Writers’ Feuds? Not in the Romance World

A month ago, the NY Times had an essay in the book review section by Rachel Donadio (“Art of the Feud”) repining about the lack of robust literary feuds today. (Norman Mailer evidently would be happy to, but nobody wants to play.) Donadio cited with nostalgia the exciting blood feud between Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman that was the result of McCarthy calling Hellman a liar on nationwide TV. Of course, Donadio downplayed the consequences, mentioning that the feud continued until death, but not that Hellman’s libel lawsuit also hectored McCarthy all the way. If anything, the McCarthy/Hellman feud was a modern example of why open feuding does not pay. McCarthy wasted years defending herself against litigation because she let the pleasure of publicly insulting Hellman overcome her common sense. A writer quoted in the essay, Thomas Mallon, unhappily reports that literary novelists now “subscribe to the ‘if you can’t say something nice...’ school of thought.” And here I was under the impression that it was just the overly proper matrons of the romance novel world who do this! You can’t say anything in the romance world without someone taking you to task just as a mother would talk to a recalcitrant five-year-old. Romance writers are prissy and patronizing. They're always telling other people how to behave. This is true on blogs, on RWA (Romance Writers of America) chapter e-mail links, in romance newsletters and magazines, and everywhere else. Part of the romance novelists’ prevailing attitude is rooted in their fear of appearing unladylike, I'm sure. They want to be seen as good girls: modest yet talented, not evil, ambitious women: scrappy and sometimes jealous. And then there is fear of the publishers. Until recently, too few romance writers had significant clout with publishers. These women got used to being treated like they weren't very important. So they made sure never to voice an opinion other than praise: praise of each other, praise of the publishers, praise. They were and are extremely politic. And they police each other ferociously. Recently, a well-respected romance writer, Anne Stuart, commented publicly that she did not think her publisher, MIRA, was doing a whole lot for her. The result? Her editors at MIRA mocked her on the blog of high-ranking Harlequin editor Isabel Swift. Maybe this was gentle mockery, all in fun. The photo of the ladies in their crowns and boas looks funny. But maybe it wasn’t. Doesn’t matter. Other romance writers responded by taking Anne to task publicly. They told her she behaved badly and was unprofessional. But is anybody feuding about this? Unlikely. I’ve attended a lot of romance writers’ conferences and it is rare to hear anything at all negative about any writer’s work there. Nobody even dares say, “I read her latest book, and I don’t think it’s very good.” Even this mild criticism isn’t allowed, because romance writers’ conferences, like their organizations and their chapter magazines and e-mail links, are boosterism. You dare not rain on anybody else’s parade, because it’s all meant to garner good publicity or a better contract, or whatever. I’m not into feuding, mind you. But somewhere between absolute wimpdom and stupidly pugnacious would be better than what we have. There’s simply no dialog happening. Reader’s comments found on websites are either uncritical praise or hostile vulgarities. Review zines are into praise. Reviews posted on Amazon actually tend to have more meat, but I don’t think the author is allowed to respond. I’ve never seen any responses. And heaven forbid there should be an extended debate! How can you have a good old-fashioned writers’ feud without a debate? Or a drunken fistfight? (Okay, it’s women: hair-pulling.) Well, you aren’t going to have a feud, because romance writers are too obscure to be personally interesting to the general public. Maybe if Nora Roberts went off the rails and suddenly wrote a stinging indictment of Jennifer Crusie’s latest book, we’d get a fight. But it won’t happen. We’re all the best of buddies here in the romance world. Another reason it won’t happen is that romance novels do not get reviewed in the mainstream publications where literary feuds fester. Checked out any piercing comments on the latest Debbie Macomber in the New York Times Book Review? Of course not. She’s not getting any ink from them, regardless of her fan base or her sales figures. What about Sandra Brown, arguably the perfect example of a romance writer turned mainstream thriller writer? Nah. When these writers hit the bestseller lists, as they regularly do, the Times lists their books and that’s it. To start a feud, actual prose opinion is required. Preferably by a jealous writer. Anything newsworthy today gets put on the web instantly, so nobody builds up a big head of steam and lets loose with a mean review as a method of replying to another writer’s agenda. Instead, either people send hostile e-mails, or, as mistresses of their own websites, they pontificate. It’s PR, and everything is good, in this the most commercial of all worlds. I can’t believe that romance writers never get angry, never dislike each other’s work or just each other, and never get a little plastered in the conference hotel bar and mouth off about some other writer. But you won’t hear about such things in print.

Give the Gift of Words

“The majesty and grandeur of the English language is the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative, and musical mixtures of sounds.” A little over the top for purposes of writing about romance novels, I guess. But the words from the 1964 musical comedy “My Fair Lady” came to mind a few days ago when I was pleased to discover that one of my favorite writers, P.G. Wodehouse (1881 – 1975), included among his numerous talents romantic fiction. By today’s standards his stories are more than a bit staid. To be sure there are references to sexual attraction, but they are worded so cleverly that you might have to read them two or three times to get the idea. But, for my money, that’s no small part of what made Wodehouse such a great writer. His facility with words was not a free gift. To fully appreciate it, you have to concentrate. He didn’t make it too easy for you. You have to work for it. Here, for example, is a short passage from a story entitled “The Best Sauce.” “It was Eve’s practice to tell herself several times a day that she had no sentiment for Peter Rayner but dislike. She did not attempt to defend her attitude logically, but nevertheless she clung to it, and tonight when he entered the drawing room she had endeavored to convey by her manner that it was only with the greatest difficulty that she remembered him at all, and that, having accomplished that feat, she now intended to forget him again immediately.” Now the editor in me would want to cut that paragraph down most likely by shortening the second sentence, which from a grammatical standpoint is far too long. But the writer in me – and more important – the reader in me knows that to move even a single comma would destroy a piece of brilliantly constructed writing. It would be like changing a note in a Mozart symphony. You just wouldn’t do it. Granted, of course, Wodehouse wrote in a very different era for a very different audience. Still, if the job of a good writer is to educate (even minutely) as well as to entertain – and I believe that is part of a writer’s job – then we can all learn from the skillful ways in which the greatest writers manipulated our language. Am I suggesting that a writer sacrifice his or her individual style to become a more skillful user of words? Under no circumstances. But somewhere in the course of concocting the plot, setting the scene, defining the characters, and all the other steps that go into creating a novel, writers might be induced to consider not just what they are going to say, but precisely how best to say it. Most writers probably think they already do this. But it’s clear that a great many get so caught up in characterization and imagination that they forget the importance of the words themselves. As Mark Twain observed, “The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”