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

Thank you so much for your wise words about Jeffrey Wells and his Wee One. Because you know, it saves me the trouble of writing a post to point out what an obnoxious, sexist, pretentious, illogical blowhard he is.

Jesus-mother-of-god, woman!  You just hit my mean-assed-bitch-prepare-to-die-mF’er nerve with a vengeance!  I can’t even think to respond to that response email, it pissed me off so much.  Don’t DO that shit to me at work.

::: Shutting down superfluous programming functions for work currently taking up cpu power in brain to process new data ::: 

Yeesh!

I will respond once my nerves ratchet back down from bitch-hell-on-wheels level to rational-writer-reader levels.

What*a*tool!

What woman in her right mind thinks she can find a man who buckles swashes, for God’s sake? I mean, wouldn’t a normal person stop and say, hey, maybe I am taking the stories a bit too literally? Blame her lack of finding a man on anyone but herself, right? She’s just a victim. That titled, rich, arrogant, rakehell alpha male isn’t right next door?...Her comments remind me of something my ex-husband used to say.  He decried the growing popularity of romance novels in the 70’s because all those scenes of hot romance just make a woman expect too much of a man in the way of performance!  Thus the ex…

My God, I’m seeing spots right now from my mind trying so fucking hard not to blow a gasket. 

As for person #1, I’ll repeat what I’ve repeated many-a-time before upon coming across such idiocy as a way of attempting to calm myself down (as heard on Street Smarts): and remember - half of all people are below average.

For person #2, I’ve just created an addendum to the above: and also, a portion of those below average like to think they’re above average and thus act like insufferable dicks.

[My husband was rattling off a pet theory last night about the US is going the way of ancient Rome.  Given the evidence of lead in the water as displayed by these two, I’m starting to wonder if he isn’t right.]

[My husband was rattling off a pet theory last night about the US is going the way of ancient Rome.  Given the evidence of lead in the water as displayed by these two, I’m starting to wonder if he isn’t right.]—fiveandfour

The Internet is our lead in the water.  That, and reality shows.

When romances are blamed for every fault known to man, I’m reminded of the controversy a few years ago.  Then born again author Robin Lee Hatcher, former President of RWA, commented in the newspaper about her “secular” romances that she felt she was contributing to women’s “sex addiction”.  That is a paraphrase, I don’t have the article, one of these days I need to go to the library and get a copy of it (the good? thing about living in the same town as she).

Really, ladies - where’s the compassion for the poor literary snob? A little pity. Warm your hearts a tad, eh? I mean I think he’s made it pretty clear that he can’t get laid to save his life and it’s only because all women are dumb doodyheads who can’t see him for the intellectual god that he is and okay maybe his hair is a little to blame but it’s really about how girls are drooling retards who only like young and good-looking men with hair that doesn’t make them wince and and and and well and he wouldn’t want them ANYWAY, so THERE.

Poor guy could use a coupla squirts of human kindness. Not that I plan to shoot any his way. Or encourage it in any but an ironic way, of course.

“Don’t try and justify lazy, degraded literary appetites.”

He is an ass but that is the funniest tagline ever, IMO.  I’ll try that on my husband.

Didn’t you know that women are to blame for EVERY ill in the world?  From the bible on down to actual and metaphorical witch burnings, we are to be watched.  Because, when not conforming to societal needs to be size 1 and trembling, we need to be schooled by Daddy…
“There is a world out there...an amazing wonderful world of knowledge and exotic places and fresh attitude and beliefs and sensuality and illumination"…
Thank you, Knowledge Daddy! We promise to be good girls, forever!  God.  I remember taking a class on Socrates, taught by an old school wanker who foamed at the mouth whenever he got going on the Male Societies of ancient Greece.  Ah the glory days when men could be brilliant and form intense relationships with pretty young boys who worshipped them in semi circles!  “Tell us more, Master SuckmyKokkus!  How shall we live?” And I hear the same refrain, over and over and over again. 
From Monty Python and John Belushi claiming that women just aren’t capable of Real Comedy to the never ending miasma of Women’s Fiction as the embodiment of all that is evil, or trivial, or banal (unless someone dies or is raped and you are subsequently loved by Oprah).  I am so fucking sick of it. 
I need a nap now.

Mr Wells is probably one of those people who carry around large literary tomes with them at all times.  They loudly proclaim which author they are reading, all the while mispronouncing the author’s name.

Ladies, ladies, ladies.  How, I ask you, can you allow yourself to get bent out of shape by a man who considers a pompadour the height (pun intended) of masculine beauty?  How can you take seriously anything this guy makes pronouncements about?  It comes as no huge surprise to me that there are men in the world with a desperate need to find something, anything, to validate their sense of superiority over women.  The guy is an egotistical ass.  Need we perseverate more?

Having said that, how about we go egg his house?

I’m about half-way through my cheap edition of the Collected Works of Oscar Wilde. Will completeing it make my breasts any bigger?

For the first person, a scene from the show Father Ted comes to mind.  I wish I could find a screen cap.  There’s a dumb priest who can’t remember the difference between reality and fiction, so Father Ted makes an illustration for him.

About the second person: what a wanker!

Mr. Wells failed to explain one thing. Why is it that most of the men on my bus don’t read at all, but play their Gameboys?

Meh. I know too many people who claim “I only read *literature*.” I think their lives are boring, stale and narrow as a result. I love my sci-fi, fantasy and romances, and THEY take me to wonderfully evocative worlds.

I think dude with his sexist attitude is an unobservant moron. I’m not bent out of shape about him, becasuse he’s pathetic. He doesn’t know what he’s missing, except maybe his penis, which shrunk and wandered away because no sane woman wanted to help him use it.

Since everyone has done such a beautiful job of articulating why Wells’ wank is offensive, I’ll approach this from the other direction.  People like Wells are not only an insult to women and mass market fiction, but to literary fiction, as well.  He’s ammo for people who dismiss all lit-fic as pretentious and obscure.

As someone who spent many many years in school studying the stuff, I’ll admit it: I’m hooked on lit-fic, and even on some lit-crit and some philosophy. But I’m also hooked on a couple of mass market fiction genres, and hate either category either universally trashed or universally elevated.  There’s some great lit-fic and some lousy, pretentious stuff in that category.  Some Romance and sci-fi novels have had as strong an impact on me as have some of my favorite lit-fic books.  The best fiction, from my pov, rivets my attention, provokes me to think and feel strongly, and satisfies me like a Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate bar or a bowl of Cherry Garcia ice cream. The worst bores me or angers me or makes me want to retch, regardless of the genre. 

As to the idea that Romance novels ruin real relationships, I think it’s sweeping statements like this that fortify the defensive strongholds around the genre, making it very difficult to talk about anything problematic within the genre without readers feeling that they need to defend all of Romance, as if it’s one big homogenous lump o’ love.  The idealization of love and Romance is as old as, well, the concepts of love and Romance.  Frankly, I think that the things in Romance that have the most potential to create negative influences are far more subtle and are connected to what constitutes proper “womanhood,” rather than setting up unrealistic expectations for real-life relationships.  But it’s hard to even get to this stuff becuase we’re still debating the fantasy-reality split.  And where are the discussions of some of the really empowering messages that Romance can send—messages about how women don’t have to feel pressure to bear children (Crusie’s Anyone But You), that women should accept themselves for who they are (Crusie’s Bet Me), that sex can be very healing (Cach’s Dream of Me), or that women don’t have to be meek and selfless (Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart).

I guess these go right up there with the stereotype of romance-readers as lonely housewives who never get any sex from their fat husbands and read romances to fill in the empty hole in their lives…

Frankly, I read romances and other light reading when on public transit or in the doctor’s office because they are easier to read in fits and starts without getting lost than more dense “literary” works. And they also tend to be literally “light” and easily carried in a purse or shoulderbag. But I suppose these logical reasons wouldn’t matter, would they?

did somebody say Cherry Garcia?

Oh, for the love of god, spare me from the “intellectuals”.  People read what makes them happy.  Sometimes it’s weighter stuff and sometimes it’s “junk”.  And, as so many have noted, it’s a lot easier to read junk in public where you don’t have to keep rereading the same sentence to have it make sense.

Grr.  Stupid boys.

“Oh, for the love of god, spare me from the ‘intellectuals’.”

Wells’ comments are not those of an “intellectual”—they’re not thoughtful, not intelligent, not well-considered, not articulate or insightful, not accurate, and not deep, unles you’re counting deeply defensive and offensive.  And deeply afraid of something other than mass-market fiction.

What gets me about the whole “romance creates unrealistic expectations” argument is that on the whole, good sex and lasting love are reasonably attainable goals, even if they’re not usually accompanied by the high drama of a romance novel.  My life certainly comes much closer to a romance than a mystery or a fantasy novel.

OMG Jennifer - I loved Father Ted, it’s such a shame that actor died, it was brilliant comedy.

As for not reading more literary stuff - I’ve been known to on the odd occasion when I had insomnia and needed a literary sleeping pill.

I guess I’d better go check a mirror, to see if I really exist. Because, according to this guy, I don’t. Because I am a poet with an MFA degree, and all that comes with being part of that subculture of the literary world (book and chapbook published, readings given, subscribes to literary journals, goes to conferences and writers colonies, applies and gets artist grants), who also reads and adores Jennifer Crusie, Jennifer Weiner, Judith Ivory, Laura Kinsale, Emma Holly, Diana Gabaldon, Mary Balogh, Eloisa James, & etc & etc. So who knew? Now they’re not only checking bags on the NY public transport, they’re going to check my reading matter to see what my intellectual credentials are? Apparently, now I need to wonder if there’s some idiot sitting across from me on Metro North, checking to see what I just took out of my Posman’s bag and wondering whether it measures up to his private lirary pantheon. Hell with him. I will read what I want, where I want, for all kinds of reasons.

Robin--hence the quotation marks around intellectual.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who is truly intelligent who doesn’t see the value in also not being a tool.

And you’re dead on.  There is a greater fear there than mass market fiction.

And Sherryfair, you’re right. 

I guess I’d better go check a mirror, to see if I really exist.

I feel the same way.

Oh.
My.
God.

*trying to find the keyboard through the fine red mist of rage that has overtaken my vision*

Freddie Fucktard there needs a blanket party worse than anyone I’ve ever seen. FYI - blanket party = go to his house, drag his woefully superior and sadly-unblessed-in-the-mantool-department self out of the house onto the porch, toss a blanket over his head and kick the ever-loving craparoni out of him. Repeat as necessary.

That said, he needs to STFU and never ever talk again. When he open his mouth, all of the stupidity and poor-little-womanism of ages past and present erupts.

If I want to read Plato, I’ll read it. If I want to read Nora Roberts or any other MM author, I’ll do that too.

Freddie is one of those who reads Playboy for the articles, I am sure. What a load of sexist malarkey! For shame, Fred!

He’s a turd.

Why would anyone care what a person like that thinks? 

Flush and let him go…

No one answered my question about whether reading Wilde makes my tits bigger! The edition has a really really thick spine.

Literary? Check this out.

Sorry the link isn’t fancy (I can’t access my html cheats)… but OMG is this thing written in some sort of code known only to the literati? Is it part of the secret world of the PhD?

X

[Candy: Edited to make link all fancy ;-) ]

Some random thoughts on what you linked to (and they don’t mean I know exactly what he’s doing):

It’s very minimalistic. He’s stripped out as much of the narrative and exposition as he can and supercharged the remaining stuff so it’s nearly a chain of images, like a prose poem.

He’s terribly, terribly afraid of the emotional charge of the material, which is a love triangle, a betrayal by a friend, and a woman dying of cancer. What he’s afraid of is sounding sentimental, golden-lit, Hallmarky, like a movie disease. So again he strips out as much as he can and uses indirection in the narrator’s reflections and observations.

OK ... that’s how I see it ... Candy this feels like standing in a museum looking at an abstract painting with someone and trying to describe what it might be doing. Half of what I am saying could be projection.

But I tried.

This reminded me of something I saw on the making of horror movies the other day: some directors like the suggestion of violence where the audience fills in the blanks and others like the full-on show everything style.  This piece falls into the fill in the blanks category.

I wonder if this is how this person writes all of the time.  If this style is something he’s adopted for this one piece, I can understand his choice: the narrator’s exorcising himself of the grief of the experience (or trying to) and didn’t necessarily care if the audience understood all of the details.  Plus, it seemed like it was something “too big” to be fully described, so he was attempting to provide some snapshots of personalities and moments and experiences because the whole movie can’t be described.

The result of that, though, is that some things are downright confusing (”He was grave and flighty. Before you realize it’s the light that is giving you that feeling. ”) and that overshadows the things that he gets just right (”I kept my serious side, the side that was blown apart, tucked into a shoulder blade. We did not have enough time for grief.” and ”Feeling comes before the event is understood.”). 

I agree with sherryfair in that it is like a prose poem.  If the lit geeks/culture police are trying to gain a larger audience, this is not the kind of thing that’s going to do it for them.

No one answered my question about whether reading Wilde makes my tits bigger! The edition has a really really thick spine.

I’m sorry to say that I suppose the answer is no (based on the fact that those “we must, we must, we must increase our bust” exercises we tried at summer camp never worked, dammit), but I love the idea of spreading that thought around: the more you read, the bigger your boobs or dicks. 

Can you imagine the results if a few middle school teachers carefully allude to the idea in class for a few years?  The legend of the idea will grow amongst the pre-adolescents in whispers until it’s stated as fact (like that old saw I remember hearing about the many Senators that loved smoking pot, always stated in true urban legend style with “a friend of my aunt’s cousin told me” and “I’ve forgotten the names, but they’re old and white") and the next thing you know there’ll be a run on Mason and Dixon and the collected works of Shakespeare.

Hmmm, now that I think about it some more, I’ve come back to reality and recognize that this will never happen.  Given the size of the Harry Potter books, those will work just as well.  Sorry Pynchon, you’re going to have to attract a new generation of readers some other way.

Yes, Fiveandfour, I can imagine this guy keeping a writer’s journal and lifting out lines he considers its “greatest hits” and pasting them in, one after the other, as a sort of collage. The writing seems almost like free association.

And, yet, I can see the rationale. This writer wants try to strip outall the workmanlike, duller parts in fiction that concern getting a character from inside the car and through the door and onto the sofa.

As fiveandfour put it, it’s an act of faith that the reader is going to do have the work. You lose anyone who doesn’t feel like playing connect the dotes that day. And forget about anyone with attention deficit disorder.

It’s not exactly like nonrepresentational art but it’s certainly fragmented. Yeah, like a collage.

Will it get a wider audience? Well, literary fiction was messing around with narrative for a long, long time before “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Memento” and “Mulholland Drive.” And now it’s gotten as far as those movies playing in mutliplexes. So I don’t want to say never.

Whoops, my bad. Christine posted it and I said “Candy.” That’s me reading fast and carelessly.

Yeah, I agree, much of it does sound like trying too hard. As I said, like it’s the best lines in the guy’s little journal that he carries around and writes in.

Holy shit. I don’t know whether to scream at this A*hole and his misogynistic diatribe or to laugh my head off at your insanely brilliant combacks.

to a previous respondent: It wasn’t lead poisoning that did the Romans in. It was a combination of an overstretched empire that absorbed the (resentful) peoples it was supposed to be subjugating, their historical tendency to murder anyone who looked like a political threat the moment they ascend to power, constantly doing away with the best and brightest, and the influx of a particularly nasty strain of Malaria that wiped out coastal communities and made their farming land untenable.

Oops sorry, I forgot, I’m a Romance reader. My IQ isn’t up to this kind of discussion......

cheers
Euri

There will always be people who consider themselves superior to others. But as I noted on my blog, if someone says they’re intelligent, can you trust their source of information? Hardly.

True intellectuals don’t have to bring others down to prove it. They don’t have to prove it at all. Only posers do.

It’s kind of like dealing with my five-year-old. To rage at them only encourages them. Ignore them.