Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

These are allegedly educated adult women with jobs, and many of them seem to demonstrate quite a bit of wit, but… God, they just seem so DUMB. Oftentimes in petty little ways that drive me up the wall. Like, for instance, I have Beth Kendrick’s Exes and Ohs on my TBR pile, and I picked it up the other day and started browsing through it. And before 20 pages have gone by, Our Intrepid Yet Extremely Broke Heroine has thrown her cellphone into the road with great vigor, breaking it into teeny smithereens the way fragile plastic doodads tend to do when you hurl them to the ground. Why did she do this? Because its batteries had died while she was trying to call her best friend to recount her encounter with her ex-fiance.

Big old “What. the. fuck” from this corner of the room, folks. The phone was in perfect working order, she can’t afford a new one, and the only crime the poor thing committed wasn’t even its own fault--unless cellphones can magically recharge their own batteries nowadays. I had to set the book down. See, that didn’t make the heroine sympathetic or cute or whatever to me. That branded the heroine as a Big Old Dumb Bitch, and on one hand she might outgrow her dumb bitchery, but on the other hand, maybe not, and do I really want to invest the time and mental energy to read about and root for a character I already dislike?

Another point of contention is the preoccupation many (though not by an means all) of these books have with conspicuous consumption. I mean, I’ve touched on this subject tangentially before in a post I only half-jokingly called “Filthy Lucre.” Political and economic leanings aside, my personal experiences have also predisposed me to grit my teeth when I read about broke heroines obsessed with expensive shoes and designer clothing. See, my fourth brother, whom I used to live with (hell, whom I used to speak to), was unemployed for many years, and I was far too stupid and softhearted to kick him out after the first year. After paying all the rent and many of the utilities by myself, I had about $150 a month to cover a bus pass, feed myself and take care of other necessities. I went for years without new clothing, new shoes, new music, new books. I stopped eating out, and I cut way, way, WAY down on my concert-going schedule (and let me tell you, that last really rankled). This didn’t bug me too much, initially, because I don’t NEED new, pretty things, and hell, the Portland public library is pretty damn awesome and it was past time I learned how to how to cook properly and affordably anyway. In short, I tightened my belt because I knew I had to, like how I assumed most sane people would act in a similar situation.

My brother, however, didn’t stop his spending.  Literally every month he’d come back with a cute new outfit or hot new pair of shoes from Banana Republic, Kenneth Cole, Diesel. Expensive shit. He got some under-the-table freelance design work, but he was still allegedly so broke he couldn’t even pay his $45 share for the internet/telephone bill. Despite that, his wardrobe kept expanding by leaps and bounds--he had a walk-in closet that was overflowing, three giant storage tubs full of seasonal clothing and his bedroom floor was literally covered in clothing and shoes. And there I was in my dirty-ass sneakers and mary janes with holes worn in the soles, getting madder and madder but constrained by a lifetime of Good Chinese Daughter upbringing from just tossing him out on his ear because oh God, what would my parents think? (And mind you, I’m the youngest in my family--my brother is 7 years older than me, and trust me, the irony of a 22-year-old just out of college having to be the caretaker for a man almost hitting 30 did not escape me.)

So because of this personal experience and the very, very deep anger I still harbor against my brother, the specific kind of chick lit that features impecunious heroines who are all ga-ga about designer brands makes me want to hurt somebody. In fact, it’s a measure of how very likeable I found Betsy of the Undead series that I didn’t immediately chuck the book when she spent most of her first Macy’s paycheck on Manolo Blahniks. I’ve had to live with someone like that, and that sort of irresponsibility gets old REAL quick.

So as with Indian romances, any sort of love story involving slaves and slave owners and tales of divorced couples reuniting, this is one particular fantasy I can’t really buy into. I’m sure there are chick lit books out there that aren’t arch and precious and all about conspicuous consumption; it’s just that the ones I’ve encountered seem to follow a pattern I’m not too fond of.

Sarah chimes in: ME TOO! Me me me, too too too! I cannot tell you how many women I see on the trains in the morning, reading chick lit. You can tell them by their size, right (the books, not the women)? Larger than a traditional paperback, skinnier than a romance, and with some sort of girly-colored graphical cartoon on the front? They all look the same, and to me, they all taste the same, too. Harumph.

They even get their own section at the drugstore - down on an aisle endcap, there’s a whole rack of chicklit, while the romances, mysteries, and standard issue bestsellers for people getting on the train are over near magazines. Chick lit, it has its own rack(et). It’s very special, and certainly different from the other mainstream paperback pieces of fiction. Harumph, indeed.

The same things that bug Candy about ChickLit are the same things that bother me. Most of them are broke for stupid reasons. (Candy, for the love of all that is holy and good, I implore you, do not go NEAR the Shopoholic series. Trust me on this. I read the first one.) And yet, most of them have jobs, jobs that seem to pay well, at least, that what the lead character says when she takes a moment to feel guilty for slacking off yet again at their job.

There are other oddities harbored in the ChickLit genre that I don’t get, either. For some reason they are often British and somewhat overweight with self-image problems, and, as Candy said, think nothing of destroying perfectly good appliances even though they can’t afford new ones. And they’re obsessed with attaining the right men while working those jobs that just fill time and create a paycheck - that they can then overspend on shoes and scarves. They don’t really take care of themselves; they wait for someone to take care of them.

I think one of the things that bothers me about ChickLit is that it is permissable reading material. It’s ok to be seen reading Shopoholic Has an Enema and Pass the Chocolate, I’m Having a Meltdown in public. These are books marketed openly to women. The authors often enjoy some degree of celebrity for having authored these works, these books that take the pulse of the modern working woman. It’s cool to be seen reading them.

What absolute horse pucky. I have a theory that the reason ChickLit experienced the advent that it has is due to the publishing world’s noticing the number of young women entering the workforce who need (a) books to read on their public transit commutes, and (b) heroines to read about that have something in common with them - entry level jobs, figuring out the world, annoying parents, weight concerns, etc. And what irritates the shit out of me is that these characters, they let you look down on them. They exist to make you feel better about yourself. And not only that, things happen to them because they are “nice” or “good” or “kind” and they aren’t complete bitchasses, and so they earn their happily ever after, and maybe it’s with the rich executive guy who just got his MBA and a promotion by age 24, and all is right with the world because suddenly, Dippi McHeroine can afford a new cell phone, now that hers is in pieces on the street. Or Jemima J-heroine loses weight after seeing herself photoshopped into slender glory, and ends up with a hot job, a new sense of self-worth, and a hot, hot man she’s lusted for all along. Or maybe Frumpi L’Heroine figures out all by herself a way to deal with her annoying evil boss and her annoying evil stepmother and finds a modicum of personal happiness - and of course a guy figures into the story most of the time somehow. But isn’t this genre often inculcating among young women the idea that fulfillment isn’t to be had professionally? That true fulfillment is money, goods acquisition, and a hot, hunky man? How is that addressing the needs to the young, female workforce, except using common rhetoric to slide the idea into their heads that the workplace isn’t really where they want to be, and reinforcing old, dangerous standards of what modern femininity is?

A vast number of these novels also take place within publishing as a career, and that I don’t understand. Most of the women who are in entry level publishing careers are trying desperately to get into the field and will take any job just as a foot in the door. Are there that many people who are just cruising along in the publishing industry as admins and assistants just for the paycheck and the comfy chair? I don’t know any of those people, if so.

Most of all, Chick Lit also doesn’t do it for me because the heroines never do anything, aside from make big messes. Stuff happens to them. Then, when they happen to do something, it’s a catastrophe. They aren’t often autonomous and they don’t make decisions to better themselves after they’ve had a three-martini lunch with their shallow friends about how much things suck. That’s not inspiring, and it’s not interesting. It’s dumb and I get irritated with people like that in real life. I don’t care about shoes and handbags to the exclusion of your having a brain. And I surely do not care about this that or the other hot guy, and it’s not because I’m married. I have single friends, but they are not weight-obsessed slackasses who stick their heads up their asses then complain about the view. I can’t handle people like that with a great degree of patience. I’m not friends with them. They annoy me. And I hate spending my leisure time with them.

Because Romances are written so tightly to genre, and the predictability factor is so important to their buyers, they can’t overhaul their image that much. The explicitness of the sex scenes is the only wiggle room they have.

Whuh? Has this woman checked out the romance section in her local bookstore lately? Horny vampires (color vision optional). Chaste Christians. Werewolves. Spies. Assassins. Navy SEALs. High-in-the-instep aristocrats. Fairies. Witches. Mermaids. Rock stars. Poets. Actors. Nurses. Doctors. Threesomes. BDSM. Murders. Betrayal. Adultery. Secret babies. Cowboys. Sheikhs.

So, uh, sex is the ONLY wiggle room romance authors have? Bull. Fucking. Shit. The only requirements for romance novels to be considered as such, near as I can tell are:

1. It must be a love story and focus on the budding romantic relationship (usually between a man and a woman, but erotic romances are fast changing that).

2. There must be some kind of commitment and happily-ever-after ending.

Draconian constraints, indeed.

When a woman buys a traditional Romance, it’s like a hardcore porn fan buying a XXX video. She wants her money shot. She does not want distractions. She wants familiarity, to connect with “the childhood masturbatory feeling,” as my friend and offbeat Romanticist Pam Rosenthal so perfectly described to me.

You can say very much the same thing about ANY book in ANY genre. Do mystery fans buy a book just so they can read about how the mystery is unsolved, the investigator is dead halfway through the book and the murderer/other variety of Very Nasty Person still running loose? Do erotica authors buy a book so they can be lectured on the evils of sex? Hell no. People buy books because they EXPECT something. If I pick up a literary novel about a Jewish family’s internment in a concentration camp during WWII, then by golly by God I expect a story about just that; I certainly don’t want blue fairies with tentacles to show up out of nowhere and turn it into a Merry Gentry novel.

The point is: Closure matters. Expectations matter. There’s no difference whether the book is literary fiction like A Sacred Hunger (can’t recommend that book highly enough, by the way--GO GO GO READ READ READ) or an SF novel like Hyperion or a romance like Bet Me. If enjoying fiction and the closure it brings = shooting my wad into my own hand, then consider me a chronic masturbator--and proud of it.

The tension between Erotica vs. Romance isn’t sex, it’s writing style.

Nope. I’d say three things separate erotica from romance:

1. Romance focuses more on romantic relationship, erotica more the sexual relationship.

2. HEA is de rigueur for romance, but not for erotica.

3. Erotica HAS to include sex. How’s that for conforming to formula? Romances can skip the sex entirely and still work. How’s that for busting a genre convention?

Let me examine one of these desires as an example: Inter-racial relationships. Even though they are an exploding statistic in American life, they are still frowned upon- to say the least. (...) However, in “Romance World,” everyone is likely to be in bed with someone of a different “color” than themselves. White women with black men, and black women with white men, is a hot ticket.

I know I’m not up on the hippest, happening-est romance trends. Fergawdsake, I discovered MaryJanice Davidson and Emma Holly just a couple of months ago. But inter-racial relationships are common in romance novels? What. The. Fuck. I have read hundreds--actually, come to think of it, I’ve read well over a thousand romance novels in my lifetime. Romances featuring inter-racial couples that I’ve read are as follows:

The China Bride by Mary Jo Putney
Harvard’s Education by Suzanne Brockmann
White Tigress by Jade Lee

In each book, the inter-racial aspect was NOT glossed over (though I read the Brockmann book so long ago that I can’t remember much about it); the concerns about two different races marrying were very, very real and are central issues in the book.

Now, if she’d addressed how class issues are handled in European historical romances, THAT would’ve been more on the money.

Another Romance fetish is overt bondage, and domination/submission. Rape/forced sex is de rigeur.

Oh yes. That infamous preponderance of rape in modern romances. I’ll just repeat what I said in my drive-by bitching, with minor modifications: “Do you wish that Susie Bright has read romance novels that were published in the last 10, 15 years instead of being stuck in Woodiwisslandia, circa 1975? Yeah, me too.”

You know how women’s bodes are the ones that always have to be perfect in porn, even if the men are kinda droopy or overweight?  It’s the same with romance, in reverse. The men’s bodies are all PUMPED— the women can be whatever. Her imperfections are irrelevant or sympathetic; the hero has to be an oiled stud muffin. Fabio is Jenna is Fabio.

OK, she has a point here. But not all romance readers find grotesquely muscular men attractive, and not all romance readers find Fabio to be the beau ideal. I certainly don’t. I love me a nice, skinny nerd hero like Jack Langdon in The Devil’s Delilah. Oh, wait, it doesn’t feature rape, which according to Bright is de rigueur for a romance. Maybe it’s not a romance novel after all. *wrinkles forehead in deep thought*

The biggest difference between my Best American Erotica and one of the “Sexxxy” Romances isn’t the sex… it’s the style of the writing (genre vs. literary fiction). Every romance has a ‘happy, monogamous ending” while BAE stories are more diverse, without that guarantee.

She’s clearly talking about two different things here but conflating them into one. One is writing style, and the other is genre constraints. Erotica has a genre constraint, and it’s every bit as inflexible as the HEA ending demanded of all romance novels: it has to have sex. Loads of it. In fact, it has to BE mostly about sex. What constitutes a literary writing style is certainly up for debate, and I’ve encountered romance novels that feature beautiful, literary prose. Laura Kinsale, for example, does quite well in that regard.

In the same way that sci-fi and mystery novels historically became more psychological and complicated, the same thing is happening to romance, which has been the infantile genre the longest. The women still love their romances-- like loving their Barbie Doll-- but they’re buying other things now too.

Yowwwch. Not only am I a mental masturbator, I’m now a child for reading romances. And apparently my reading tastes are not diverse. I guess reading everything from SF/F to veterinary textbooks to literary fiction to children’s books to old adventure stories to romance novels to scientific non-fiction (I need to spend more quality time with Fabric of the Cosmos, dammit) doesn’t qualify. Maybe I need to read more erotica?

Romance readers are not remaining “monogamous;” their reading interests are diversifying.

Heh. From what I’ve heard and read, romance readers are some of the most voracious, diverse readers there are in the market.

If they break formula, they’ll be a better writer.

Sweet. I want to become the first erotica author to write an erotic novel all about the salubrious effects of abstinence, with nary a sex scene in it. How’s THAT for breaking formula?

However, I’m of mixed feelings regarding the Garden trilogy. I’m a little tired of paranormal-Noras. I liked the witch family in the Donovan series (there were four books in that series, which was originally a Silhouette release) and I was ok with the Keys saga, though I got tired of the magic fireworks shazaam-pow-woosh effects without an explanation as to how the characters knew they had it or how to use that magic.

But the ghosts, spirits, and otherworldly characters, particularly the malevolent ones? They don’t thrill me. Particularly Roberts’, as she usually gives them such a backstory and character development.

I’m willing to bet that either Nora or her agent/editors sat down, examined the trends, and said, “We need to access the paranormal market! There have been witches in two series and we’ve been there, done that. We’ve had a few psychics here and there, but we need ghosts! Ghosts, I tell you!”

Enter the Garden trilogy, with a crazy, whackass antagonist ghost who is either marvelously benevolent or trying to kill the characters, and it really isn’t doing it for me. I like Roberts’ books for the depth and the emotional struggles of the protagonists, particularly the men, as I think she writes some fantastic heroes. But ghosts? I don’t give a crap about ghosts. I know the ghost isn’t going to be a permanent part of the entire story, and it’s not like one of the characters will fall head-over-feet for a phantom.  The paranormal-Noras are too obvious: ghost has unsettled business, therefore happily ever after for each pair and for the over-arcing storyline in the trilogy cannot be reached until ghost’s business has been dealt with, minutes respectfully submitted, and ghost-to-do list crossed off in the characters’ Day Planners.

Roberts used to write some clever conflicts between the protagonists, too, and inserting paranormal external conflicts puts a burden on her ability to create, knot together, and unwind those conflicts. I like Roberts for her internal struggles, an the heroes and heroines who have to overcome personal stuff as well as interpersonal mess, and while there is always some tracable change, including in the Garden trilogy, the external influence of said ghost takes up way too much time for my taste. Other writers have introduced paranormal elements as antagonists, or even protagonists in one young adult series I encountered, and it didn’t detract from the characters’ development. With Paranormal Noras, the main characters definitely get the shaft as the paranormal elements evolve. In the Garden trilogy specifically, the ghost is almost part of a menage a trios.  (Now that would be interesting).

This might be the first time a Roberts trilogy will stop for me after the first book.