The Message of a Book: A Short Rant

This post was inspired by a discussion over at All About Romance a few months ago.

Can we just never talk about the message the book is giving to children ever again? Please. Pretty please. Or, you know what? Hey, let's at least have like a two month moratorium on this discussion every year. We'll call it "Let's NOT Think About the Children Month".  It'll be great. We can discuss books without talking about how they affect readers.  No, the word is "effect" because apparently there's this belief still circulating around that somehow art will cause you to do things. For instance, if you watch "The Last Temptation of Christ" one too many times you will become an atheist. Or if you read about romance novel alpha, bad boys somehow you will then go out and find yourself an abusive relationship. Can we just please admit that this is just not true? That art does not cause things? Except boredom on occasion.

Or maybe that it's the opposite parallel.  Maybe girls read books with bad boys in them because that's who they are attracted to already. Ever thought of that? And I've said this before but "bad boy" is a loose and ambiguous term.  I have a love for literary bad boys at the very least and yet, I find myself in stark disagreement with certain people about who they refer to as a "bad boy."  Not only does the term change definition from person to person but one can also be attracted to some bad boys but not all bad boys.  Just because I fancied Lestat doesn't mean I'm going to date Ted Bundy.  This whole conversation and line of thinking is so chock full of bad reasoning that I can barely keep from running around and smacking people upside the head.  Do you know what is a stronger factor in determining whether or not a young girl ends up in an abusive relationship or destructive sexual patterns? Shockingly (and Freudianly?) it is her relationship with her father, especially during her teen years when she feels like crap all the time and the other teens around her are basically no different from a pack of feral dogs.

Don't you think that perhaps Bella's attraction to the paternalistic, controlling Edward in Twilight was more a product of the distant and cold relationship she had with her father? He never talked to her. He barely checked in with her on how she was doing or why she would make the sudden decision not live with her mother and stepfather (I heard somewhere that Stephanie Meyer's early version had her running to Forks because her stepdad had made an inappropriate pass at her)? Oh no, it could never be the dysfunctional family relationship. No, no.  Bella's questionable attraction to Edward is clearly a direct result of her love of Wuthering Heights.

It just doesn't scan. Moreover, plenty of people fall in love with the wrong people, especially when they are young. Rarely does it happen that one meets a life partner in the hormone addled days of their youth. It happens, but not often. Why? Because when you are a teenager you are technically a sociopath.  And everyone knows sociopaths have difficulty make good life choices.

Spinsters, Bluestockings, and Other Aging Virgins

I think I might be a spinster. Is there a checklist or something I can look at to make sure? Let's see: over-educated, check. Glasses, check. Governess, oh no but teacher and librarian sort of equals that, terrible fashion sense, nope. Phew, this close to being a spinster.

But if I am a spinster and my life was a romance novel, then any day now Mr. Wonderful Pants should be coming along to sweep me off my feet. Which would be good because my love of beautiful shoes has completely ruined my feet. The bone below my big toe actually aches. However, I think that my shoes are the major fashion item preventing me from being a spinster.

In any case, I prefer romances featuring spinsters and bluestockings the most.  It has to do with Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

When I was between three and five I was obsessed with several things: Mr. Darcy, The Nutcracker, The Magic Flute and being a Sleeping Beauty princess.  My love of Mr. Darcy was born of having viewed the old Masterpiece Theater version of Pride and Prejudice.  I thought Mr. Darcy was a dreamboat. According to my mother, I used to pretend to kiss Mr. Darcy.  I also wanted to be a ballet dancing, opera singer. Unfortunately, I was unable to carry either a  tune or a rhythm. Such is life.  I was also the oldest child of a family of girls.

By the time I was five I was very aware of the fact that eldest sisters rarely, if ever, get a happy ending. In order to get a happy ending one must the youngest or the only child. I was neither.  I was convinced that somehow this dream of being a ballet dancing, opera singing princess in a story would some day come to pass. After all, if sudden transformations into great beauties have taught us anything then they have taught us that sudden transformations into great beauties are possible.

Imagine my bitter disappointment when none of this actually occurred. Ah well, what can you do. The other aspect of myself that characterized my childhood was deep sensitivity to anything that stank remotely of injustice or unfairness. That being said, it always seemed to me to be extremely unjust that ugly step-sisters and eldest children got the shit end of the deal in fairy tales. I mean, why should birth order rule you out of having a happy ending?

Which brings me back to spinsters, bluestockings and other aging virgins. Here then is coterie of ugly step-sisters and eldest daughters, albeit not in those terms, who are finally getting their happy endings. This coterie also includes any girls with glasses.

Favorites of this genre include, but are not limited to:

Mary Challoner in The Devil's Cub

Annelise Kempton in The Devil's Waltz

Beth Armitage in An Unwilling Bride

Penelope Featherington in Romancing Mr. Bridgerton

And most especially, Sophie Hatter in Howl's Moving Castle which is not a romance but amazing, amazing, amazing.

What I think I like most about these stories is that these heroines are not the object of initial desire, but somehow by being their own self, they become beloved.  While standards of beauty have changed, the one that has remained the same is that if a woman is to be successful in love then she must never be herself.  This is the central thesis of the infamous The Rules but it is not a new thesis.

Yet, these stories reject the notion that in order to be loved or sexually desired that a woman must hid her intelligence, push her beauty like a drug or crumble in the face of danger. In short, to exhibit masculine qualities rather than feminine virtues.  It's rather heartening, but is it true? This I do not know.

Epilogues or Babies + Schmoop = Puke

Personally, I like children and someday I hope to have one or two.  However, children are not romantic. They are very opposite of romantic. As my father is wont to say, children are the enemy of gracious dining.  I think this could be extended to most activities.

And yet, children populate the epilogues and indeed, the logues of romance novels. Why is this? The heteronormative imperative to procreate? Mmmmmm, maybe but I think not so much.  I think it may be a genre standard which is to say that the romance genre is in a certain respect the opposite of tragedy in two ways:

1. It postulates a worldview in which the ultimate reality is happiness not grief and

2. It reifies the domestic. Epic and tragedy deal with Great Matters, matters of state, matters of God, and while romance does this, too, it does it on a more mundane level.

Thus the proliferation of babies is a symbolic measure of both of these standards. First, babies represent the continuity of generations as birth is the opposite of death. Second, babies represent the joy of the domestic. I say joy and not pleasure or happiness because children bring all of these things but when they are throwing a tantrum in the shoe department of the Nordstroms one rarely feels pleasure. Joy connotes a certain spike of pain along with the happiness, at least in my mind.

Despite this symbolic measure of babies, they aren't romantic. Babies cry and shit and throw tantrums. They do not care if you are tired or hungry or horny. They rarely if ever negotiate. Oh sure, the baby is funny and adorable and says awesome things that you only wish you could still say, but that doesn't take away the fact that the baby got some sort of sticky goop all over the couch . . . which you sat in. Not romantic.

So when novels end with the hero and heroine smooching over the sleeping head of a toddler all I can think to myself is, yeah right! One party would be off trying to do the following: laundry, the dishes, take a shower, sleep or watch something other than Caillou or Handy Manny.  

"Quick Henry!" the heroine ought to say in low panicked tones. "While Charles is asleep, I'm going to take a shower."

"I'll move him to the crib."

"No, don't do that. You'll wake him up. Just let him sleep right there."

"I need to vacuum up these cheerios. If I leave him here, he'll wake up at the sound."

"So don't vacuum."

"But I can't vacuum when he's awake, because he yanks the cord."

"Ssshhhhhh, you're gonna wake him up."

"Can't I do anything in this house?"

Well, at least that's the way it goes in my family.  My point is that children don't necessarily strengthen a relationship or offer convenient moments for making out.  I would like to see less babies and births in epilogues. I like the concept of an epilogue but maybe authors could just jog it down the road a few years to the vow renewal or a toast a child's wedding. That would be better than babies.

Books I've Bought: A Photo Essay

I love library book sales. I love used bookstores. I love thrift stores. Why? Cheap paperback books. I used to scour the thrift shops of the East Village for hidden romance treasures, certain in the knowledge that they knew not what they had. And indeed, they didn't. The following proves it.

I bought this in a bookshop located in the upstairs of an old 18th century building in St.Ives, Cornwall, UK.  I can't remember how much I bought it for but I was stoked by the fact that at that time none of Heyer's books were in print in the United States.

Fatty Fat Fat Fat

Over at All About Romance  Abi Bishop has written a post on fat heroes and heroines in romance.

Fat and love. Love and fat. The question, as far as fat in romance is concerned is this: Will the reader find a fat hero/heroine believable as a romantic lead? Or does being fat preclude having an erotic experience because fat is somehow a signifier for that total lack of sexual attractiveness? A recent survey (conducted by me, just minutes ago) of internet porn has concluded that there are a lot of fat, ugly, and fat n' ugly people fucking a lot, in various positions all for the titallating enjoyment of viewers across the world. That said, if fat people can fuck in amateur porn and get a lot of viewers, why is it so unbelieve that fat people can fall in love and fuck both other fat people and thin people. Another survey, also conducted by me via observation of couples over the years and repeated viewings of the old TLC show A Wedding Story, has suggested that people pair off in the strangest manner. I postulate three kinds of pairngs off:

Today's Music Is . . .

Here is a sampling of several songs I find particularly delicious. Enjoy!

"The Rake's Song" by The Decemberists



"True Romance" by She Wants Revenge



And last but not least:

"Wicked Game" by HIM

Sacrifice & Love

Over at All About Books, Rike has posted a blog about inequality in romances and marriages. Comments, right off the bat, became very defensive about posters own marriages and what-not . . .

However, I do think that Rike has a point and as I was thinking about it, I realized that this is actually the main reason I hate the ingenue as a heroine.  To me, the naive but beautiful ingenue encapsulates everything that is wrong with male/female relationships: that in order to be in relationship not only do women have to sacrifice themselves totally and without the man having to do anything either but aslo that in order to be in a relationship a woman has to start out on an unequal footing or else she cannot expect to incite desire in men. Anyone who knows me, knows that I have had a long standing disgust, nay antagonism towards relationships between younger women and older men. Invariably the man has money, perhaps not wealth but definitely is comfortably set. The woman is, if not strictly speaking beautiful, then at least very good at approximating it with the use of plastic surgery and yoga (see Bravo's The Millionaire Matchmaker for references). She is also invariably neither as accomplished as the man nor as innately intelligent/smart. When I see this in real life it makes me want to light people on fire. The only reason I don't is because I never seem have a convenient Molotov Cocktail on hand.

This is not love, people. This is prostituition in its most insidious form. It is an exchange, not of souls or even of bodies, not of minds or of hearts but of economic factors between the wealth of money and the wealth of beauty. I do not believe any of the men on Millionaire Matchmaker really want to find love.  What they want is to buy love. This is why they are going to a matchmaker. And she's not an old school yenta of the Fiddler on the Roof variety. Oh no, she is a pimp, bringing these men only the best products, the most appetizing of merchandise. Every woman on that show adheres to current standards of "beauty" with no deviations at all, not in dress, not in hair, not even in face. There is nothing remotely individual about these women. I suspect it must be something in the water in L.A. making them all into Stepford Ho's.  Not that I, personally, would want to have my body anywhere near these "millionaires" as most of them are so phenomenonly unattractive both in body and mind that one is literally gobsmacked with the idea that sexual desire could ever be possible. Can a vagina dry heave?