Oh Dear!

By Laura Vivanco on

I'm not sure I've received my first bad review, exactly, but it's clear that Dr Kate Macdonald didn't come away from reading For Love and Money: The Literary Art of the Harlequin Mills & Boon Romance with her view of romance novels changed for the better. Her review of it is up today and, if anything, it seems I've reinforced her belief that they're formulaic, which is quite the opposite of what I was trying to do. Kate, who reviews for Vulpes Libris and teaches at the University of Ghent, concludes that

Vivanco spends most of this book struggling to persuade us (me) that these novels sprout from a deep, rich bed of nutritious literary quality, and share a common standard of literariness. But it’s the formula that Vivanco is critiquing here, not the writing. Because these novels are so formulaic, they are policed rather than edited. Anything that transcends the formula will be edited out if the publisher thinks that The Reader or The Buyer (much more important) will not like it, so applying the principles of literary criticism to a formula seems a bit pointless. Also, I do think Vivanco reads too much into her subject.

I've read (and continue to read) a lot of Harlequin/Mills & Boon romances and, as I stated in For Love and Money, I believe that "many are well-written, skilfully crafted works which can and do engage the minds as well as the emotions of their readers, and a few are small masterpieces" (15). Kate, however,

could not see why anyone would want to read the writers whose works were quoted by Vivanco. I was more than disappointed by the quality of the writing in those quotations: I was appalled. [...] Vivanco quotes from many, many separate works, and the only way I could tell them apart was that the older texts, predating the 1950s, had a recognisable style, some sense of a person writing, rather than the formula. I could imagine someone speaking the dialogue in those quotations, and I felt interested in the stories, the characters, their voices. This was not the case with the extracts from the more recent novels, written, as Vivanco says in her title, for the money. I’m not at all surprised that wise novelists, some of whom are now famous, used pseudonyms when they wrote for this romance manufactory. But clearly there is a vast and satisfied readership out there who want to read novels written like this: they choose to buy these books, and that’s the problem.

And if someone's not convinced that the novels have any literary merit, it's not surprising that they're going to want to see them studied them from a different angle:

The romance genre is notorious for not normally being considered worthy of literary criticism, so Vivanco’s study is a good addition to the new romance studies.

However, I have caveats. I don’t think Vivanco has studied these generic, formulaic novels in the most interesting way. I have worked on very similar fiction, mass-market novelettes published in the 1890s. I got nothing of interest by looking at their literary quality, but found vast amounts to write about when looking at them as book history. Thinking about these novels as part of daily reading, and looking at their context is fascinating for understanding their readers’ reading tastes, and how much they would pay for it. Janice Radway did this in 1984 (Reading the Romance) for the American romance market. Looking at how Harlequin Mills & Boon romances are marketed, and what exactly their formula is, and why it works so well, would be valuable socio-literary book-history.

HJ (not verified)

Tuesday, 9 April, 2013

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Oh dear, indeed!  To be fair, it looks to me as though nothing you (or anyone) could have said would have persuaded Dr Macdonald that there's any merit in Harlequin/Mills & Boon books.  

Did you get the feeling that she's never actually read one of them, too?  To be fair, she doesn't have to have read any since it's your book she's reviewing, not them.  On the other hand, she appears to be drawing conclusions about them based only on the material quoted in your book and I'm not sure that's a safe thing to do.

Did you get the feeling that she's never actually read one of them, too?

Kate clarified in a later comment that "I used to read Mills & Boon about twenty five years ago when I was a literature student, but they didn’t suit me; But I still read romances very happily now."

she appears to be drawing conclusions about them based only on the material quoted in your book

It certainly wasn't intended to be read as a sort of anthology. Some of the quotes are pretty short and they weren't specially selected in order to give a flavour of their authors' different styles. They were chosen because they illustrate the particular topic under discussion and inasmuch as groups of them therefore relate to the same topic, perhaps that  that makes it more likely that the quotes will seem similar. To me, of course, they sound different, but I've read all of the novels from which they're taken, so I can't judge how they might seem to someone who's reading them out of that context.

it looks to me as though nothing you (or anyone) could have said would have persuaded Dr Macdonald that there's any merit in Harlequin/Mills & Boon books

Given that Kate said that "applying the principles of literary criticism to a formula seems a bit pointless" I think you may well be right.

But clearly there is a vast and satisfied readership out there who want to read novels written like this: they choose to buy these books, and that’s the problem 

This quote is telling. I can't help thinking that her comments are all coloured by the underlying belief that this is "a problem"

The problem, for her, is that there is a formula and that the authors have to write in a certain way to comply with it.  She believes that this prevents individual styles and makes the books indistinguishable.  (But she says that based on the quotations in your book.)

So is the problem that authors are being forced to write formula? If that were the case, and if the authors didn't like it, surely they could find another publisher?

Or is the problem that readers are supporting the production of indistinguishable books, and it's inherently bad for indistinguishable books to exist?

In my reading of her review, what she thinks is wrong is the second of your options:  "readers are supporting the production of indistinguishable books, and it's inherently bad for indistinguishable books to exist?"  

But it's not just because it's bad for indistinguishable books to exist per se but also because the creativity and artisitc production of the authors is adversely affected.   This isn't so much to do with the authors themselves but with the sanctity of original works.  (I'm putting that badly - it's early in the morning- but whatever it is which makes it wrong to abridge or censor writing.)

BTW I haven't read the comments on her review;  I didn't read them before my first comment and given the references to them here I'm not going to now!

This isn't so much to do with the authors themselves but with the sanctity of original works.  (I'm putting that badly - it's early in the morning- but whatever it is which makes it wrong to abridge or censor writing.)

I've seen comments online by some current authors saying how helpful their editors have been in focusing their attention and helping them improve their writing. Of course, an author would have to be rather reckless to denigrate her editor publicly, so perhaps there are hundreds of authors sitting at their keyboards fuming about their editors but unable to say so. So really I know very, very little about the HM&B editors (though some have been quite helpful to me personally when I asked for information).

Jenny Crusie's written about editors since she left category romance:

Editors should edit. They should not dictate content and they should never, ever rewrite words. And yet both of these sins are rife in the world of category because it’s the category editor’s job to transform art into soup; that is, make a work of fiction marketable. This is to everybody’s benefit as long as it doesn’t violate the writer’s work. But all too often it does. An editor who says, “This scene is brilliant, and it’s integral to the book, but readers don’t like dinner scenes so take it out,” is violating the author’s work. An editor who says, “This would be a really good book if you added a baby and a cowboy,” is violating an author’s work. An editor who says, “I thought this part where you wrote ‘Ralph came’ was too gross so I rewrote it as ‘Ralph reached his release’” is violating the author’s work. Does this happen outside of category? Yes. But it happens more often in category because some editors are leery of the category audience

However, (a) she adds that

there are many category editors who are in that position and who can still see beyond babies and cowboys, who protect their authors’ work and edit it to make it better instead of inoffensive, and who are willing to take a chance on really good but different books because they believe in both their authors and their readers, it is clearly possible to be both a category editor and a good editor. I’ve had four who were both, so I know they’re out there. We just need more of them.

(b) HM&B authors who find their editors "policing" them rather than editing could find some other way to publish their work: Crusie left to write single titles, for example, and nowadays there's the option of self-publishing. I've also noticed that some authors write for more than one HM&B line, so perhaps for some a shift in line could lead to finding a more suitable editor.

(c) It's possible the proportion of "policing" editors has changed in the decades since Crusie stopped writing category romances in the late 90s.

MD (not verified)

Tuesday, 9 April, 2013

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Exactly what HJ and Joanna said - I read the review, and it sounded to me that there was nothing you could have done there. Most of the review does not even talk specifically about your book. It starts with "I hated all the quotes", moves on to "M&B editors will edit out anything not fitting the formula, and this is awful" (without any proof) and then criticises just one specific instance dialogue from the book. I suppose one could say that "you showed us quotes and I hated them all" is a criticism of your book, but I agree with people who said that the tone of the review was condescending and not well informed.

There is a theory that says "If they misread it, it's because you weren't clear", and thenre is a lot of truth to that. But then, having dealt with a great many academic reviews, I can also say that sometimes people read something with a pre-conceived idea in mind, and things go downhill from there. I have had to deal with "Paper X proves my opition" in the past, when paper X proves exact opposite. I got a feeling that this thing about "M&B police writing with a formula" falls in that category - there is a pre-conceived opinion to start with, and nothing is going to shift it.

And I am not up to wading into the comments on that article, things got too heated there.

Exactly what HJ and Joanna said - I read the review, and it sounded to me that there was nothing you could have done there.

Thanks. I did think that was probably the case, but it's nice to get outside opinions on this kind of thing because it's impossible to be totally objective about one's own work.

There is a theory that says "If they misread it, it's because you weren't clear", and thenre is a lot of truth to that. But [...] sometimes people read something with a pre-conceived idea in mind, and things go downhill from there

Kate did write that "I have worked on very similar fiction, mass-market novelettes published in the 1890s. I got nothing of interest by looking at their literary quality" so I think what we had was a fundamental disagreement about the quality of the evidence. Those quotes which "appalled" Kate were ones which I saw as building up a case for the diversity of M&Bs and the skill of many of their authors.

I submit that this is a bad review, because its author is condemning an entire genre, and its readers, based on out of context quotes.

Further, there is no point commenting there anymore--the author has too many commitments elsewhere to respond to comments, and the blog coordinator doesn't want people to respond to comments or the problematic aspects of the review itself.

This is a truly bad review because it only addresses the book tangentially.