Trashy Romances and High Culture, Sisters under the Skin

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

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

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?