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

Sarah Weinman forwarded us this fascinating (if brief) discussion between Dwight Garner, senior editor of the New York Times Book Review and a romance author going only by Jen.

Jen starts out by asking, in response to the brief book review recaps by Garner:

Interesting that every single book reviewed elsewhere has also been reviewed by the Times (the Diana book’s gotten two full reviews, plus a feature piece on Ms. Brown).

Can you give us some insights into how reviewers make their choices? Do you all get a supersecret list of which books/authors/imprints are important enough to merit a mention? Have reviewers noticed that it’s the same tiny handful of authors who get written up everywhere, while there are authors — and, in the Times’ case, entire genres — that never get mentioned at all?

Garner provides a link to Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus’ explanation of the process. When Jen points out it still doesn’t answer her question about why certain books are selected as worthy and brings up romance as a genre that has been completely neglected in The Book Review, Garner responds thusly:

Reviewing romance novels: whew. We don’t have room to review so very many things we’d like to; is reviewing romances really the best use of our space? Can’t the readers who love them find news of them elsewhere?

Who does do a good job of reviewing them, anyway? Who is the Lionel Trilling of romance critics? Maybe we should hire that person, whoever he or she is.”

Jen’s reply is eminently worth reading, but alas, not easily quotable. Go go go; read read read. And Garner’s responding comment is wonderfully civil, even as it doesn’t necessarily provide any further food for thought.

For once, I’m not going to jump all over this and be shrill, partly because Garner’s courteous (if dismissive) tone is making me feel contemplative. His rather off-hand contempt is clear, but I feel like engaging in a dialogue instead of yelling. (Not that yelling isn’t good, dirty fun on occasion. I love a good blog rumble as much—if not just a touch more—than anybody.)

Ignoring, for the moment, the comment about the Lionel Trilling of romance (and really, even if they DID find one who qualified, do you honestly think, Garner’s assurances aside, they’d hire her? Psh), here’s my take on why The Book Review and other major newspaper literature reviews won’t cover romance novels while allowing certain bestsellers and genre roundups between their hallowed pages—and no, it’s not going to be the usual “Blame the patriarchy!” spiel:

1. It’s all about the benjamins, baby.

2. It’s also all about being a cultural gatekeeper. Baby.

*cue lamé-clad jiggy dancers*

There are certain works of popular fiction that The Book Review can’t afford to not cover if they want to maintain even an illusion of being fresh, relevant—and profitable. If a book is going to make a huge enough crater on the landscape, then by golly by gum The Book Review is going to track its blazing progress across the sky—together with all the other newspapers, because they can’t afford to miss it, either. They may not have kind things to say about the impact, but they have to at least cover it.

Similarly, once mysteries and science fiction moved far away enough from the intellectual ghetto that their readers weren’t afraid of being clobbered left and right by cultural assumptions as soon as they admitted their love for those genres, I think The Book Review realized that they needed to throw some sort of sop to them. But also? I think at one point, the new(ish) generation of editors looked at each other and had conversations like these:

“You read SF?

“Um. Yeah, I do.”

“...so, did you read way too many Ray Bradbury stories as a kid?”

“Yes. Also, please don’t tell anyone about my unspeakable love of everything Heinlein. What is UP with him and his ‘sex will save the world, and if that don’t work, fascism will’ schtick, anyway?”

And realized that really, being an SF or mystery reader isn’t the end of the world.

This sort of thing hasn’t happened with romance novels yet, and they likely won’t for a good long time. I have the impression that The Book Review drew a sort of line in their cultural map with the round-ups for SF and mystery. “We’ll go this far but no further.” They have a reputation to maintain, for god’s sake. Can you imagine the uproar should they decide to cover romances? Doing so would be lending a sort of tacit approval to the genre. It would say to all their readers that not only are there books well worth reading within the genre, there are books actually worth the time and energy that go into reviewing them. The Book Review isn’t nearly ready for that sort of step yet. It has too much invested in its prestige, of being one of the vanguards of high culture.

This is why Garner’s arguments about lack of space vs. popularity of genre don’t really hold water; why they are, in fact, prety goddamn ridiculous and half-hearted. While romance novels as a whole outsell other genres as a whole, individual mid-list romance titles perform about as well as mid-list anything else. If they were truly interested in elevating the undeservedly obscure, I don’t see why they couldn’t do exactly the same for romance novels as they did for SF and mystery.

The line on the map has been drawn, and The Book Review are keeping quite firmly to their side of the divide. In the end, it really does boil down to the crack Garner made about the Lionel Trilling of romance and its implication that no such creature could possibly exist. Romance, as far as they’re concerned, lies at the empty blue expanses at the furthest reaches of the map, with “Take Caution: Here Lie Gyrl Cooties and Manne-Titty” scrawled in an elegant hand and a drawing of Fabio underneath the dread warning. And what’s more, The Book Review is certainly not interested in exploring and risk being touched by The Bewitched Viking’s ever-extended finger. I can’t say as I’d blame them on that score….

I leave you dear readers with this—I figured, since I mangled it for Hoff’s sake, I can do no less for The Book Review:

No! I am not Lionel Trilling, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant reviewer, one that will do
To swell the Internets, start a flamewar or two,
Advise the readers; cause their eyeballs to twitch;
Insolent, but glad to be of use,
Impolitic, incautious, and a bit explosive
Full of high sentence, and low humored abuse;
At times, indeed, almost corrosive,
Almost, at times, the bitch.

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