Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Everything I Know About Love: Too Much and Too Little

There has been a great deal of discussion taking place about Jessica Miller’s review of Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels. The review provoked many interesting questions, responses, and queries. I don’t want to engage specifically with the review, but to offer another perspective on EIKAL.

Roland Barthes in A Lover’s Discourse writes: “Everyone will understand that X has ‘huge problems’ with his sexuality; but no one will be interested in those Y may have with his sentimentality: love is obscene precisely in that it puts the sentimental in place of the sexual.”

I’m guilty of sentimental reading and writing, and I find these sentimental or affective responses to reading and writing to be particularly interesting. Indeed, this is what makes romance reading so interesting – romance novels thrive on the sentimental (and sometimes the sexual). But, I don’t think we should treat these “sentimental” moments without criticism.

For instance, in Miller’s review, one of the most interesting lines from my perspective was: “I haven’t said much about the specific lessons Wendell finds in he romance genre. This is because, as a romance reader and therefore a member of her target audience, I’m too embarrassed.” I love this moment in the review, not because I agree with it, but because the reader is “too embarrassed.” Not just embarrassed, but excessively so. Barthes writes: “To try to write about love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes of which love diminishes and levels it)."

The romance is excessive precisely because it is about love. Love is excessive. But Barthes is not alone. Richard Terdiman writes, “people love being in love, and when they are they talk and write about it with an expansive intensity.” Adam Phillips writes that falling in love is “traditionally overwhelming, [an] excessive experience.” To fall in love and to fall out of love (or worse, to be thrown out of love, to be rejected and rendered abject) are excessive experiences and we tell these stories so as to come to terms with them.

Why, for instance, if we know that love is dangerous, can cause harm, shatter, and perhaps ultimately destroy us, do we continue to desire, long for, dream of, and write about love? Just consider the excessive story of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which the hero tells his reader: “without doubt, the only thing that makes Man’s life on earth essential and necessary is love.” All of our love stories and romance novels talk about the possibility of love, loving, and being loved. I admit that this reading of love is hopelessly romantic. Romance novels provide readers with ways of imagining love and loss, the muck of language, things being too much and too little. These are stories that need to be told, need to be listened to, need to be read because they are so essential to the human experience. The desire to read about love and tell love stories is a way of coming to terms – a search for lost terms – with a love that cannot and will not be excessive enough.

For some readers of EIKAL, I imagine there is a recognition of not being alone in their love of romance, for others, I imagine they are “embarrassed.” I think varying reactions are testament to the complexity of romance. Readers, like the romance novels they read, are not a monolithic group.

EIKAL puts on full display the wonderful, luscious, beautiful, problematic, heart-breaking excessiveness of romance. Readers of romance, critics of romances, and scholars of love are, I think, coming to terms with, trying to capture, and falling in love with love and its excesses. Perhaps an all too optimistic vision of Everything I Know About Love, but to quote my favourite writer, Marcel Proust, “if a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all of the time.”

10 comments:

  1. I think you have misunderstood Miller's use of "embarrassed." She does not seem to be embarrassed to discus or read romance literature, after all she has a blog in which she regularly discusses the romance novels she reads. She is embarrassed to discuss the lessons Wendell's finds in the genre.

    ReplyDelete
  2. love is obscene precisely in that it puts the sentimental in place of the sexual

    Jonathan, what does this mean? I think I'd have to strongly disagree with Barthes that "no one will be interested in those [‘huge problems’] Y may have with his sentimentality." In my experience it's quite usual for people to focus on emotions when discussing a relationship which is going through problems.

    The romance is excessive precisely because it is about love. Love is excessive. But Barthes is not alone. Richard Terdiman writes, “people love being in love, and when they are they talk and write about it with an expansive intensity.”

    These seem like generalisations to me. Some people feel intensely, but are, nonetheless, highly unlikely to "talk and write about it with an expansive intensity." To take a literary example, in Sense and Sensibility does Marianne really feel love more deeply than Elinor? I think not. And even Mr Darcy, who's a very popular hero, isn't a particularly good example of "expansive intensity":

    Why, especially when you called, did you look as if you did not care about me?"

    "Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement."

    "But I was embarrassed."

    "And so was I."

    "You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner."

    "A man who had felt less, might."
    (Chapter 60)

    Also, do "we know that love is dangerous"? Is it? Again, I think it may depend on the kind of person one is. Marianne's love does indirectly put her life in danger, but Elinor's doesn't.

    I admit that this reading of love is hopelessly romantic.

    Do you mean "romantic" with a capital "R"? My reading of love is hopefully romantic, but as is probably obvious from the above, I prefer romances to demonstrate sense rather than intense sensibility.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "I think you have misunderstood Miller's use of "embarrassed." She does not seem to be embarrassed to discus or read romance literature, after all she has a blog in which she regularly discusses the romance novels she reads."

    My concern here is less the "embarrassed," and more the "too."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Re being "embarrassed," Wendell seems to expect that her first lesson (which, in fact, is not about being in love) will embarrass her readers:

    The first rule of your happy-ever-after is to be happy right now.
    Prepare ye for a moment of touchy-feely-squirminess: that means the first, most-important relationship you have is the one with yourself. If you are happy, content, and capable of taking good care of yourself, whether that's an hour of working out or an hour of reading with a dish of ice cream (and I heartily support both), you're on your way toward happy-ever-after because you care about yourself now. In other (really sickly twee, I admit) words, happiness is the present we give ourselves in the present, and its presence in our lives is a present to the world. (I just totally made you throw up, didn't I? Sorry about that.)
    (11)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Barthes _A Lover's Discourse_ like _The Pleasure of the Text_ is written in fragments (actually, large parts of Barthes writing are written this way). The particular quotation comes from "Love's Obscenity - obscène / obscene" which begins, "Discredited by modern opinion, love's sentimentality must be assumed by the amorous subject as a powerful transgression which leaves him alone and exposed; by a reversal of values, then, it is this sentimentality which today constitutes love's obscenity" and then he provides a series of examples.

    On generalisations -- yes, it is a generalisation, but I'm not certain that should be a problem out of hand. The romance novel's rules are "general," but the way those rules are explored, narrated, etc., can and will be quite individual to a given text. I don't think it is a matter of "loving more deeply" (I'm not even sure how we would go about measuring such a sentiment). I think that there is something excessive -- both too much and too little -- about romance and love.

    On embarrassment -- I don't think that "embarrassment" should be read as necessarily a negative. Wayne Koestenbaum has written a wonderful book on Humiliation (not the same as embarrassment, but similar) and in a way he provides a theory of these incidents and what we can do with them. John Waters review is perfect: "This literary 'topping from the bottom' is the funniest, smartest, most heartbreaking yet powerful book I've read in a long time."

    But, I think that this question of embarrassment is worth considering, perhaps in another post.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm beginning to suspect that Barthes is writing in a very different social/intellectual context from the one in which I find myself.

    yes, it is a generalisation, but I'm not certain that should be a problem out of hand.

    If someone states or implies that all people in love "talk and write about it with an expansive intensity" it feels problematic to me. At very least, it may lead to errors such as those of Mrs Dashwood, who

    found that she had been misled by the careful, the considerate attention of her daughter, to think the attachment, which once she had so well understood, much slighter in reality than she had been wont to believe, or than it was now proved to be. She feared that under this persuasion she had been unjust, inattentive -- nay, almost unkind, to her Elinor: -- that Marianne's affliction, because more acknowledged, more immediately before her, had too much engrossed her tenderness, and led her away to forget that in Elinor she might have a daughter suffering almost as much, certainly with less self-provocation, and greater fortitude. (Chapter 47)

    At worst it could create a norm governing how people should feel/express love because it seems to imply that if a person fails to "talk and write about it with an expansive intensity" then they're either abnormal or they aren't feeling love.

    I think that there is something excessive -- both too much and too little -- about romance and love.

    When you use the word "romance" here are you referring to romance in general or specifically to romance novels? Either way, I don't understand what you're getting at. I feel about as confused as though I'd been discussing possible outcomes with reference to the Three Bears' porridge while you've been thinking about the same topic with reference to Schrödinger's Cat.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am interested in the excesses of love and romance (and/in romance novels). The romance novel presents an interesting site in which to explore these excesses because romance novels, particularly category, are limited to a certain amount of space (very few of us would read a romance novel if it were written by Proust). (And, as a side note, I think this size question is very important, in a way similar to the question of time to therapy.)

    When Terdiman writes: “people love being in love, and when they are they talk and write about it with an expansive intensity" and we lament it for being a generalisation, I have to wonder how much of a generalisation it is. After all, many of us in defending romance will note just how much of a market share romance novels have in book publishing, or we will note how many titles are published each month. If those are the numbers of stories being published, imagine just how many stories are being told over coffee among friends. We all have love stories, and that is what is so rich about love stories, and that is why the romance novel is, in a way, different. Even in reading all of the romances, how many of these novels have ever matched in perfection to our own lived romances? Romances (novels, lived, otherwise) for all their generalisations always prove to be remarkably unique.

    I'm not sure that I am convinced Terdiman's comment and my appropriation of it will necessarily lend to "a norm governing how people should feel/express love." I think there is another possibility: permission to express love in all of its expansive intensity.

    ReplyDelete
  8. The romance novel presents an interesting site in which to explore these excesses because romance novels, particularly category, are limited to a certain amount of space (very few of us would read a romance novel if it were written by Proust).

    There are plenty of romance readers who still remember the days of really long works of romantic fiction with some nostalgia. Works such as Gone With the Wind and M. M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions aren't exactly short. Neither's the Twilight saga or the recent Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy (which is apparently based on Twilight).

    After all, many of us in defending romance will note just how much of a market share romance novels have in book publishing

    I wouldn't. For one thing, I wouldn't want to assume there's a relationship (either positive or negative) between quality and quantity. For another, in the UK crime fiction seems to be more popular than romantic fiction (and in the UK, "romantic fiction" is often romantic but not "romance" as defined by the Romance Writers of America). In 2006 PLR (Public Lending Right), which "tracks library loans across the UK" reported that:

    Adult library borrowers today are turning away from romance in favour of crime and thrillers [...]. The list of the Top 10 Most Borrowed Titles in the UK for 2004/5 reveals that the gritty forensic novels of US writers such as Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs and James Patterson have gained in popularity with borrowers, compared with previous years when romantic fiction dominated the Top 20 [...]. Whilst novels by Josephine Cox, Joanna Trollope and Danielle Steel are still favourites with librarygoers, Dame Catherine Cookson, who reigned supreme as the UK’s most borrowed author for 17 years, has dropped out of the list of Top 10 Most Borrowed Authors for the first time since records began in 1984.

    In a 2010 address to the Romantic Novelists' Association Joanna Trollope said that:

    I looked at the Sunday Times bestseller lists this morning, and in the hardback fiction top ten, there are six crime or thriller novels, and in the paperback list, there are another six. That's twelve of a single genre out of twenty. Romantic fiction has four out of twenty - warm congratulations to Katie Fforde, Jane Green, Maeve Binchy and Jill Mansell. But that is a third the number of crime novels. (256-57)

    and the latest from PLR is as follows:

    UK's Most Borrowed Titles 2010/11

    1. The Lost Symbol Dan Brown
    2. 61 Hours Lee Child
    3. Private James Patterson
    4. 9th Judgement James Patterson
    5. Worst Case James Patterson
    6. Caught Harlan Coben
    7. Don't Blink James Patterson & Howard Roughan
    8. The Postcard Killers James Patterson & Lisa Marklund
    9. The Complaints Ian Rankin
    10.Worth Dying For Lee Child

    UK's most borrowed authors 2010/11

    1. James Patterson
    2. Daisy Meadows
    3. Nora Roberts
    4. Jacqueline Wilson
    5. Francesca Simon
    6. Danielle Steel
    7. Julia Donaldson
    8. MC Beaton
    9. Mick Inkpen
    10. Clive Cussler

    ----
    Fabulous at Fifty: Recollections of the Romantic Novelists' Association 1960-2010. Ed. Jenny Haddon & Diane Pearson. (Romantic Novelists' Association, 2010).

    ReplyDelete
  9. I think you're quite right, Laura, to see a subtle (or not so subtle) ranking of loves in Barthes' discussion, so that "real love" is characterized by excess, passion, and intensity, unlike some other version of affection (say "esteem enlivened by desire") which is made out to seem a paltrier, paler thing.

    Barthes isn't alone in this distinction, of course. I think of Thomas Carew's poem "Mediocrity in Love Rejected":

    Give me more love or more disdain;
    The torrid, or the frozen zone,
    Bring equal ease unto my pain;
    The temperate affords me none;
    Either extreme, of love, or hate,
    Is sweeter than a calm estate.

    Give me a storm; if it be love,
    Like Danae in that golden show'r
    I swim in pleasure; if it prove
    Disdain, that torrent will devour
    My vulture-hopes; and he's possess'd
    Of heaven, that's but from hell releas'd.

    Then crown my joys, or cure my pain;
    Give me more love, or more disdain.

    That said, I wonder if this focus on love's extremity isn't partly a way to avoid the "embarrassment" of those steadier, sweeter, friendlier versions of love, which may give the critic, theorist, or scholar rather less to talk about, although they may be much more enjoyable to experience, on the whole.

    Jonathan, I wonder what you make of the rhetorical "excess" that marks the passage Laura offered from EIKAL? The wordplay and repetition, especially (present / presents / presence) strike me as interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm not sure if those "steadier, sweet, friendlier versions of love," don't already contain an excess -- either too much or too little. I will have to think about this, but I think about flirting, which often enough is "sweet" or "friendly."

    I'm also not sure on the excess at play in that particular passage, especially with the present, presents, presence. It is certainly excessive, even with words like "most." And maybe it serves the sort of didactic, self-help side of the book. Certainly lots to think about.

    ReplyDelete