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

Fabulous reader Dr. Frantz, herself a professor of English and romance fan, brought this fabulous event series to my attention:

Conversations about Romance, an ongoing seminar at the Smithsonian.

Suzanne Brockman, Diana Gabaldon, Mary Jo Putney, Carly Phillips and Jennifer Crusie are each booked for a seminar to discuss their writing, and the host, Dr. Pamela Regis, interviews them with a book signing following each session. If the next session wasn’t 9 days after my due date, I’d be in the car driving to DC, no question.

What gets me is the description on the page itself:

Romance novels were created to celebrate women’s control over their own destiny, with the promise of enduring happiness at story’s end. The popular genre’s established pedigree includes such venerable writers as Jane Austen.

The form allows for tremendous latitude in expanding on the basic theme of the heroine and her man.... However, they all share an abiding sense of the heroine as the winning centerpiece.

“The heroine as the winning centerpiece?” “Celebrate a woman’s control over her destiny?” I am so on board with that.

Dr. Frantz also mentioned in her email to me, and on her LiveJournal that the session she attended with Suz Brockmann was fantastic.

I went to Suz Brockmann’s interview this week (drove all the way up from NC!), and it was just fabulous—although it was Suz, and she’s such a great person, it’s difficult to imagine it going any other way.  And while the whole evening was immeasurably improved by the dinner afterward with 20 fans, Suz, and her husband, I still think the interview itself was wonderful and worth attending.

What was truly great about it was that you’re in the Smithsonian, for heaven’s sake.  Surrounded by signs advertising classes about Opera and Native American Culture and Far Eastern China dildoes painted with flowers (not really), and all these “high culture” things, and then there’s conversations about romance novels in the same space, given the same attention and respect.

I thanked the woman in charge and she shrugged it off, but I thought it was important to recognize her for having the balls to put on a program like this.

I concur - it is so important to consider the development of the romance novel alongside all the high-academe topics such as the development of women’s rights in the 20th century. We certainly touched on this idea during the monster conversation about rape in romance.

But romance novels in the Smithsonian? I’ll have a grin on my grill the rest of the day - that is fantastic! 

A friend of mine reported that she went shopping and bought a Nora Roberts paperback - for $10. Some big splash on the cover said, “Specifically designed for comfortable reading.”

Alas, she reports, it doesn’t come with chocolate.

But what is this comfortable reading thing with the extra cost conveniently built into the purchase price? According to the explanation in the book, the new size is known as “Premium Format:”

The premium format is specially designed for comfortable reading, featuring REMARKABLE improvements on the interior design of the traditional mass market paperback. The book itself is larger, for easier handling. The type is also larger. The paper is brighter and there is more white space between the lines of text, creating a more pleasurable reading experience.

A more pleasurable reading experience. And yet, it doesn’t come with chocolate? Shame, I tell you.

After some cursory Googling, I found an August 2005 article from USAToday (aka McNews) which explains that sales of the mass-market paperbacks, aka the smaller ones, are down, and the folks quoted in the article attribute the decline to various sources, including the Oprah picks which are packaged in trade-paperbacks or hardcover.

So I have to wonder: does size matter? Does a larger trade-sized publication, by occupying territory between mass market and hardback, imply better quality of reading? Do we need a size of book between mass market and trade to make for more “comfortable reading?” Or do publishers need better sales to make themselves more “comfortable?”

In today’s Dear Abby there is a letter (bottom of the page) from an attractive woman who is tired of getting stared at because she is married to a dwarf. She adores her husband and was looking for suggestions from Abby as to how to address rude comments, questions, and stares.

Manner-issues aside, this got me thinking: would there ever be a romance novel with a dwarf hero? Heroine? What other unlikely scenarios could there be - and if you think about them, how unlikely are they really?

Obvious case in point: there’s a romance that makes Candy do the pee-pee dance about a stroke-victim mathematician and a Quaker heroine.  If you’d explained the scenario to me before I read it, I’d have thought you were nuts. After I read it? Heck, I STILL think about it. The more unlikely the hero, or heroine, the more fascinating the romance can be.

Consider the number of military heroes and heroines with post-traumatic stress syndrome symptoms, who aren’t sure they can trust what they experience. Or the number of lead characters who have survived personal trauma that shapes their personality, and provides them an internal conflict to overcome.

So why, when I think, “Hm. Dwarf romance...” do I immediately follow with, “Nah, no way.” Is physical difference a blow to the fantasy? It shouldn’t be.

What unlikely hero or heroines can you think of, and more importantly, is there a condition or scenario that is just completely impossible? I mean, we have people humping the undead left and right at this point in the published romance world. Is there anything that’s truly “untouchable?”

Some minor link sluttage:

An excellent overview of race and racism in romance is in the most recent edition of At The Back Fence at All About Romance.

I don’t have much to add to the dialogue, except my puzzlement at the whole “African American Literature” section in certain bookstores. It didn’t even occur to me to look for black romances there, for example, until somebody pointed out that certain stores, like Borders, sometimes shelve their black romances there. You don’t generally see, say, Asian American lit, or Hispanic American lit, etc. etc. pushed into their respective little niches in stores. That, more than anything else, says volumes about how very much black people are viewed as the Other.

Oh! And Monica and LLB have finally kissed and made up. Or at least e-mailed and made up. Champagne all around! Summon the dancing girls! Free elephant rides for everyone!

I have an interesting question I want to pose to y’all later, but first, some assorted link pimpage that’s engaged my attention:

• Doug is running a sex scene contest, Bulwer-Lytton style. I’m sneak-writing my entry at work. God, I hope the old hag who sits behind me doesn’t decide to sneak up and check out what I’m typing.

  Ah, what the hell--it’ll make her life more exciting.

• Brenda Coulter argues that we should be very, very nice when reviewing books because romance novelists are sensitive and writing a book is harrrrrrrrd. Booksquare replies, and Monica Jackson enters the fray as well. They all have points I agree and disagree with.

  Y’all know where I stand on this issue, right? I mean, if the 666 engraved on the back of my skull and my oft-declared love of pain didn’t give you a clue already....

• Is bacon dropping from the sky? Because holy fucking shit, Monica Jackson and LLB are having a civil conversation. Where’s that sal volatile?

  I still hold out hope for a reconciliation between Monica and LLB/AAR. *wipes tear from eye*

• AND! Thanks to my fabulous friend Katie, I found out about Virgin: The Untouched History, coming in 2006, which dedicates TWO CHAPTERS TO HYMENS. Katie has read it and told me it’s grrreat, and I always believe Katie, and you should too because Katie? Is fabulous. I just can’t wait for this book to come out, but in the meanwhile, I’m checking out Hanne Blank’s erotica anthologies.

  So, anyone have a list of authors to whom I could gift The Untouched History? *evil glee*