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all hail Mary Bly
Pokey (who never comes here to read this weblog, I know she doesn't, so I could say all kinds of interesting things about her and would she know? maybe we'll find out.) pointed me to an NYT op ed piece called A Fine Romance written Mary Bly, who is an English professor and also the author of historical romances (writing as Eloisa James). I'm encouraged that (1) the NYT ran the damn thing and (2) she had the nerve to write it in the first place.The only thing I'm not sure I agree with is the contention that romance readers avoid certain kinds of novels. I'd have to see more proof of that.
You know these links to the NYT aren't free forever, so get over there and read it. The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: A Fine Romance. Here's an excerpt:
So why is romance the only genre ghettoized for including [sex] scenes? In the early 80's feminists like Janice Radway maintained that romances channel women's desire into patriarchal marriage, but now these scholars are issuing apologias, having discovered that many romances depict working, independent heroines. As Ms. Radway has since declared, romances actually validate female desire. Clearly, the genre's struggle for respect is part of a larger cultural battle to define and control female sexuality.
February 15, 2005 03:58 PM
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Comments
Hmm, I know people who are afraid to read 'literary fiction,' mostly because they're sure they won't 'get it' and they'll feel stupid. Or they think it will be boring. These people aren't really romance readers either. Most of them don't really read fiction in general.
I think part of that prejudice on each side of the bookstore is that view that romance is fluff and sex. Which is illogical because there's sex scenes in every genre (including 'literature'), as Bly points out, and because there's literature out there that uses sex as the center of the story (erotica) whereas sex is a sort of support of a romantic story, whether actual, implied, written, whatever.
Posted by: Christina at February 17, 2005 11:40 AM