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

Candy: That’s an excellent question, actually, and something I haven’t noticed.

Corollary: are villains more likely to smoke in romances?

Several different explanations pop up in my head about the lack of smoking among protagonists:

- A lot of people hate the smell. Cigarette breath != sexy. Well, I, personally, don’t mind it too much, but I know lots of people who do.

- The odds of all sorts of diseases increase by so much that if there was a hero or heroine who smoked, I’d think “Oooh, hey, lung cancer in 20 years. Sweeeet.” Which isn’t romantic, and it interferes with the HEA.

- It’d be a lot more acceptable if they portrayed a character struggling with it and triumphing at the end.

- Addictions aren’t particularly sexy or romantic, unless used in the context above.

Sarah:I am curious as to whether one can trace the use of cigarettes in romance fiction among protagonists alongside the increasing negative publicity surrounding smoking. Whereas a heroine who smokes in a 80’s romance might as well be putting on shoes for all the significance her cigarette has, today that same cigarette, as you state, can impact the HEA in the reader’s mind. I wonder if publishers have stances on smoking protagonists, the way some editors mark out any mention of September 11 in some manuscripts.

It may be possible that as smoking protagonists decreased in number, the number of villains who smoke increased. Or at least, smoking was used as a prop to indicate villainy or the like.

I wonder what the Bitchery thinks - are smoking heroines and heroes victims of addiction, or are they individuals making their own choices, just doing their thing and it doesn’t mean that much anyway? Is it a marker of a time period and a different set of social standards that is now gone the way of the shoulder pads and the wide offset leather belt? It wouldn’t be the first time I read too much into a characterization element.

Candy: I do think popular opinion has turned against smoking, to the extent that it’s now seen as almost on par as, say, smoking pot. (I actually know some hippie types who view pot with a lot more charity than tobacco.)

I wonder why all the hard-bitten SEALs and cops never smoke. Those people tend to smoke quite a bit, right?

Sarah: True. It is odd that some characters who in “real life” you see smoking don’t often do so.

At the invitation of one of her clients, Milagro attends a book party for a former classmate and flame, Sebatian Beckett Witherspoon, who broke her heart and went on to pretentious literary success. She hated his book, but goes to the party anyway, and finds that he’s beyond furious to see her there, even though he was the one who dumped her for another girl who was more his social equal. Seems you can put the Latina in the Ivy League, but that doesn’t mean the other students won’t recognize the divide in culture and class. Milagro, because she has a backbone of steel from having grown up with a monstrous mother, seems to be aware of but largely immune to such snubs.

While at the party, she flirts with waiters, mingles a bit, and meets Oswaldo Krakatoa, with whom she has an incendiary attraction, and she follows him to his hotel room, where they make out in pre-booty-shaking fashion, which causes them to fall down, and somehow in the twister he ends up biting her. Then some funky crap begins.

Seems Milagro wakes up feeling sick as hell, and hides out at a friend’s house until she can get herself home. Then she’s kidnapped by Beckett Witherspoon, who turns out to be a member of a murderous and completely insane organization called CACA, but then rescued by a friendly waiter from the book party, who turns out to be Oswaldo’s brother.

She’s hidden away at Oswaldo’s family home so her recovery can be watched by the family, and where just about everything can be filed under “Is Not What It Seems.” First, the dude’s name is Oswald, but why he choses to tweak his identity, I couldn’t say. And why is she there? And are they actually vampires or just victims of a strange blood disorder, as they profess that they are? Then, there’s the crusty, cranky, bitchy matriarch of the family, Edna, who takes an instant dislike to Milagro. Does she belong with Oswald’s very wealthy and very elegant family? Should she leave? Should she stay? And is she now a vampire?

Obviously, I’m not giving all the answers, so if you’re looking for Miss Harriet, you know not to look here. A good number of the reviews published so far dwell on the point that this isn’t a romance; that’s fine, it’s not. It doesn’t have the structure of a romance and while there’s some great attraction between Oswald and Milagro, the challenges placed in their way serve to discredit his integrity and could easily make him seem like a disingenuous buttnoid if the reader expects noble, perfect hero.

Milagro, however, is a damn hell fascinating character. She speaks directly to the reader through asides and commentary within each situation, which was jarring at first, but then became one of the quirks of her character, like a Shakespeare character addressing the audience. Not every character does, so those that do are significant. At the beginning of the book, her manner of addressing the story and the reader can make her seem an unreliable narrator, but ultimately I recognized her written style as indicative of the fact that as a Latina trodding in the world of WASPS and the very flaky top of the upper crust, she herself did not feel entirely welcome in any situation she was in. Because she wasn’t sure if she was an observer or a participant, she steps back and forth into and out of the story.

By the end of the book, I found myself questioning whether Milagro did change, and if she grew or developed as an individual. She certainly changes, but then seems, on the surface, to change back. On one hand, she stops pushing herself to act on, and think, and write what she thinks will impress other people, and starts living solely to make herself happy. It’s as if, due to the dreadful childhood she experienced, she feels that all she deserves is to live on the fringes of security, happiness, and wealth, and that her near-bottom-dwelling apartment existence is all to which she should feel entitled. While it’s not said outright, Milagro learns to accept the possibility of her own acceptance.

Oswald, however, is a very curious hero, and his behavior is one reason you cannot read this novel expecting it to be a straight-up romance, neat with a twist. He’s not always honest, though he is charming and very self-assured, and, like Beckett Witherspoon, has a very difficult time avoiding his desire for Milagro. His redemption is questionable and his worthiness of Milagro is equally so, but at the same time, it’s difficult not to root for her happy ending with Oswald.

My problems with the story came from not being able to clearly discern what was real. Was the disease real, or was vampirism real? Was the villain real, or was it a puppet show with good looking, empty-headed people it’s front, believing that there was more support behind them than there actually was? What actually happened to Milagro’s health by the end of the book? The reason I want to call this story a fable, or perhaps an allegory, is that there seems to be a moral, or a metaphorical representation pointing to a larger subtext, but even with some serious time pondering the story, I can’t gain access to what it might be.

Further, while Acosta’s writing itself is crisp, funny, clever, and very, very sticky, in that you can’t very easily put the damn book down once you’ve started it, the story veers off the road a few times, leading me to question whether secondary characters are more important or less so than I thought, and adding to the sense of disorientation with the final and potentially greater implications of the ending. Something could be going on here, I’m not sure I get it, and I hate not getting it. Makes me feel stoopud.

Aside from the possibilities of subtext, and the questions surrounding the resolution to the story, Happy Hour at Casa Dracula is a marvelously fun book to read, and is published at just the right time. Expect to see it in a beachbag near you.

Before we begin on to my opinion proper, I’d like to briefly venture into the tangled thicket of copyright issues: Karen had to remove the Changeling covers because apparently, they didn’t give her permission. I can think of a couple of workarounds to that: you can link to the covers in question instead of using images, or you can provide reviews of the covers, and claim fair use. Or, hey, sign up for an Amazon.com Associates account, and link to the covers via thumbnails, so that readers can have a preview of the awfulness in store.

Right, then. First of all, all this talk about “subjective standards” in art? That only carries so far. A lot of cover art is just plain bad. I’ve seen covers of featuring broken necks, misplaced arms, improbable hairdos, and bad makeup. How bad? I’m talking aqua eyeshadow--AQUA EYESHADOW, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY--on medieval romances.

Second of all, not all covers for small presses or e-books suck. Maili, for example, did a great job for A Murder of Crows and the reissue of All Night Long. (I could look up a few more; I remember seeing some nice ones on Ellora’s Cave and LooseID, but I’m at work and feeling lazy.)

My take on this, much like my take on books and other forms of art, is that yes, there is a way to assess whether something’s good or crap, and it’s also possible to separate this from whether you like it or not. I can’t stand Hemingway’s work even though I think he’s brilliant at what he does; I love Dara Joy’s books even though they’re gawdawfully written. Technical proficiency, passion, vision, originality and effort all combine to create good art--unless you’re a Dadaist, of course, in which case, never mind then.

To revisit the food metaphor: it’s possible to admit that a cake is well-made even though it may not be to your tastes, because it’s a cheesecake and the texture of cheesecakes kinda squicks you out, and that even though you love Twinkies more, the cake is, well, BETTER. Discernment and preference are two separate, if inter-related components.

Cover art can be any of these combinations:

It can be well-made and not at all to your tastes.

It can be well-made and suited to your tastes (the holy grail of cover art).

It can be a piece of crap and not at all to your tastes (something like 99.5% of all romance novel covers fall under this umbrella for me).

It can be a piece of crap and suited to your tastes (come on, all you DeSalvo and Fabio fans out in the audience--I know you’re out there! Stand up and stand proud in your love of the cheesy goodness!).

What gets to me, though, is when people start tooting the “But it’s art! It’s all subjective! Therefore to some degree, it’s all good!” horn. No, no, no. Do not even start comparing yourself by implication to Picasso, Chagall and other masters. Gah. Picasso and Chagall knew what they were doing. They were GOOD at what they did, and I can respect them for that, even though I don’t care for their work, either. I can certainly concede that most covers feature a certain Cubist sensibility in the way limbs and torsoes are arranged, but I’m pretty sure the mullets, body grease, contorted expressions and bizarre bodices are like nothing Picasso could’ve ever imagined, even in his worst nightmares.

Another common argument goes something like, “Aww, c’mon, it’s so DIFFICULT to make cover art. It’s got to be good,” often followed by the “Well, if you think it’s so easy, YOU do it.” Effort alone isn’t enough. Something’s not good just because you work hard at it. Somebody could put a LOT of effort into drawing a horse that ends up looking like a lopsided airplane. Hours of drawing and coloring and more drawing and coloring. At the end of it, is it good? Hell, is it even ART? If it is, then high school art teachers everywhere should give up their day jobs and become curators instead.

Look, it’s quite obvious that some cover artists wouldn’t know a proper human proportion if it came up and drew a shamrock on their forehead, mmmkay? I’d like to see somebody with the ovaries to stand up and say “Yes, I made that, and yes, it was utterly shitty. Sorry. I didn’t have the time or resources. Hell, I don’t even have the talent.” A lot of romance novel covers suck. And by suck, I don’t even mean the gentle, ticklish suckles you give to a lover you want to tease--I mean rough-n-ready glommings with teeth and everything given by an inexperienced, enthusiastic person with enough headgear to set off metal detectors from miles away. So many CG romance covers fall squarely in the uncanny valley, it’s not even funny. The rest of the covers, featuring live models, are just plain uncanny, especially in their steadfast insistence on body wax usage for their male models.

I have to say, however, that what bothered me the most out of the whole thing at Karen S’s, is not so much that people got kinda pissy at what she said. Karen S delights in making people pissy, and she’s fun to read because of that. She certainly welcomes people becoming pissy right back at her. But c’mon, now: all this posturing about “No no no you don’t have permission” and “It’s never OK to insult people!” adds a whole new layer of annoying, pointless bitchery.

Screw dat. Some of those covers not only deserve to be roundly mocked, they NEED to be, because my God, if nobody made fun of them, the artists might persist in the delusion that they’re actually GOOD.

First of all, this part of the article in particular made me laugh:

I was stunned the other day to discover that Flashman is just as popular with women as with men. Yes, Flashman, the outrageous Victorian bounder who kicks off the first novel in the series by raping his father’s girlfriend.

If he finds THIS stunning, one hates to imagine what would happen to his brain should somebody try to explain something TRULY weird about the world, like, say, quantum entanglement, or Tubgirl. But then, small minds are easily astonished, because they’re usually surprised at anything that can violate their dearly-held foundational beliefs.

And really, Johnson has approached this conundrum from entirely the wrong angle. He’s astonished that women would read action books, but doesn’t really ponder why men don’t like to read romances. I think the writer has missed out on a huge factor: the stigma of effeminacy.

Yes, women read more action books than men. You are more likely to see a woman reading a Tom Clancy than a man reading Maeve Binchy. I’ve covered this before in “You Read Like a Girl”. You can see this phenomenon extend beyond literature; once something is feminized, it’s seen as tainted, unworthy, less rigorous. Chick movies, chick cars, chick books: these are not compliments. These are terms of derision. Even the most reasonable men and many, many women are afraid of being tarred with the girly brush.

You see this happening in the working world and in academics as well. One of the first fields to attract large numbers of female students was literature and the arts, and nowadays, these fields are mostly written off as the territory of floppy-haired nancy-boys with even floppier wrists. The sciences, baby! That’s where it’s at. Only, once biology started attracting more and more women, the field started to be written off as less rigorous, too. Right now, the attitude seems to be that the REAL sciences are chemistry or physics--preferably the wackier theoretical branches of physics, where it’s still largely dominated by men.

And let’s talk about primary school teachers, something Johnson mentions in the article as having more males than females because of the “paedophile hysteria.” This flagrantly nonsensical explanation ignores the simple fact that more women than men get degrees in primary education, and more women apply for those jobs. Being a grade-school teacher is one of THE quintessential chick jobs of the modern world, with all the earmarks of a typical chick job: it has a large built-in nurturing component, it puts you in constant contact with people, it’s difficult to do yet rarely appreciated, and it pays shit.

There seems to be a rule regarding female critical mass in any area of life: if enough chicks are into it, it can’t be very good. It can’t be worthy. This goes for books, careers, movies, TV shows, cars, subjects of study, sports, clothing--hell, just about everything.

And reading seems to have been delegated as, well, a kind of girly thing to do. But it’s not just the stigma of effeminacy working against boys who read, I think. Kids who love to read and to learn for their own sake, especially the more quiet ones, have been picked on, bullied and called ugly names for a long, long time, and these sorts of things hit kids a lot harder than adults--as we grow older, we’re able to latch onto the anti-cool cool of being a nerd and say it out loud, I’m a geek and I’m proud. I imagine it’s even harder on boys than on girls, because boys are expected to act a certain way.

What way? I’ll allow Boris Johnson, gender relations analyzer extraordinaire, illuminate us as to the True Nature of Masculinity:

There is too much coursework, [Dr. Sewell] says, and not enough of the adrenaline-pumping terror of the exam. Boys need competition, he says, or they slump back into apathy and thuggishness.

They need facts and dates, not empathy. Dr Sewell is dead right. Here is the terrible truth about us boys. We may be devoted to our subjects. We may be interested in learning for its own sake. But what really actuates us, what makes us flog our way through the books on the syllabus, is the simultaneous hope of coming top and the fear of coming last.

Wait a second: England has gotten rid of exams and grades? I thought the only places that have done this were small liberal arts colleges with reputations for academic rigorousness that border on the fearsome, like Sarah Lawrence in NY and Reed College here in Portland. Huh. England’s education system is a lot more radical than I thought.

And honestly, is it the sissy-boy, wishy-washy, womanish lack of punishment that’s led to boys doing less well, or is it because the past century has been the first time that women have been allowed in the education system in the same numbers and on equal footing with men, and we’re finding out that females as a population seem to do better at certain skills required to be a good student, like sitting down and concentrating for long periods of time?

But that can’t be it, of course. Girls are doing better in school? IT MUST BE THE FEMINIZATION OF EDUCATION, OH NOES.

And if fear of coming last and hope of coming first is a motivator that’s more male than female, then I and many, many other women I know must be dudes.

But out of all the astonishing nuggets offered by Johnson, this one is perhaps the most astounding:

The reason women devour so much fiction is that it is the only place where they can find a certain idea of masculinity. It is a spirit that has been regulated out of the workplace and banished from the classroom.

Women turn to fiction, I would guess, because it is the last reservation for men who are neither violent thugs nor politically correct weeds, where a girl can still get her bodice ripped without the bodice ripper being locked up.

The urge for why I love reading so much, explicated at last! It has nothing to do with the joy of immersing myself in other points of view and other worlds, or vicariously experiencing adventures I will never be able to in real life, or the thrill of learning for the sake of learning, or the relief I get from having my over-active brain shut up and become occupied with something other than bugging me about endless reams of minutiae.

I read because I want a dick who can get away with acting like a dickhead.

Gotcha.