In Praise of Genre Fiction

If you read genre fiction, you've probably heard the laundry-list of complaints about it from readers of "serious" literature: formulaic, cliche, tawdry, unoriginal, and--worst of all--popular. Genre Haters seem to think any novel shelved by plot or content is, by definition, a lesser species of fiction.

But that's a load of bullshit. If bookstores started shelving "Sprawling, multi-generational family dramas" together, you'd find The Godfather, The Corrections and Love in the Time of Cholera in the same section as the oeuvre of the late-yet-still-writing VC Andrews. Would proximity to the late Ms. Andrews make the first three books any less worthy? Would it make Flowers in the Attic any less addictively terrible?

Genre haters have a tendency to compare the worst of genre fiction with the best of literary fiction, and then acting like it's a foregone conclusion that "literature" would come out on top. And, worse yet, if a bit of genre or popular fiction is particularly good, they start calling it literature. By subject matter and structure, Jane Austen's stories are romances, but, somehow, because they're so very good, they're literature. Likewise, the insanely popular, often maudlin and always melodramatic works of Charles Dickens transcend the author's immense popularity and often trite subject matter (Oliver Twist, anyone?) and wildly popular roots to become "literature".

The way I see it, there are only so many plots and themes out there, and, depending on historical era and geographical location, some of those plots and themes are more popular than others. So what if genre fiction works with a predetermined set of known elements--so does opera. Does musicians and music-lovers hate on opera for all those tales of doomed, stupid lovers? Nope. Opera lovers love the music. The subject matter is just a framework.

That's kind of how I feel about genre fiction. Genre is a framework around which I can let my imagination run wild. If you pick up a murder mystery, you know somebody gonna get killed, and the crime is gonna get solved. But the how, where, when, and why of it--oh, those are some fabulous details. If you pick up a romance, you know folks are going to fall in love, and no matter what kind of crazy shit happens between the words "Chapter One" and "The End" those folks are gonna have some kind of a happy ending.

One reason I like writing romance is that it incorporates elements from every other genre. Absolutely anything can happen between Chapter One and the End--mystery, adventure, intrigue, emotional drama. Romance novels can be contemporary, historical, futuristic, speculative, magical. Romance offers an incredible latitude of possibilities built around the simple, easily accessible framework of a romantic relationship.

The other reason I like writing romance? The happy ending.

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Tall Order

When I try to recall the Romance novels I've read from the eighties they blur into this weird image of a hydra-headed chimera of asshole billionaires, white savages and pirates--all somehow depicted by Fabio--forcibly seducing a veritable secretarial pool full of foot-stamping, head-tossing, chin-lifting virginal heroines. And, I seem to recall, that for most of those asshole billionaires/white savages/pirate princes, "tall" was 6' or maybe 6'2".

Lately, though, I can't seem to find a Romance hero under 6'4". And don't even get me started on paranormal romances, where the heroes remind me of that episode of Gilligan's Island where the castaways found a box of radio-active seeds and inadvertently grew giant versions of garden variety vegetables. In paranormal, it seems, there isn't a hero under 6'6".

To which I say WTF?! Heroes have gotten super-tall, but heroines have remained small and feisty. Whenever I see such a pairing in print, I imagine the heroine as a fluffy Pomeranian (not unlike my current favorite TV dog, Mr. Muggles) yapping around the hero's feet. If authors are going to keep writing giant-sized heroes, they could, at the very least, make their heroines a few inches taller, too?

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A More Perfect Union

Happy 4th of July!

Having just vowed to write fewer posts about myself, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the 4th of July, and what America means to me. (Hey, I never claimed to be consistent.)

Friends and relatives are often surprised when, in the course of conversation, I reveal something that marks me as a big ol' America-loving patriot. They think I've got some sort of beef with this great country because I'm liberal, or because I'm black, or because I think the war in Iraq is both a tragedy that will haunt our nation for the next century and a harbinger of our falling international stature.

But what they don't get is that I consider having a beef with my country to be my civic duty as an American citizen. We declared our independence because we wanted the right not just to debate with our government, but also change it. And for two hundred and thirty one years, Americans have been disagreeing with government and doing what they can to change what they don't like.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The very first civic goal mentioned in the preamble to the constitution is that of forming a "more perfect Union." Perfection is not an attainable goal. If a thing can always be more perfect, can the quest to improve it ever stop? No.

This is what I love about my country. Our most important document enshrines the goal of continuing improvement (and, given the size of our modern self-help industry, most Americans share that goal--at least when it comes to their personal lives). So, while the founding fathers may have been sexist, racist, slave-owning douches who talked high but lived low (I'm looking at you, Jefferson), the process of continually improving government, of striving for a more perfect union has ensured that this great-great granddaughter of slaves has the same freedoms under the law as every other American (as long as I don't try to marry a woman).

America isn't perfect, but I've always loved the way we keep striving for a better, more equal government. The only thing that has ever or will ever derail our progress is when Americans stop debating and disagreeing. When Americans let themselves get fooled into thinking that disagreeing with the government means disagreeing with America. Nothing could be fur from the truth. Every time we let the government take away our freedoms, every time we shut our mouths when some talking head accuses dissenters of "treason" wether are betraying our country's first and most important goal: to form a more perfect union.

So this July 4th, I'm going to write my senator and tell her to give Dick Cheney hell for keeping secrets from the people who pay his salary. I'm going to write the mayor and tell him how much I hate the potholes on my street. And I'm going to write the president and tell him he's a douche to imply that people who disagree with his administration hate America or hate freedom, because as far as I'm concerned, there is no greater service an American civilian can perform for her country and for freedom than to stand up and disagree.

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This is Not a Review: Karma Girl

Don't expect fairness and objectivity 'cause I haven't got either. Descriptions are half-assed, my taste is mercurial, and ratings are assigned entirely by whim.

Karma Girl by Jennifer Estep

First things first, I saw the first chapter of this book on a critique group site quite a while ago. I liked it then, I like it now. It's good to see folks make good.

Synopsis: In a World Where...every town has its own superheroes and ubervillains, plucky investigative reporter Carmen Cole climbs the ladder of journalistic success from Beginnings, Tennesse to Bigtime, New York by exposing the secret identities of every superhero and ubervillain she can find. Then her activities cause one of the heroes she's exposed to commit suicide and she gets demoted to society reporter.

An ubervillain orders Carmen to discover the identity of the leader of the local superhero group (who hates her on account of the suicide she caused), or face a fate worse than death. Guess who the hero of this story is. Opposites attract. Doomed love ensues. Karma Girl saves the day.

Over all, I liked this book. The Incredibles plays the comic book parody better than Estep does - but I can't blame anyone for falling short of Brad Bird. (Yes, that sound you just heard was me sighing like a schoolgirl whilst thinking of the writing/directing prowess of Brad Bird.) I liked the world Estep set up, and I am impressed that she managed to think up so many alliterative names for the characters (+ Clark Kent approved: Superman Comics #1). Also, I adore the town names.

Carmen's first-person narration draws the story along at a pretty good clip (+Flash Comics #1 a fast, fun read) . The romance is sweet but the love scenes are also written in the first-person, which is a very tricky thing to do (-not quite Superman, but close: Jimmy Olsen, Superman's Pal #111) . I am also willing to admit that first-person love scenes kind of creep me out.

While, as stated above, I generally liked this book, I have to mention that Estep, as a writer, totally hit one of my pet peeves. Specifically, she uses race as description (-What happens when racial stereotypes form a team of superheroes? New Guardians #1).

Here is Estep's description of one of the side-kick characters, Henry Harris,

"The black man smiled at me and went back to his computer." p.25

Estep describes his clothes, his age, his glasses, but she can't just throw in a line about what the fellow actually looks like? Is his face round or long? Does he have dark skin, light skin, freckles? What color is his hair? What color are his eyes?

Also,

• "I stopped at the black man's desk..." p. 52
  
• "The black man tugged at his bow tie...." p.135
  

One (dubious) point in Estep's favor, The Black Man does not use slang.

Estep occasionally describes another sidekick character as "the Asian girl", though, to be fair, she does give that character a more thorough description by using words like "skinny" , "young", "pretty", "heart-shaped face" and "almond-shaped eyes". See, that's not so hard to do, is it?

• "The Asian girl's face grew guarded." p.56
• "The Asian girl reluctantly took it..." p. 57
  

She never once refers to any of the other characters as "the white man" or "the European woman". Oh, and in case you couldn't guess, as the only two minority characters, the Black Man and the Asian Girl, hook up thanks to the heroine.

In conclusion: The book was a fun fast read except that Jennifer Estep landed on one of my major pet peeves. I do realize that this pet peeve probably won't hinder other readers' enjoyment of the book as it did for me. I would probably read another of Estep's books, but I'd get it from the library. Ms. Estep's not getting another dime from me until she learns that race is NOT a description.

Rating: If Karma Girl by Jennifer Estep were one of the actors who has played Batman in the Batman movies, with Michael Keaton being the best and George Clooney (sorry George) as the worst. Karma Girl would be:

Christian Bale



Hot and fun, but ultimately hampered by something that annoys me (a.k.a. Katie Holmes).

Oh, who am I kidding. I just wanted to link to a picture of Christian Bale.

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Hair-o-whine....

Flowing tresses, silken locks - what is it with long-haired heroines in Romance novels? Maili's post on cutting her hair got me thinking about women and hair and standards of attractiveness. I'd like to think we are past the days when a woman's hair was regarded as her crowning glory, but in Romances long hair = teh sexy.

I've only had hair past my shoulders a couple if times, but both instances, I noticed that I tended to shed a lot. It was all over the bathroom counter, in the drain, and it tended to get, um, caught, or pulled or leaned on in intimate situations. Ow. So why the thing with long hair?

Is it all those video vixens shaking their asses and hair around? Or the girls gone wild whose flailing straw like manes, stringy with beersweat and Fructis often hide their faces even as they surrender their dignity? Yes, long hair is a sign of youth, but lately it's started to seem a little trashy, too.

Harlequin Presents aside, most romance readers outgrew stories about timid chignon-sporting secretaries falling in lurve with domineering rich jackasses decades their seniors back in the early - okay, late - eighties. Can't we give up on the flowing silken tresses, gilded locks and other hair hyperbole?

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I Voted...

...which gives me the right to complain. So don't say I didn't warn you.

I don't have any complaints just yet. I'm pleased as punch that Rummy's gone, and I'm practically silly with schadenfreude that W will have to start actually reading the bills that come to his desk before he signs them, but I know the next two years won't be all Reforms and Roses.

We are talking about politicians, here. It's only a matter of time.

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BAD Writer! Using Race as Description.

Kimber had a great post on her blog a while back about use of brand names and well-known products in novels. I kind of went on a tear in the comments because I think using brand names instead of descriptions is a sign of Lazy Writing. Makes me mad every time.

Yesterday, I encountered another sign of Lazy Writing makes me even angrier: Race as Description. The book, which shall remain nameless*, featured the following gems:

1) "A few seconds later, the door opened to show him a tall Hispanic male." (p. 59)
2) "At six feet even in height, Andre was a handsome African-American man who..." (p. 68)
3) "'It's our differences that make up our strength.'...To emphasize his words, he pointed the top of his beer to indicate an African-American couple on their right. Three seats over from them was an Asian family." (p. 86)

Maybe you're wondering why I am so pissed off. After all, it looks like the author went out of her way to highlight the diversity of her characters. But, listen, race is not a visual description. "African-American" describes a rainbow of skin-tones, hair colors, body-types and features. My dad has a dark-chocolate complexion, my aunt (his sister) has red hair, honey-colored skin and freckles - both are "African-American".


Likewise, "Hispanic" doesn't say squat, except that the person in question speaks Spanish. Are they Americans of Spanish origin? Maybe Mexican? Peruvian? Cuban? Ecuadorian? Argentinian? Dominican? NewYorican? "Hispanics" can be anything from blond-haired, pale-skinned, blue-eyed European types, to dark-haired, brown-skinned people of Native American origin, to dark-complected people who routinely get mistaken for "African-American" here in the States. And don't even get me started on the Asian-Argentineans & Asian-Peruvians I've met - "Hispanic" encompasses all Spanish-speaking people, so they count, too.

And while we're on the subject of the word "Hispanic" - why would a writer use the same careless, a-cultural catch-all that Richard Fucking Nixon used to lump all Spanish-speaking peoples as a visual description? The only reason I can think of is that the author thinks that Hispanic is a race, and that race is a description. (That description of Carlos occurred before the character uttered a single line.)

Except, she never describes the white people as European-American or white. Here's a description of a person whom I will assume is white (despite, or rather, because of, the lack of any racial signifier): "A petite receptionist was dwarfed by a large brown workstation...She had her blond hair pulled up into a tight bun and was dressed in a thin light blue sweater set and a pair of khaki pants." (p. 46)

I don't get it. There's an African-American character, a "Hispanic", even a Vietnamese-American character, and yet this blond chickie doesn't at least get a shout-out to her "Polish-American" features or "Nordic-American" ancestry. Instead, the author lets the character's name, "Kristin Delinsky," say "Nordic-Polish" for her. So why the hell do we need to be told that some guy named "Carlos" who sprinkles his dialog with Spanish words is Hispanic? Or that "Andre Moore", who makes Gone with the Wind slave jokes (slave jokes! p. 123) when the heroine tells him to do something is black?

Perhaps the author is one of those people who thinks that only non-white people have a race? When she writes "man" or "woman" she means "white man" or "white woman" - everyone else gets a racial modifier. Quote #3, above, describes a crowded theater. Only the nonwhite members of the crowd get listed by race. There is no mention of a "European-American" family enjoying themselves.

I hate that shit, mainly because it paints the author as the sort of person whose default image of a person is a white person. I'm not calling the author a racist or implying that all her linens have eye-holes cut in them. I'm sure she means well - it's pretty obvious she's trying to be all diverse and multicultural and shit. The thing that makes me angry is that instead of looking around her to see that people of other races come in all shapes, sizes and shades, and that the standard Census categories for race are woefully inadequate as description of that spectrum, she took a lazy shortcut that ended up insulting at least one of her readers.

Writers ought to be able to observe or fabricate individuating details and convey those details in their descriptions. But if all this author sees is race when she looks at or imagines a person, I'd rather she didn't do us multicultural types any favors.

I once dropped an acquaintance for referring to me as her "biracial friend" in a conversation that had nothing to do with race. If that's all I was to her, if that was all she saw, I'd just as soon not be a part of her world. Race is no substitute for visual description. Name-checking the races of friends or characters does not make a person - or an author - appear multicultural or color blind. Instead, it does just the opposite.



* for copyright's sake, the book was "BAD Attitude" by Sherrilyn Kenyon

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See You Next Tuesday

Oh no, I did it. I slipped up and used the "c" word in print. Specifically, I referred to fictional character Meredith Grey of Grey's Anatomy as "a sandy little cunt" in my comments on Monica Jackson's scattered, but thought-provoking Romancing the Blog post.

The instant I hit "submit comment" I thought, "Oh shit, that phrase could be fucking offensive."

But then I wondered why I was worried. I don't find the word offensive when used by women. Especially as in my preferred mode of use - "sandy little cunt". The people, places and things who receive that designation from me are about as pleasant as having sand in one's tender parts. "Cunt" is not the bad part of the phrase. Nope, just like in life, the bad part is the sand.


Unfortunately, "cunt" is most often used as a derogatory, objectivizing insult toward women, just as "pussy" is often used as a derogatory, feminizing insult toward men. Isn't it strange how men all over the world can spend the better part of their lives chasing, thinking about and dreaming about something, and then turn around and reduce the home-run of their sexual aspirations to a demeaning insult?

I'm for taking the words back - or over.

Step 1: Positive Associations.
We women should make sure that any man who wants pussy should respect pussy. And that means a man can't call his one of his boys a pussy for missing a basket, or call the woman who cut him off on the freeway a cunt. There's this old play called Lysistrata. Read it. Learn it. Do it - or, er, don't do it.

Step 2: Set a Good Example
Erotic authors often use "pussy", and occasionally use "cunt". Truth be told, I much prefer those words to purple phrases like "her quivering love chunnel". Good, old-fashioned words like "vagina" also work just fine as far as I'm concerned (YMMV).

Step 3: Stop Avoiding It
Stop using similar-sounding words, or dancing around the subject. Just say what you mean, and don't be ashamed.

Well, that's it 4 me. C U Next Tuesday!

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Do it for your country!

Apparently, Chick Lit is Hurting America. D'oh! And here I was, acting like the dumb popular fiction reader I am, blaming W, Iraq, the National Debt and Haliburton for our current sorry state of affairs.

But, no. According to a former editor who hasn't even got the guts to sign her name to her ill-considered screed, Chick Lit is hurting America by squeezing literary fiction - real fiction - out of the marketplace. Ron at Galleycat has already poked some lovely holes in the ripe Swiss cheese of this writer's arguments, which leaves me free to engage in a bit of a rant.

Ah-hem: Chick Lit is hurting America?!? Goodness, gracious! How could I have missed the signs? My simple-minded, anti-intellectual reading habits must have blinded me to this stealthy assassin of rigorous, rational thought that has slithered like a serpent into our midst, poisoning the hearts and minds of innocent American women against the virtue and necessity of reading fiction that imparts BIG, IMPORTANT lessons about life. If only I had spent my hard-earned money and leisure time on Improving Literature instead of the sort of titles that make anyone who reads them in public " look like a dateless loser" I would posses the keen powers of social analysis necessary to blame the present decline of literary fiction on dumb women who don't know any better than to buy and read what they like.

Ms. Anonymous made her living off the publishing industry, and now she's ranting because people won't buy what she wants them to buy. Do I smell an unpublished literary novel? No, that's mean of me. It's probably just something I stepped in while walking across my lawn.

Unlike romance or sci-fi, chick lit is a genre that is in direct competition with literature because of its price point and packaging...chick lit premiered in hardcover and then moved to trade paperback. And though they're all about boys, there are seldom any boys on the cover. Brilliant! The genre succeeded exactly because it looked more literary than its embarrassing romance counterpart. You could take Bridget Jones's Diary on the T and not look like a dateless loser.

Yup. That has to be it. Blame it on the covers. Because it's not like people buy books for the content. It's not like books come with little blurbs that describe the plot. Oh, no. It is all about pricing and covers.

Ms. Anonymous seems to think that we poor dumb women get so confused by the pretty, non-lurid covers of chick lit that we buy a copy of Jemima J when we really meant to plunk down our money for The Corrections. Lady, anyone that dumb is probably still working her way through Goodnight Moon. Didja ever stop to think that maybe people just buy what they like?

...what's dangerous about chick lit is that it fills trade slots at publishing companies that used to be given to literary fiction...

I'll take that as a "no". So, let me get this straight: publishers should publish more books that sell less, and fewer books that sell more? Out of the kindness of their hard little capitalist hearts? Because it's good for the country?

The mind boggles.

If anything, Anonymous's less-than-well-thought-out rant is just another example of a culture that demonizes anything people do purely for pleasure. Ms. Anonymous seems to think genre fiction should have covers that will distinguish such books from "real" fiction - lurid covers, perhaps, with poorly-drawn aliens, or "bare-chested hunk monkey" covers that immediately mark their readers as "dateless losers". Anonymous wants those of us who don't spend all our money on literary fiction to be punished - branded, even - for reading what we like. (What say we ditch the hunk monkey covers and skip straight to sewing scarlet letters on our sweaters, eh?)

This is not WW II. Literary Fiction is not War Bonds, scrap metal, or ration stamps. If my money goes to Jennifer Weiner instead of Elizabeth Merrick, that does not make me Anti-American or anti-intellectual. Anomyous's disingenuous, "rah-rah America" argument against chick lit is as characteristic of "the Bush-styled propaganda" she comdemns as anything I've heard on Fox News.

Are my reading habits hurting America? Hell, no! The great thing about this country is that, taxes aside, no one can tell me what to do with my time or with my money. Funny how critics always seem to forget that particular nugget of Americana when they're pointing the finger of doom at popular culture.

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Bare-Arsed

When she's not comparing gays to child molesters, and insisting on a definition of Romance Fiction that reads like she pasted it together from torn up shreds of the senate's failed Defense of Marriage Amendment, Jan Butler seems like a pretty nice person.

She likes baseball, and Mary Higgens Clark. I can respect that. Well, I can respect baseball...except for the steroids.

I felt kind of sad that I was so mad at her. I get the feeling that if I met her in line at the supermarket, we'd probably have a lively conversation about Life&Style's latest ridiculous expose of superskinny celebs while we waited for the old lady in front of us to pay for twenty-three cans of Ensure with Susan B. Anthony dollars, Canadian nickels and expired air freshener coupons. We'd never discuss homosexuality, or religion, and I'd probably walk away thinking, "What a nice lady."

But this isn't the supermarket, this is the net. The only thing I know about her besides the Mary Higgens Clark/Baseball thing is that she believes in slippery slopes, and doesn't want to be in the same association as people who think gay is OK. And she's been stinking up the web accusing people who don't agree with her of "persecuting" her and infringing on her First Amendment Rights. Apparently, anyone who uses their First Amendment rights to disagree with the stupid things she has used her First amendment rights to say, is robbing her of said rights. Huh?

Her foam-flecked rant reminded me of this Pulitzer Prize winning photo. Sometimes people are so rabid to defend their own irrational opinions that they are willing to sully and shame the very ideals and institutions they claim to be protecting.

Some may argue that Butler was just shooting off her mouth, but on the web, those who click "Publish" in haste will not have the opportunity to repent at their leisure - as I'm sure Ms. Butler has since discovered.

I left a comment on her blog comments, but despite her ranting about freedom of speech, I doubt she'll print anything by folks from the "left side of the creek" like me. So I've reprinted here:

Ms. Butler,

You accuse your detractors of persecuting you, yet you feel free to lump homosexuals in with child molesters - to accuse them of criminal sexual deviancy when they have broken no laws and hurt no one.

Your detractors have not accused you of breaking the law. They have not lumped you in with extremist fundamentalist terrorists or other illegal groups who espouse conservative beliefs - though, were they to follow the lead you have set, such inferences would surely be fair.

What your detractors have done is call you stupid and bigoted. Both actions are well within their first amendment rights. Your continued insistence that, in airing their opinions, they have somehow robbed you of the right to express yours only proves their assertions that you are as ignorant of the law you claim to respect as you are intolerant of the freedom you claim to protect.

Our society will always need people who are willing to shout, "The Emperor has no clothes!" Unfortunately, Ms. Butler, the person standing bare-arsed in this crowd is you.

Please note how I remained calm, polite, and 99% obscenity-free. On occasion, I am capable of such feats.

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