The Corean Chronicles
Romances and F&SF
Because of my own contempt for those literary types, whether professors or writers, who sniff down their noses at all forms of "genre" fiction, I'm not about to do the same to romances... or thrillers, or mysteries. I do allow myself some disgust at splatter-punk, and the pornography of violence and/or human plumbing, otherwise known as ultra-graphic sex, but that doesn't mean some of it might not be technically well-written. Snobbery and blanket exclusion under the guise of "excellence" or "literary value" is just another form of bias, usually on the part of people who haven't bothered to look deeply into genres or forms.
While more than a few "sophisticates" and others dismiss romances as formulaic, that's just a cop-out. Just about every novel ever published is formulaic. If novels weren't, they'd be unreadable. The only "formulaic" question about a work of fiction is which formula it follows.
Romances happen to have some redeeming features, features often lacking in mainstream "literary" fiction, such as a belief in love and romance, and optimistic endings, and often retribution of some sort for evil. There's often a theme of self-improvement as well. Are these "realistic" in our world today? No, unhappily, they're probably not, but paraphrasing one of the grumpy old uncles in Secondhand Lions, there are some things, which may not even be true, that people are better off for believing in, such as love, honor, duty... And if romances get readers to believe in the value of such traits, they're doing a lot more for the readers and society than "realistic" novels about the greed on Wall Street or the narcissism of the wealthy or the depths of violence and degradation among the drug and criminal cultures.
From a practical point of view as an author, I also can't help but note that romances are the largest selling category of fiction by a wide-selling margin. Nothing else comes close. As in every other form of writing, there are exceedingly well written and even "literary quality" romances, and there are abysmal examples of fiction, but as Theodore Sturgeon said decades ago, "ninety percent of everything written is crap." That includes F&SF, romances, and even, or especially, mainstream "literary" fiction.
So... no, I don't dismiss romances. Far from it. And I just write my romances as part of my science fiction and fantasy.
Do the stats of the genre of romance, highlight something missing in society, for half the species anyway? :-)
I'd imagine the men sublimate their psychological vacuums, in other forms of reading!
Strange how adversity seems to bring society together and the good times drive it apart!
Does make you wonder if longevity of life, will only bring ennui if a purpose cannot be instilled in mankind.
A book has a certain resonance; Brave New World, with it's use of soma and the feelies to control society, wonder if they read many romances?
I've always wondered at the gullible and cynical dichotomy.
If you are trusting you are gullible, if you don't, you are cynical.
Still I digress and ramble, must be old age!
TTFN
Ian
Since I haven't read any Harlequin romances, I don't really have an opinion on them myself; I simply mentioned them earlier because they're generally assumed to be the most 'generic' and least intelligent examples of genre fiction, and have become a sort of cliché for referring to simplistic pulp in general. But given the fairly convincing arguments you've previously made in favor of generic formulas, perhaps this is just an example of bad criticism, and it was a mistake on my part to adopt this cliché.
On a related note, I can't help wondering if the poor covers on many fantasy and romance novels don't help to encourage negative assumptions on the part of those who haven't yet been initiated into these genres. With the exception of The Magic of Recluce, I think many of the Sweet covers on the Recluce books have been bad enough to scare away some newcomers. On the other hand, some of the Corean books and a few of the SF books, e.g. Gravity Dreams, have had excellent covers.
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