, going on hayrides, and playing games, plus costume contests.

Adults hold costume parties that often are rowdy. Masquerade balls have always been a staple of high society, which does not mean that proper behavior was the rule. To the contrary; being in disguise tends to bring out the wildness in people. And of course in Venice and other Italian cities, the pre-Lent period of Carnival was traditionally a time for disguising oneself in a domino, an all-enveloping, loose cloak with a mask. Such masks have frequently covered up a lot of adultery and thuggery. You’ll still see characters wearing dominos in operas taking place prior to the 20th century. Mardi Gras in New Orleans continues the tradition of religiously-linked costumed revelry in North America, and Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is the longest. Bottom line, all of these masquerades involve frisky goings on.

But for romance characters, the masquerade is a more purposeful event. Scared-but-excited heroines dare to be seen in revealing witch costumes à la Elvira, or strapless Wonder Woman uniforms, or short-skirted sexy nurse outfits (no orthopedic shoes allowed), or Princess Leia the Slave Girl metal bikinis. Why do heroines do it? Mostly in hopes of losing their inhibitions for just one night. Of being the belle of the ball. Of attracting attention as they never have felt comfortable dealing with in their regular lives. Do they get in trouble? You bet. Most romance heroines who wear sexy costumes attract exactly the kind of attention they can’t handle. And it all goes downhill from there. The virginal heroine suddenly has to make good on her slutty costume. Or run away from the handsome hero who takes her naughty wrapper for her real personality. It makes for a lot of fun in a romance. (Maybe not so much fun in real life if the outrageous costume is taken too seriously.) Flirting with a dangerous-looking man who’s dressed as a vampire could turn into an erotic encounter with a real vampire. And then, the masquerade ends and the heroine has to live with the consequences of her behavior.

But romance heroines aren’t behaving a lot differently from regular office workers. Every year, the media carries stories of how managers need to outline in advance what costumes are acceptable at offices on Halloween. And send employees home to change if they don’t adhere to the dress code. Still, there’s always somebody who learns the hard way that a stripper outfit is not suitable office attire.

Although heroes in romances usually dress in romantic costumes like knights or pirates, cross dressing can have its romantic side. Check out Georgette Heyer’s classic historical romance, The Masqueraders. Published in 1928, this is a romantic tale of a sister and brother who are hiding in plain sight in London society after the 1745 rebellion in Scotland. Their method? Switching genders. It’s a delightful comedy of manners that at the same time is extremely romantic.

Today we’re more likely to see a hero or heroine as a spy in disguise, with romance not part of the original plan. The amazing part is when the female agent manages to pull micro-sized weapons out of her extremely tight or almost nonexistent costume. She’ll bemuse the competitive co-agent, entrap the lustful villain, and fulfill her mission despite the seeming impossibility of even moving in her costume.

But there’s another kind of masquerade that is common in romances that does not involve Halloween or a grand ball. It’s the classic makeover. A hitherto-dowdy heroine gets a good wardrobe, a good haircut, and a chance to shine in her social sphere. And she makes the most of it, at first masquerading as a more confident woman. Then becoming one. Romances featuring this kind of situation are too numerous to cite specifically, but we’ve all read them. They can range from the simple country girl goes to town plot to a marriage or engagement of convenience, to any other plot device that requires that a modest-dressing heroine suddenly breaks out into a sexy new look. Sometimes, though, authors go overboard trying to establish a contrast. In Emilie Loring’s In Times Like These, the heroine is wearing mourning before she gets her new outfit. Mourning! In 1968! I don’t think so. Still, the heroine duly receives a Brand New Outfit, which makes her feel like a new woman and restores her feminine self-confidence. Not to mention makes the hero fall for her.

And that’s the point of all this disguising. Regardless of the reason for running around Rio or New Orleans in a costume, the purpose of costumes in a romance is romance.

Is This Man a Romance Hero?

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:55:00 +0000

I found this photo stuck in an old novel that had been in the basement of a neighbor. My neighbor’s late wife of half a century had gotten the book at a yard sale, he thought. But who was this youngish man in the photo? A family member? A stranger? He’s well dressed, in a three-piece suit and a high collar. I’m not an expert on dress, but I’d guess from his hair parted in the middle that we’re talking sometime before 1935. A costume expert would know for sure.

And was he young? Was he a “college man,” as they used to call them, home for the holidays, but nicely dressed because it was Thanksgiving? And because people did dress more formally eighty years ago? It’s an informal shot of a formally dressed man. He has some creases in his face, but I’m not sure if they indicate age, or merely that he has a thin, long face. He’s standing in front of a rock wall, and there might be a scarf hanging on a bare bush next to him. Or it might be part of a fence. His suit looks to be thick wool. Was he an accountant, a banker, an attorney?

I took the photo back to the neighbor, and his elderly sister thought it might be “Frank.” A cousin, or brother, or something. So I gave them back the photo. But I had already been captivated by this image from so long ago.

I’ve been captivated by images before, and in fact that’s a key plot event in many romances, especially in time travel, Gothic, and ghost stories. The heroine sees a portrait or a photograph of a person, and begins to wonder about the person and weave stories. And then investigate the person. And next thing you know, she travels back in time and has a romance with that handsome man in the portrait! Often in such stories, the portraits take on different aspects depending on the time of day, or upon some sort of ghostly possession of them. The eyes follow the heroine. The expression changes. Even the background alters.

But having seen many portraits of well-known kings, queens, and courtiers, I am not so sure that portraiture in real life is accurate. People who commission paintings of themselves usually insist on being made ideal. Their figure faults and facial flaws are obliterated. In an era when many people were pock marked, for instance, seldom are marks seen in portraits. And was George Washington really as well muscled as the painters portray him?

We’re so lucky to have photography now. We can see what a person looked like for real. Or is this true? Images can be manipulated by a skilled photographer even without air brushing and the myriad of computer retouching techniques. Just with the pose and the available light. So there’s a possibility that this man, who looks so seriously at the camera, was actually a fun-loving fellow who seldom was seen without a smile. Only this time, he was. We have all experienced instances of looking strange to ourselves in photos. It’s not so much the shock and denial of “Do I really look like that?” It’s more that the camera has created an image of us that we ordinarily do not project. A dark-haired baby can look blond. A doofus of a guy can look intelligent. With careful lighting, a person with a round head can appear to have a long head. Check out this early photo of Phil Collins, who despite the rock star treatment, persistently looks like a typical working class Brit with whom you’d raise a glass of ale in a pub anytime. But there was an effort to pretend he fit the skinny-faced mold of the typical rock star. When Garth Brooks had his flirtation with rock music, he did the same thing, trying to hide his full face half in shadows, so he would have the same familiar look of the alt rocker.

It’s the same with height. The heroic paradigm is to be tall. And you will find that in most romances, the hero is the tallest person in the book. If he is not described as very tall, but is specifically said to be of average height, then no one else is described as taller than he is. And forget a hero who is short. I’ve yet to run across a single one.

As for baldness, although I remember having a conversation with a romance writer who was pro baldness, I can’t offhand think of a single romance hero who is balding. Maybe today he’d have a shaved head. But no already-receded hairlines. It’s a hero thing. And it’s ironic, since baldness has to do with testosterone levels as well as with genetics.

So the typical romance hero is tall, dark, and with a long face. Is my mystery man a romance hero? Hopefully he was to some woman.

Minx, We Hardly Knew Ye

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:24:00 +0000

Minx, a line of graphic novels aimed at teenage girls and introduced with much fanfare and a large budget by DC Comics in 2006, has been canceled. Much discussion about DC’s decision to throw in the towel after the line has been out a bare two years has centered on Minx’s dearth of female creators, its unfortunate placement in bookstores, and its lack of the fantasy elements so beloved by teenage girls. And people are wondering why DC Comics pulled the plug so quickly, since it was trying to carve out a completely new niche for realistic girls’ comics and needed to build an audience. There is no already-established audience for realistic teenage girls’ comics. There is a huge established audience for manga, but Minx was not manga. Apparently, some people got confused. They thought that girls who like pretty art with beautiful young men who look like fashion models (manga) would want to read deliberately realistic, even exaggeratedly awkward art with ugly young men who look like they’ve never matched a tie to a suit (Minx). No.

Or at least, no to a huge immediate audience, and no to instant impact in the market. And now, by canceling the line, no to a chance to find that audience simply by being in the market long enough to earn a place.

It’s not easy to start a new anything. In fact, 99% of all new businesses fail, usually due to a combination of marketing mistakes, sheer bad luck, and undercapitalization. But DC Comics is one of the big two comic book companies, and it has plenty of capital, access to marketing intelligence, and the ability to hire dedicated and creative people. Still, Minx ended up being treated the way comic books have always been treated: a quick in and a quick out if the title doesn’t instantly sell big. There was no time allowed for a slow build. DC could have scaled down its ambitions and kept on printing these books, albeit in smaller quantities. It even could afford to let Minx run completely in the red for years as a vanity project, burnishing the DC Comics reputation as a publisher all the while, until the audience found it or a lucrative movie deal put it in the black. Many a book and magazine publisher does just that, including DC Comics itself, which continues to publish Wonder Woman because of the value of its licensing and Hollywood potential.

If a small press publisher had been producing the Minx books, you can bet that the publisher would have gotten a second job or mortgaged the house and kept on publishing them, possibly less often and only as money came in to justify another title. But large corporations don’t operate this way. Minx may be viewed as a balance sheet failure yet in reality it was a commitment failure at the highest decision-making levels. Even though DC got lots of good press for publishing them and the books themselves got fairly good reviews, only big sales would satisfy. Yet given time, the Minx books could have found a secure if small niche in the graphic novel world.

What the lack of success--and quick demise--of Minx tells us is that if you want to do something different, you have to plan to build your audience yourself. You’re not going to be able to just take over some other audience that happens to be the age and the gender you want. Nor is success likely to occur instantly. But must it involve a huge outlay of capital? Not necessarily. Many dedicated small presses have sprung up, both Internet and Print on Demand, headed by individuals with a personal passion for publishing. Like MyRomanceStory.com. Instead of waiting for the big two comic book companies to come around to the idea of publishing romance comics for adult women, we have done it ourselves.

So as painful as the cancellation of Minx is (think John Donne’s “any man’s death diminishes me”), all hope is not lost. We’re here. Others are out there. Sooner or later, it’s all going to come together in a big whoosh of success.

Trashy Romances and High Culture, Sisters under the Skin

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:57:00 +0000

People who don’t read romances often dismiss them by saying they are all the same. This sameness is given as the main reason that romance should be considered trash fiction. The haters usually go on to insist that there is a formula that authors use to write romances. And that anything written to a formula is to be despised. And in conclusion, that people who like reading the same thing over and over are to be despised as well.

Strong words, but you’ll hear those and stronger from many detractors of romances. I’ve defended various aspects of this argument before. And cleverly, I believe. Others have written wonderful defenses. But I’ve just had a new thought, and it made me laugh so much I had to get out of bed and write it down.

You see, yesterday I attended the Verdi opera, “La Traviata,” and three days ago, I saw Act II of “La Traviata,” sung by different people in a different opera house with a different set and costumes, and possibly, with different cuts. Later this season I’m going to see Shakespeare’s play, “A Winter’s Tale,” put on by the Folger Shakespeare Theater. But I saw it only a few years ago at the Washington Shakespeare Theatre. Different casts, different sets, different productions. But still, the same thing. In fact, pretty much the same words and arias.

Hmm...does this strike a familiar note? I’m seeing the same thing over and over. But it’s never exactly the same, because it is live theater. Because each production has different sets and costumes and makes different cuts. Cuts? Yes, most operas and all of Shakespeare are cut to make their running times shorter for modern audiences, and to remove comedy shtick that simply isn’t funny a couple hundred years later (like jokes about the Irish, which used to be common in British plays). And of course the actors are different each time. The singers are different each time. In fact, although “La Traviata” is the same opera year after year, it is different every time I see or hear it.

Exactly like romances. Each new romance may try to capture the spirit of previous romances, and may even tread very similar ground in terms of plot and characters. But each romance is different. Reading a romance is a singular experience, just as seeing any performance of an opera or play is unique to that night, that production, and those actors.

This concept really blows my mind, because then of course it can be widened to include symphonies, which people go to hear over and over even though the musicians wear pretty much the same formal outfits in each, and their positions on the stage are dictated by custom, and symphonies have a set structure, and the music is supposedly the same. But each conductor makes the music come out differently and every musician plays his or her instrument differently. That’s why people go to hear the same symphonies again and again. And buy multiple copies of the same music, each performed by different orchestras.

Does this hold true with ballet? Sure. With chamber music? Of course. With Edward Albee plays? Yes. How about paintings? If an entire room at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is dedicated to Monet water lily paintings, and the room has natural light, the experience is different from seeing the same paintings one at a time mixed with other artists’ works, in galleries that display them in interior rooms with no natural light. After all, Claude Monet painted them in a series, outside.

And then of course there is what we the audience bring to these experiences. If I am feeling unhappy when I begin reading a romance, I may start sobbing when the heroine experiences a setback. And then feel much better when she reaches her happy ending. If I am tired when I arrive at the opera, I may be impatient if it opens with a standard “We are the Happy Villagers” song. (Presumably, this kind of opening scene exists because aristocrats in prior centuries constantly arrived late to these events. But to me it’s dead air.) Operas have already cut the mind-numbing ballets that used to be standard between acts, but I guess they can’t cut those villagers, because they sing. Romance writers used to give very elaborate descriptions of scenery. Think of Daphne du Maurier’s extended descriptions of the terrain in Jamaica Inn, for instance, or Emily Bronte’s obsessive descriptions of the moors in Wuthering Heights. Now romances spend less space on geography (and on symbolic imagery and hyperbole), and more on emotional scenery. Whether I am impatient with descriptive details or am willing to sit back and soak them up has a lot to do with my enjoyment of a particular romance. And for that matter, if I am in the mood for something traditional, and the artist surprises me with something experimental, I might get turned off.

What about re-reading an old favorite romance? Isn’t the experience slightly different each time? Don’t we find new things to admire in the best writers with each reading? Yes, and that’s why those romances are keepers. It’s also why some operas get performed constantly and others are rarely done. And why some Shakespeare plays are seldom staged, and others, like “Romeo and Juliet,” have such universally relevant themes that they are recreated over and over, and in every medium possible.

It has never bothered me that I have a taste for both highbrow and lowbrow culture. But most people I know like only one, and have misconceptions about the other without any depth of experience of it. This is a shame. Romance is a cornerstone of human interaction, and so any work of art that attempts to describe human behavior is likely to have some romantic element to it. Romance readers who only read romances and don’t open themselves to a wider cultural experience are missing a lot. And of course, we romance readers know that people who don’t read romances are missing a lot, too.

Teen Idols

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:04:00 +0000

I have memorized the Jonas Brothers’ names. I know that Nick Carter was in the Backstreet Boys, not in ‘N Sync. I have more trouble with Mark Wahlberg. Was he from the New Kids on the Block? But then who is Donny Wahlberg? And I am struggling to recall the names of the boys in Hanson, a boy group that was wildly popular 15 years ago. Jacob? Another Joe?

I’m not deeply interested in every teen idol band, but I want to keep current with popular culture. Because teen idols often are terribly important to many people, they become touchstones of popular culture. They are windows into how Americans are thinking and feeling. So are romances. Right now we have several very different strains of romance that are popular. And they are extremely different. It’s a long distance between the Christian evangelical publishers’ squeaky-clean sexual attitudes (okay, call it prudery) and the erotica writers’ anything-goes attitudes (sure, call it porno for women if you want to. But be ready for a fight). These books represent philosophical and spiritual belief systems in diametrical opposition.

And then there is paranormal romance, which has been extremely popular for several years now. In paranormals, vampires or werewolves usually are not the villains, but the misunderstood heroes. They make a strong pitch to obtain or retain civil rights that may be denied them by ordinary humans. Lots of these vampires don’t suck human blood and are okay people, too. And the werewolves have strong family ties but their pack mentality and the rules under which they live (including their sexual practices) are strange to humans. If this isn’t symbolic about ethnic and other groups that suffer discrimination, I can’t imagine what else it means.

But what if I want to read a more conventional romance? There still are plenty that attempt to be relevant to women’s issues today without drawing a line in the sand involving religious beliefs. There are plenty of romances that don’t involve canine teeth and blood-sucking tendencies. And there even are romances in which there is fur, but it’s the fur provided by some über-rich, cosmopolitan hero. We’ve all laughed at the Greek tycoons and Italian billionaires and the crazy book titles that Harlequin is using currently. But as a very canny old man once told me, if you see a thing twice in the marketplace, it’s making money. So another genuinely popular strain in romances today, and it’s an all-time classic, is the rich man story, in which there is a tremendous disparity in wealth and power between the hero and the heroine that threatens to turn her into some kind of love slave or baby mama (putting a polite face on shenanigans involving sexual services that resemble prostitution, but which of course will develop into true love).

As much as I am eager to find the newest trend in romance, and exhaust my interest in it by reading the same kinds of storylines over and over, I also want to keep up with the rest of the world that gets reflected in romances. Which brings me to horror comics being popular during Republican administrations (check it out; there’s a definite trend), and the rise of a single soaring pop music idol group or individual every decade versus the fad pop stars who come and go.

Which of course brings me to Elvis. Elvis Presley’s meteoric music career has been described in great detail elsewhere, but the chief aspects are these: Fusion of several strains of white and black music, new and overtly sexual moves while performing the music, and one hot guy with a tragic ending. Elvis was so wildly popular amongst teenagers that his personal life became big news 50 years ago. His career had dramatic twists and turns and ups and downs. And he died young, which made him a genuine rock and roll legend, the King. Elvis went from “who is that low-class truck driver with the dirty moves on stage?” to “irrelevant near has-been” to “back on top with his legend secure” to “the key popularizer of black music to whites in America.”

My funny Elvis story is this: I once worked in an office where it seemed like a good idea to have a known hobby-type interest. It gave me something to joke about with my co-workers that didn’t involve me in anything deeply personal and wasn’t threatening to anyone. So I let it get around that I had a thing for Elvis Presley. It was a harmless exaggeration. The people I worked with were a nice bunch. When it was time for silly office gifts, they gave me cute Elvis-themed items. I truly appreciated the thought, and I liked the presents. And I never told them that over a lifetime of listening to Elvis songs on the radio, I actually had only bought two Elvis records while he was alive, and I never had gone to any of his movies or his live concerts. I wasn’t one of his original screaming teen fans. Still, I really liked playing my own personal copy of “Blue Christmas” in an endless loop.

But why try to learn something about the Jonas Brothers? Why is knowing their names important to me? Because that makes them people, not just a teen phenomenon I can ignore because I’m not a teenager. It’s so easy to get in a rut, to listen to the same music or pick up the same types of romances over and over. And I don’t want to do that. I want to find what is new and different. I may not like it, but I want to know about it. I do appreciate Elvis as a musician today far more than I ever did in the past, but that doesn’t mean that I play his music every day, or even every month. I listen to what is new, just as I read new types of romances.

When I’m a geezer on a quiz show some day, I want to amaze and awe the audience by being able to name the teen idols of generations younger than my own. Or identify the popular romance authors that younger women are reading. I have spent much time learning about the art and artists of generations before me. But although I want to honor the past, I also want to participate in the future as it becomes the present. So I don’t just go around condemning rap music, a cliché attitude that brands a generation as grouchy geezers. And I don’t want to condemn out of hand even romances whose sexual details are breathtakingly different from what I am used to. That does not mean that I’m going to major in those new trends. But I want to know about them for myself, not just develop a second-hand, knee jerk negative opinion derived from ignorance. That’s why I want to remember the names of the current boy sensations.

Romance Keepers

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:44:00 +0000

First, I’d better explain what a keeper is. I remember how the little stack of paperback novels in my bedroom as a teenager slowly began to be a bookcase worth of books, and then another, and then another. Even though I am a lifelong library patron (currently a proud carrier of cards from five library systems), I couldn’t always find what I wanted at the library, especially the latest books out in paperback. So I bought books. And they started to pile up, and then I ran out of space to keep them. And then they went into boxes in the attic, and then...well, and then, one day I decided to de-clutter and get rid of some. But I kept a few, the best ones. Hence, keepers.

We all have to make these decisions once the volume of what we own becomes too large for the space we control. As a teenager, my only active space was my bedroom. The love of reading can populate a room fast. And I kept running out of space, which was why I resorted to putting books in the attic. Later, living in apartments, I kept adding to my collection of books. I didn’t get rid of them unless they were really awful, true disappointments, the kind of book you want to throw against the wall. By the time I moved into a house, I had so many romance paperbacks that my bookshelves were floor to ceiling around two sides of a large bedroom. By the next house, they took up three sides. And there wasn’t any more space available for my books, because the rest of the house had its own collections of books of more general interest.

Somewhere along the line, I realized what other romance readers have concluded. Many of these books were merely of the moment, and I never wanted or needed to read them again. Whatever the writer had to tell me I absorbed in one fast session. There weren’t additional layers of meaning to find on a second reading. Compare that to when I have re-read Jane Austen; I always saw something new, something I missed the first time around. That’s the difference between good literature and most popular fiction.

But not all popular fiction. There are some romances that grab me, and when I re-read them, I like them all over again. Sometimes there’s merely a scene or a mood that I liked, but I want to hold onto the book to hold onto the memory of that scene or mood. Which is why I kept this riff on the bestselling First Wives Club, called The Payback Club, by Rexanne Becnel (published in 2006). It touched a nerve about women’s experiences of being betrayed and dumped by their husbands and wanting revenge; it was a funny book; and it had a happy romantic ending.

I kept The Contestant, by Stephanie Doyle (published in 2005), because of the heroine. This story about some people stuck on a “Survivor”-type TV show island, where murder and mayhem ensue, features a heroine who was an impressive problem-solver. She knew a lot about how to save her own life. Sure, there’s a romantic hero in the book, and a happy ending. But the ultra-competent heroine was the reason this book was a keeper. Romances in the past have featured too many ridiculously incompetent women, made more so by the authors’ inability to imagine a man big enough to be a hero to a woman of ability. Sad, really. In The Contestant, the heroine was a former Olympian and she had the grit of a competitor. Cool.

Another keeper, a book that I never even think of disposing of, is Babe in the Woods, by Jackie Merritt (published in 1990). This is the Hottest Trapped-in-a-Cabin Story Ever. Okay, today I suppose there are erotica writers who have written far sexier stories. But this is a straight romance, and it is hot. Even just skimming it today while scanning it, I was caught up in the dynamic sexual tension between the super-hunky cowboy hero and the fish-out-of-water city heroine. It’s a terrific book and has stood the test of time, too.

Vanora Bennett’s Portrait of an Unknown Woman (published in 2007) is a keeper on probation. What interests me about this book is that the story was set at a key moment in Tudor times, when Henry VIII was pushing Sir Thomas More to accept his changes to the practice of religion in England. Technically, the Roman Catholic Church considers More a martyr because he was executed for his refusal. Nice, sunny romance material to keep, you’re thinking. But I find Tudor times fascinating and this book’s romance between a member of More’s household and Hans Holbein, painter of the best known portrait of Henry VIII, had a lot of atmosphere. But as I said, it’s on probation. Chiefly, I’m keeping it for the cover. And in these days of home scanning, I don’t need to hold onto an entire book just to enjoy the cover. (More on me and book covers another time.)

Today I don’t usually wait long to decide if a book is a keeper. It either goes directly to a charity donation pile, or it goes to one book shelf. After it sits on that bookshelf, if I can’t even remember why I liked it, it goes to the charity box. If I think there is some reason that I will want to read it again or read another book by that author, it goes down to the basement, where I have a wall of bookshelves filled with keepers.

If you have a garage, attic, or basement filled with boxes of books, isn’t it time you sorted through them and found the keepers? And sent the others on their way?

Color-blind Romance

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:19:00 +0000

Several months ago, someone praised us on this blog for publishing romances between characters who are not merely blandly typical white Americans. The praise was a little more than we deserve, perhaps. We haven’t gone out of our way to produce edgy romantic pairings, for instance. But it’s true that we’ve featured a number of romances with African-American lead characters, not all of whom are Denzel Washington or Halle Berry physical types with white facial features (“Love Potion II,” “Love’s Redemption”).We’ve also done a story with Asian-American characters (“Beloved Rivals”). We’ve even done a story with Asian-Canadian characters, “Trust in Me.” (I’m not claiming any credit for our romances between Americans and foreign nationals, such as “Broken Enchantment,” since those already are common in all romances.) Race and ethnicity have not been major issues in these stories, just facts like other physical details. Although they could have been. But men and women in love have pretty much the same feelings no matter what they look like or where they hail from. And they always have plenty of potential for conflict without bringing race or ethnicity into it.

Last night, when Barack Obama accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, I watched his speech and thought, “This guy thinks he can make this country’s future better.” It was a good speech and it left me with a hopeful feeling. Only later, when other people commented on the historic nature of an African-American man being nominated to run for president by a major national political party, did I think about how much the country has changed. Growing up in an international city like Washington, DC, and then living in New York City for a decade, with its massively diverse racial and ethnic population, has made me comfortable with differentness in a way that many others in America perhaps still are not. Hence my concentration on Barack Obama’s message rather than on who he is historically. Yet, things have changed.

Today, we have another historic nomination: John McCain has chosen a woman governor, Sarah Palin, to be his vice presidential running mate. This is the first time a woman has had this role in the Republican party. And considering Senator McCain’s age versus her age (72 to 44), it’s proof that an old dog can learn new tricks. Which is good news for our country, because it means we don’t have to stay mired in out-dated attitudes that don’t serve our nation well.

And there is even better news about the younger generations who will eventually dominate this country. More and more, people’s outlooks are not so dependent on where they were born and into what social setting. This is another byproduct of the Internet, of course. The Way We’ll Be, a new book by John Zogby, details the results of extensive surveys from all ages and demographic groups. He specifically cites 18- to 29-year-olds as “the most outward-looking and accepting generation in American history.” That’s what we need, what he calls “the first color-blind Americans.”

What all this has to do with romance is simple enough. There was a time when most of the romances published in this country were written by white citizens of the British Commonwealth. There was plenty of racial and ethnic bias in those books, mostly implicit rather than explicit. (And there still is. How else can an entire story take place in Africa but feature only white people?) Then American authors took back romance. Uniquely American situations and solutions began to permeate romance. These included men being willing to change jobs to accommodate the careers of the women they loved (Jayne Krentz’s innovation), open discussion of sexuality and of female sexual response (fewer deflowerings and more women who knew what they wanted in bed), and stories about women who survived sexual abuse (rape survivors, spousal abuse victims who escaped, and more). We also started to see, slowly, stories about characters of mixed ethnic background. Yes, stories about American Indians, but modern ones, about reality-based conflicts. And we began to read about Italian-American and Latino characters with strong family ties and their struggles to honor such ties even as they fell in love with people of different ethnic backgrounds. And we saw entire publishing programs of romances written by African-American writers about African-American characters. Of all sorts of types and backgrounds. Asian characters have very slowly crossed into romances, too. Gay and lesbian characters are finally beginning to show up, although mostly as secondary characters so far.

Epublishing has opened the doors to stories that conventional publishers seldom have dared take a risk on in the past and still are hesitant about today. Since the young generation is the most Internet linked, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing the edgy plots and situations from online publications. The audience is out there, and it is color blind.

Even though we don’t have a truly color-blind society yet, our recent political events are clearly signaling that we are heading in that direction. Fiction mirrors that fact. In our story, “Trust in Me,” there’s obviously some racial difference between the hero and the heroine, and nobody notices. It’s just there, a non-issue. I think that’s what color-blind romances should be. Stories in which the differences make no difference. We will be nominating more African-Americans and more women in presidential campaigns. And we will be writing more color-blind romances. Good for us.

Dip into Romance

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:21:00 +0000

There is a typical romance scene that appears in ranch romances and in some historical romances, too. The heroine takes a nude dip in the old swimming hole. And the hero comes by and catches her. He either embarrasses her and makes her beg for her clothes, or he joins her and seduces her on the spot, or some version of the two. Regardless, she’s clearly at a disadvantage because he has caught her in the nude. But he’s the man she’s going to end up with, so his unchivalrous behavior is part of a courtship, or at least a sex duel. To a man in love (or even not in love), seeing a healthy, nubile young female rise nude from the water would be exciting. Men’s sexuality is reputed to be distinctly visual in nature. (I say reputed because I have lived long enough to see many flat statements about sexuality revealed as socialized bias and misinformation.) And so it would be a moment of beauty (and lust). I am not sure what the point of this kind of scene is in a romance. Maybe it’s a way of freeing the heroine of the ugly trappings of whatever clothing (and thus behavior) custom demands she wears. Maybe it’s merely a way to get the characters beyond bickering to an awareness of their sexuality and their attraction to each other. But it’s a common scene in a romances and it can be beautiful.

Yet this very scene is one that in a bible tale is all ugliness, “Susannah and the Elders,” and is the basis for an even uglier modern opera, “Susannah.” In the bible, Susannah, a married woman, takes a bath nude outside on her own property, and some men see her. They accost her and try to extort sex out of her. When she refuses, they lodge a false accusation of adultery against her. In the bible story, a champion appears, Daniel, who proves that the men are liars. Susannah’s good name is restored, and her life is saved (since adultery carried a death penalty in those days). Not a pastoral bathing tale, but at least there’s a happy ending for the heroine. The nasty men are put to death.

In the opera “Susannah,” Susannah lives out in the woods, already an outsider in a narrow-minded, small Tennessee town, and she has the habit of bathing nude in a stream. Church elders in search of a baptism stream wander onto her property and see her. And they are aghast (maybe at their own visceral response, too, but they don’t admit it). To their narrow minds, bathing in the open air is a sin. They pillory her in the community for her unseemly behavior. Susannah doesn’t understand it and so the calls to repentance don’t move her. But the town makes her so miserable that she becomes prey to the traveling preacher, a hypocritical man who claims to be praying for her soul, but soon is claiming that he is a lonely man and needs a woman. He seduces her. Eventually, Susannah gets avenged, but by then her innocence, both sexual and psychological, has been destroyed. Proof that being perceived as sexy is enough to turn a woman into a hardened slut, presumably.

What a miserable story! Why on earth does the mainstream of American artistry gravitate to such messed-up, unhappy tales? Why be so interested in showing the bad about people? And why always show sexuality as a destroyer, when it is the giver of life? There is a strong strain of misery in American modern drama. And I have to ask why. America’s 20th century was painful in part, but compared to other countries, we got off lightly. Sure, we had the Great Depression. But we won World War II on foreign soil, not our own. We went on to bask in several decades of economic and political and social world dominance. Which is exactly when Carlisle Floyd wrote “Susannah.” What’s wrong with this picture? I don’t see why serious American dramas, especially operas, are so miserable.

One reason some of us stick to genre fiction is that mainstream writing seems fixated on the unpleasant. In the biblical tale, a savior proves the accusations against Susannah are false. But in the American opera, the town starts off against Susannah and it just gets worse from there. The trouble is, you can’t learn anything useful from a miserable tale like the opera “Susannah.” There is no effective communication, no honest negotiation or arbitration between her and the town. Seeing this opera does not tell an audience member how to rectify a similar problem in her or his own life. In fact, after seeing an opera like this, you might want to go out and slit your own throat because people are no damn good.

What’s so weird about this strain of depressing, supposedly realistic American dramatic art is that it ignores the typical American can-do efforts to triumph over bad situations. We constantly see actors and politicians and other public figures work hard to change the public's opinion of them. Not merely during political campaigns, but also when they get into trouble (often of their own making, unlike poor Susannah). They use damage control and spin to work on public opinion. They go on talk shows like “Larry King Live” or “David Letterman” and apologize for being idiots. They write confessional articles in Parade Magazine, the multi-million circulation Sunday newspaper insert, or allow an interview with People Magazine, the pro-celebrity gossip rag. Or they stand in front of a press conference with their betrayed wives, and publicly repent. And public opinion swings in their favor.

Not only do we learn how to manipulate public opinion, we also teach ourselves how to mend our personal and business relationships. Books such as Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and Herb Cohen's How to Negotiate Anything offer methods of learning how to deal with difficult situations. Robert M. Bramson has a book entitled Coping With Difficult People, and there are many more of the same ilk. We have an entire category of books called self-help. So why are American dramatists so fixated on stories in which nothing goes right? On failures? One answer may be that these dramas are merely symbolic to them, and not actually about the characters at all. Thus, Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” about the Salem witch trials, is really about McCarthyism. And so is “Susannah,” some claim. But the problem is that these dramas are tragedies. And McCarthyism ended, maybe not with a crystal clear act by an heroic avenger, but with a rising tide of outrage against it. Our serious dramatists have failed to show such public outrage that turned the tide. Yet in our popular movies, public outrage scenes are common. Movies in which the little guy is up against the big evil corporation or political machine routinely end with the populace coming out en masse to support him or her. But these are popular culture movies, not art.

Romances are popular culture, too, and are much disdained because by definition they are success stories. Two people fall in love, conquer obstacles, and end up together. Yes, of course there are moments when communication breaks down, or moments like the classic catching-the-woman-in-the-pond scene, when one character tries to gain an advantage over another. But in romances we get past the sticky situations and resolve the problems. We celebrate the beauty of sexuality, including in a natural setting, and we allow people to be happy. Is that too much to ask? I don’t think so. Dousing ourselves with depressing stories in which the good guys lose does not help gird us to fight the good fight. We could use some optimism about now. So dip into a romance. It’s bound to cheer you up.

The Girlfriends Movie, a New Twist on an Old Tale

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:56:00 +0000

Have you ever seen the romantic movie, “How to Marry a Millionaire”? It’s got Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, and Betty Grable sharing a fancy apartment, hoping to land monied husbands. In an excellent 2004 article in Vanity Fair, Laura Jacobs describes this common subgenre of women’s movies, usually three girls looking for husbands. She cites “Three on a Match” and “Moon Over Miami,” as well as the glossy 1954 movie, “Three Coins in the Fountain.”

The Best of Everything was a bestselling novel for Rona Jaffe in the 1950s, written especially to be turned into a high-gloss women’s movie in 1959. Although it seems like just another in the same subgenre, it marked a subtle change in this kind of movie because it wasn’t specifically about women seeking husbands. It was about a young woman seeking her fortune in the big city, and what happened to her and to other women she knew. Of course they were looking for true love, but they weren’t looking to marry rich. These women did not have an easy time of it. Men put them down and betrayed them, both personally and professionally. It made them crazy, or it made them victims. Other women (Joan Crawford), themselves betrayed, were bitter and hateful to them. Bad things happened before the narrator main character (Hope Lange) managed to reach equilibrium and a presumed happy ending with yummy Stephen Boyd. The book doesn’t give this character a romantic happy ending, though.

Flash forward to 1995 when Waiting to Exhale, the bestselling book by Terry McMillan, was made into a glossy movie. In it, a group of women who are friends have difficulties achieving satisfying personal relationships with men, while easily succeeding in their careers. I confess that I found much of “Waiting to Exhale” confusing, because I hadn’t read the book before seeing the movie. I did not entirely understand who all the main characters were or what they were to each other. The betrayed wife was easy to recognize and empathize with, as was the single mom beauty salon owner. But the other two women didn’t seem all that different from each other; they both were being victimized by lying boyfriends until finally dumping the jerks. Much of the movie focuses on depressing aspects of romantic relationships: Husbands who abandon wives for newer models, lonely women who try too hard, cheating boyfriends who lie to wives and girlfriends, and revenge.

But what did “Waiting to Exhale” have that “The Best of Everything” and the many others of its ilk in the past didn’t? There is the wonderful, extended girlfriends scene, which is worth the whole movie. This scene celebrates friendship between women, and it’s just great. It’s nice to see such very different women together as friends. There’s a healing quality to friendships that are accepting of differences and of follies. These women are not judging each other, and they are not rivals. They aren’t in the same room just to borrow each other’s clothes and get ready for dates with men, the way the women in earlier movies were. They are present for each other, spending time with each other, enjoying time with each other. In this respect, “Waiting to Exhale” was revolutionary. The bottom line is the very positive message that it’s bearable to make mistakes and to suffer bad things in search of true love if you have good girlfriends to sustain you.

“The Best of Everything,” both the book and the movie, leaves one with a much more negative message, that young women have to weather a difficult learning experience—that most men can’t be trusted—all alone. The main characters have gotten through the confusions of early adulthood, but not with illusions intact. I prefer the more positive message of “Waiting to Exhale,” even though the story starts with illusions being shattered and continues that way. By the end, Bernadine (the always stunning Angela Bassett) wins her fair share of the family assets in court and finds some romantic hope for her future. And Gloria (Loretta Devine) gets Marvin, the solid, dependable man played by Gregory Hines. The most put-upon of the women, Robin (played by Lela Rochon), tells off her unapologetically unfaithful lover and sends him away. Plus, Whitney Houston as Savannah finally sees through her own lying lover and refuses to let him play her anymore. In neither movie do all of the women end up marrying and living happily ever after. But they do improve their understanding of who they are and what they need from men. And all along, these women have each other.

Maybe today’s movies are more realistic, and sometimes more depressing. But they also celebrate female unity in a way the old movies did not. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, published in 1996, was a rather muddled book and it was turned into almost as confusing a movie in 2002, which probably explains why it was not a blockbuster hit. The strongest, most appealing element was the sisterhood of the women through many years and many tears. This story isn’t about marrying well, or marrying money. More and more today, we’re seeing stories about the true bonds women form with each other, and how those bonds sustain them through life’s vicissitudes. Unfortunately, the frequent problem in women’s lives is their romantic relationships with men. But with good girlfriends, we can survive.