Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

There’s a huge hoo-ra (not Hoo Ha) going on right now about rape in romance, spurred by a book whose title I will not mention because I’ve never read it and neither, I think, have a lot of the people who are outraged by it. What they’re outraged by is the apparent imminent return of the rape romance. So outraged that they’re arguing that rape should be barred from romance fiction because it’s not romantic. This is where I make my disclaimer: I hate rape romance. I also hate those romances where the hero is emotionally abusive to the heroine; those aren’t romantic, either. And I loathe baby romances; anybody who’s ever had a baby knows what a kid will do to romance. Also I don’t like badly written romances; I think people should learn to write well and publishers should only publish books with good writing. And while we’re on this, any romance novel that makes God more important that the romance story is not a romance, it’s an inspirational novel with a romance subplot, and I don’t like them, either. And you know that romance plot where the heroine fights another woman for the hero? Catfight novels. Hate those. And . . .

Where was I?

Right. The return of the rape romance. Not the best news I’ve had all week, but not the end of the genre, either. I heard about the book, heard from friends of mine who loathed it and friends of mine who loved it, and then I pretty much shrugged and moved on. Until people started saying, “Anything with rape in it should not be sold as a romance.” Then I came out to play because as much as I loathe the abusive hero-baby-hack-proselytizing-catfight novel—there’s a nightmare for you—I will defend to the end of my laptop battery the right of romance authors to write it. I don’t like that stuff, but that doesn’t mean that my personal squick meter gets to define romance.

The argument that everybody’s using is an old one: rape romances are a bad influence on romance readers. I find this inexplicable. Yes, of course our books influence readers, but I’m not seeing the Armageddon here. If romance readers read books in which the hero rapes, they’ll come to see rape as acceptable? How? Bob and I just finished a book in which the hero is a hitman. I don’t see anybody coming after us and saying, “You know, women will read that book and think that men who kill for a living will make great husbands.” How dumb do these people think romance readers are? This is a cousin to that old paternalistic argument that romances are bad for women because they can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality. What disturbs me is that so many romance writers are making it in the name of feminism. It’s not; it’s anti-feminist in that it assumes a child-like reader who absorbs whatever we put in front of her. I don’t think an argument can be more wrong.

First of all, the impact on readers will depend on two things: their own squick meters/fantasies and how well the book is written. To bar rape from romance is to bar a very common fantasy for women. (If “rape fantasy” makes you twitch, try “surrender fantasy” or “lack of responsibility fantasy” or “Alan Rickman Showed Up At My Front Door and Even Though I’m Happily Married With Two Kids He Ravished Me and There Was Nothing I Could Do About It fantasy.”) Very few women fantasize about being attacked in a parking garage by an overweight drug addict with a bad skin rash and an STD. It’s always somebody gorgeous who smells good: Russell Crowe/Brad Pitt/Daniel Craig/Sex Object of Your Choice Here. It is, in short, a fantasy, and women know that. They know that when they think about it, they know that when they play the game with their lovers, and they know that when they read a freaking novel. The best comment on this one came from Susie Bright years ago. I’m paraphrasing here because I’m too lazy to go find the source, but she was playing games with a lover and suggested that he dominate her and force her. He was appalled and said he couldn’t possibly do that, that it was wrong. Bright pointed out that it was only wrong if she didn’t want it, if she asked him to do it, it was okay. In the same way, for us to say rape shouldn’t be part of the genre is essentially telling that reader that her fantasy is appalling, wrong, and doesn’t belong in the genre she loves. That’s a bias in the observer and has nothing to do with what happens between a reader and her book; she gets to read what she wants.

But the hell with the readers, I’m really upset about what it would do to writers. You’re telling me that if I put rape in a book, I’m not writing a romance? How do you know that? You haven’t read my book. The modern historical genre was founded on the rape romance, Kathleen Woodiwiss’s 1972 novel The Flame and the Flower. People can rant about the dangers of the rape romance all they want, but a novel that stays in print for thirty-five years is doing something right. I’ll confess I’m not a fan of that book, but Patricia Gaffney’s To Have and To Hold is one of the finest romances I’ve ever read, and reducing it to “a rape romance” because the hero rapes the heroine would be a travesty of narrow-mindedness and an insult to the author. And what about all the novels with heroes who try to rape and are thwarted? Do they get a free pass just because something stops their heroes, even though their intent is clear? Vidal in Georgette Heyer’s Devil’s Cub has every intention of raping Mary Challoner; the only reason he doesn’t is that she shoots him (read that excerpt here). Heyer leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind, Vidal intends to rape. And yet he’s a much-beloved hero (I must have read that book at least a dozen times and I plan to read it a dozen more in the future) precisely because he has so far to rise through the romance. He’s a rotter, but Mary’s going to reform him just by being Mary. And by shooting him. Georgette Heyer was my biggest influence as a beginning romance writer in large part because she never took the safe route, never did what was politically correct, always went her own way. But if the people who want rape out of romance are honest, that would include any hero who intends to rape, and there goes Vidal. I know I’ll never be as good a romance writer as Heyer or Gaffney, but give me the same clear playing field, please.

But in the end, all of the hoo-ra won’t matter because the readers will have the final say. Glen Turner from Queensland University of Technology, in his excellent paper delivered at the Pop Culture conference last week, pointed out that all the hand-wringing over what romance does to readers (he was referring to the abysmal Radway study and other critics who argued that romance novels were a bad influence on women) was pretty much backwards. Romance novels do not determine what readers think; readers determine what romance novels get published. Glen pointed out that the romance industry is more responsive to reader feedback than any other genre. Through reader boards and blogs, listserves and e-mails, and even snail mail, readers let publishers know what they think, but the biggest message they send is what they buy. Readers determine what a successful romance novel is, not writers with a political or moral agenda, and they do that by reading. The books they buy in stores, the books they check out of the library thereby encouraging the libraries to buy in great numbers, send a clear message in the only language publishing speaks: Sales. So I’m annoyed by the people who want to make some topic off bounds for me as a romance writer; they should get their cotton-pickin’ hands off my genre. But I’m not worried about it. I know romance readers too well to think they’ll let anybody push them—or me–around.

Although I might argue for some restrictions against the abusive hero-baby-hack-proselytizing-catfight novel. (I can’t help but think of titles, though: That Bitch Is Trying To Take The Secret Baby Some Arrogant Asshole Left Me With But God Is On My Side!!!! Hmmm. Needs to be pithier.) No, no, asking for restrictions would be wrong. My personal tastes do not define my genre, even if I feel passionately about them. Romance is bigger than me. And I’m really happy about that.

I will post a new blog, I swear, but in the meantime something keeps locking up the blog on the last one. I’m assuming it’s Bob’s post.

Here’s hoping this fixes the problem.

I’ve been working on the Fun Book on Sundays, and I ran into a snag because my hero, who is supernaturally irresistible (stick with me, it works) sleeps with at least twelve women before he goes to bed with the heroine. That’s believable given his character, but here’s the kicker: my heroine won’t sleep with him because he’s promiscuous–she’s no dummy–and he actually gives up other women to have her and keep her. I mean, what are the chances?

So I talked this out with a pal of mine, somebody who’s very savvy about literary convention and respectability, Lani Diane Rich.

“Sam nails everything that moves and then gives it all up for Char,” I told her. “Who’s going to believe that? I’m in so much trouble here.”

“Oh, no, you’re fine,” Lani said. “Char has a Glittery HooHa.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve never heard of the Glittery HooHa?” Lani patted my arm. “Oh, honey.”

I’m going to quote directly now, because nobody explains the origin of the Glittery HooHa like Lani:

Once upon a time, in a land called Television Without Pity, the peasants gathered to discuss a particular type of character on soap operas. She was always blond, always beautiful, and always good-natured and kind, and always stupid beyond the telling of it. Did someone get approached by a masked man wearing dark gloves who needed help getting a puppy out of a wolf trap, only to happily agree to assist and disappear? It was her. Did someone get drunk on her honeymoon, pass out in a strange bed, and wake up only to assume on very little evidence that she’d slept with another man? Then lie about it? Then get caught lying? Then find out it was all a set-up by her evil twin, who had always been evil and had, in fact, done this before? It was her. Did someone get trapped in their own microwave oven?

Guess who?

And yet… there is a man. We’ll call him… Hero. Hero is handsome, he is strong, and… well, yes, okay, he’s kinda dumb, too, but still he manages to rescue her every single time she’s in trouble… which is approximately twice a show. He stays by her side and loves her through thick and thin. He disentangles her hair from the curling iron. He drops his Very Important Job to rush off and rescue her from the cardboard box on the pier where the Villain left her, warning her NOT TO SAY A WORD lest he do BAD BAD THINGS to her favorite hamster, so she kept quiet, even though the Villain was long gone, and many a passerby had passed her by. The Hero is loyal and loving
and doesn’t seem to mind the fact that she is so FREAKIN’ stupid. How can this be??

Well, my friends, it comes down to the power of the Glittery HooHa, or the GHH for short. A woman with an HH as G as this girl merely needs to walk around as glitter falls from her netherparts, leaving a trail for Hero to follow. And once he finds her, it only takes one dip in the GHH to snare him forever, for yea, no matter how many HooHas he might see, never will there be one as Glittery as hers…

I love Lani Diane Rich.

So, the Glittering HooHa or the GHH. Does my girl Char have one?

Char’s a redhead, not a blonde, and she’s a forty-two-year-old professor of Ancient Near Eastern History, so she’s not dumb although she has had her nose buried in her work for over twenty years which probably isn’t the brightest way to plan your life, and she owns a dog not a hamster, and she doesn’t end up in cardboard box on a pier although she does end up in an ancient temple with a pissed-off goddess . . .

“I don’t see it,” I told Lani.

But as she explained further, the GHH is more universal than the dumb blonde, it is, in fact, applicable to the romance heroine in general. “Char definitely has a GHH,” she told me. “Sam’s toast. One dip and he’s done.”

When I thought about it, I realized she was right about the romance heroine. Take J. T. Wilder, the hero of Don’t Look Down. He sleeps with a hot actress his first day in the story, even though he’s already met our heroine, Lucy, but the next day, he feels that something was missing. He can’t put his finger on it (stop snickering) but of course we know now it’s the GHH. Shortly thereafter, he and Lucy get horizontal and by damn, that’s it for J. T. My writing partner, we’ll call him Bob, took awhile to get used to this, probably because I didn’t know about the GHH and couldn’t explain it to him that way. In fact in his first draft of the day-after-Althea scene, J. T. was thinking he’d had a very good time.

“Nope,” I said.

“You’re kidding me,” Bob said. “He had great sex with a hot actress.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t that great,” I said.

“Yes, it was,” he said.

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”

“No, it really was.”

“Bob.”

“She’s an actress.”

“Bob.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No.”

So he sighed and wrote in the part about how something had been missing–”Yeah, right,” he said–and saved us from some angry mail although we still got a lot because J. T. dared to sleep with anybody but Lucy in the book. I guess J. T. wasn’t looking at the ground and missed the glitter on that first day.

So now I’m looking at Sam, who is irresistible to women and who in turn sees no point in resisting them, and at Char in her mud brown sweater and sensible shoes, and I’m thinking her GHH better have Super Glitter (which, come to think of it, it does), and that I’m going to have to write the hell out of this because even with a supernatural GHH in front of him, Sam is not going to find fidelity easy.

But at least I have literary convention on my side.

People keep asking for author photos. Can’t my work just speak for itself? Evidently not.

But I take a really awful photo. Or maybe I look like that and I’m just deep in denial. When I got my new computer (I loooooooooooove my new computer) it came with the iSight camera built in, which I forgot when I clicked on the Photo Booth icon to see what that did. What that did was put me in all my puffy, saggy, blotchy glory right there on my computer screen.

I screamed out loud.

Then I became fascinated with it. Photo Booth comes with all these variations, all of which made me look better than the monster on the screen in plain old color. Well, they all made me look better because they made the image a different color and texture which cleared up an amazing number of blotches, wrinkles, and sags. But none of them looked like me. Or rather, they all looked like I wanted to look, but would have lead to people saying “Who is that?” Which is really depressing.

Then there was the whole problem of who did I want to be? There are some of those pictures that made me look, uh, arrogant. Vain, even. Can’t have that; pictures are for people who don’t know me and so still have a chance to like me. The last thing we need is truth in photographs. Then others are so heavily embellished with the different photo booth variations that they’d just make people squint.

Or the ones that make me look like an alien.

Hard to believe those were all taken within a couple of days of each other. Or that they’re photos of the same species.

While I was thinking about this, I went over to Teach Me Tonight where the Mysterious Laura Vivanco not only posted a wonderful picture of herself that wasn’t her, she supplied me with a link to romance author photos from the eighties. And they are FABULOUS. If only I had that kind of nerve.

Well, not the Rosemary Rogers one; I don’t think I write the kind of story where the author sprawls across her bed in her nightgown. Janet Dailey is pretty upfront about who she is; I think that photo is from the time she wrote a book set in each one of the fifty states while traveling the fifty states. Later she stayed home and traveled other people’s books. That would have been a good photo, too. So no, I don’t think I see myself standing out in front of this barn of a house with Wolfie under my arm carrying a “Get Out Of Iraq” banner. Bertrice Small has a very nice Gorey-esque photo with her husband. I have related elsewhere what happened when Bob and I tried to get an author photo taken together; if we’d been in the same pose as Bertrice and George, Bob would have been strangling me. Actually, that’s a thought; conflict sells. And I could so do the Danielle Steele pose. All I have to do is get some big sleeves, have Wolfie stuffed, lose a hundred pounds, and write a lot faster.

What I like about these photos is the Diane Arbus feel to them which nicely captures the freakshow that is publishing-for-a-living. Almost every one of those photos was carefully staged and chosen by the author to show a side of herself that wasn’t real, deliberately letting the reader in on the joke. (I love Steele’s plastic dog. I must have one.) (The photographer is really Mary Ellen Mark, who, like most of the authors pictured, is still working today.) Bob has talked about doing a photo where he’s dressed all in black with black sunglasses on, standing about ten feet behind me while I sit on a park bench looking innocent and happy. After seeing these photos, I think he might be right. Assuming I can fake innocence.

The photo I can’t imagine is the one that’s real, that shows me as I really am, because who I really am changes hourly. If that kind of self-knowledge is required for an author photo, it’ll have to wait. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I’m not self-actualized enough for an author photo. I’ll call you when I get there. Bring your camera.

I’m in Boston, having just finished two days at the Popular Culture Conference, my time travel back to academic life, and I have enjoyed it immensely, probably because I’m not worried about tenure or sitting on a committee. Or maybe it was because it’s the Pop Culture Conference, the best national academic conference to attend (I used to go years ago and give papers on mystery fiction and computer games, those were the days) because Pop Culture people know how to have a good time without highhatting each other. Or maybe it’s because the academics who study romance are just such good people. I finally got to meet Eric Selinger and Sarah Frantz from the Teach Me Tonight blog–the mysterious Laura Vivanco remains mysterious in Britain, but I think she’s just playing hard to get, or maybe she just loves it that we all refer to her as the Mysterious Laura–and so many other great people, including Glen Thomas from the Queensland University of Technology (his paper was “Romance: The Perfect Creative Industry”), a university I will now be visiting in August, so if you’re one of Glen’s students, brace yourself. And the papers were phenomenal. Sarah is reporting on them on the TMT blog and she’s doing a much better job synopsizing than I could (her paper was “”Sobbing SEALs, Frantic Football Players, and Weeping Vampires: The Rise of the Emotional Masculine Perspective in Romance Novels” which I think Bob should read, especially since her current work includes Don’t Look Down and is about to include Agnes and the Hitman as soon as I get her an ARC), so I’ll fast forward to the panel I was on today since it’s all about mememememe.

Well, me and Eloisa James and Suz Brockmann. I was there giving a paper on community (“A Book Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Community in Contemporary Romance Fiction” a lot of which will go into the Community lesson on HWSW in a couple of weeks), Eloisa was there as Mary Bly, the name she uses when she’s a Shakespeare scholar, giving a paper called “Hostile but Useful: Adorno, Pop Music, and Popular Romance”, and Suz was there as a discussant. Mary and I delivered our papers (Mary was brilliant and I would love a copy of her paper HINT), Suz spoke about being inspired to write romance and was fabulous, and then we talked about romance with everybody, on so many different topics that’s it’s hard to sort them all out now, but I can tell you I had a wonderful time.

I learned a lot about the current state of romance at this conference, but the thing that struck me most was how clearly the scholars in the room refuted Janice Radway’s abysmal Reading the Romance. Back when I was doing academic romance criticism (a million years ago), everybody thought Radway was the voice of God on romance fiction. But now that academic critics are actually reading romance themselves–I can’t say enough good things about the people who gave papers on romance fiction at this conference–they’re all looking at Radway’s work with reactions ranging from bemusement to outrage. And you know, having shrieked about how bad that book was so many years ago, hearing other people who have better academic credentials than I ever did say the same things was downright heartwarming. I am so encouraged by romance criticism right now, I’m almost optimistic. (If you’re interested, the Teach Me Tonight blog is a great place to start catching up.)

And I’m thrilled with the people who are working on it, especially Eric who did a paper on me. There’s just not enough academic criticism on Crusie, that’s what I say. Especially done by Eric Selinger who is not only a scholar but a reader, too, a combination that’s not as common as you’d think it would be. It was especially fun to watch him give his paper (“Brace Yourself, Brigid O’Shaughnessy: Jennifer Crusie Romances The Maltese Falcon”) in front of me. The urge to say, “You know, that’s not right,” was overwhelming even though he was dead on target in everything he said. And all my sympathies to Linda Lee, who came to give her excellent paper, “An Alternate Genealogy: Reconsidering Romance Novels as Postmodern Fairy Tales,” which pretty much refuted completely a paper I’d done long ago on the same topic, only to find I was sitting in the audience. That can’t have been fun, even though she was right and I was wrong. So I bought her lunch. It seemed the least I could do, after I said, “No, no, you were right and I was wrong.” Academic criticism is not for the thin-skinned.

Of course, I caught a cold here which meant I couldn’t stay and play with everybody after our panel–nothing like being Typhoid Jenny at the party–but I came back to the hotel and slept for hours and then pampered myself with room service and now I’m doped to the gills on cold meds and ready to call it a night so I can catch a plane home tomorrow. With any luck, the next On the Road I write will be in Australia in August. I’m looking at fourteen weeks of beautiful non-traveling and uber-writing. It’s enough to make me want to wallow.

But a huge thank you to Eric and Sarah and Darcy Martin (her paper was “”Exploding the Stereotype: The Heroine as Portrayed in the Silhouette Bombshell Series”) and everybody else who presented such thoughtful papers on romance fiction, and a special so-good-to-see-you-again to Emily Toth, and a definite you-were-brilliant to Mary and Suz. It was a very good day.