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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A Case Study on Genre: Rosina Lippi's Tied to the Tracks and The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square


Rosina Lippi has decided to label her latest novel, The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square, and a previous contemporary novel, Tied to the Tracks, "romantic comedies."

Over the past few weeks there's been quite a bit of discussion here and elsewhere about genres, how to define them and how to distinguish them from each other. At the 2008 PCA conference An Goris observed that "Genre is [...] inherently dynamic and ever-changing; it may seem stable, but only 'stable for now'." But if they're "stable for now", are there any definitions we can agree on for now? And what purpose(s) do they serve?

At Romancing the Blog Barbara Samuel was wondering why although "Most romance writers who branched into women’s fiction are still delivering a pretty solid romantic story along with the great characters we’ve come to require in romance, [...] romance readers are quite wary" and don't seem to follow the romance authors who decide to write women's fiction.

So what is "women's fiction"? Barbara Samuel added that "women’s fiction is–by its very nature–about women, while romance is about the relationship, and the man, often even more than about the woman." So while romance guarantees "a central love story," women's fiction doesn't. And, as Katie pointed out, "a romance novel promises a happy ending, a women’s fiction novel may, but doesn’t have to provide it. Btw. that’s also one reason for me why I rarely read chick lit, having been burned once too often."

Rosina was asking about the differences between chick lit and romance, because she wanted to "get a sense of [...] how these two novels of mine are perceived. If they fit neatly into one category or another, or not." Beth responded by describing chick lit as books
in which the main protagonist is female, and the plot generally revolves around problems that she is dealing with on a personal level. Usually the heroine in young-ish (20’s or 30’s), has a job in the entertainment/PR/marketing/journalism/media field, and generally she is single. She often has issues with her family. In order to achieve her happy ending, she has to work through her problems and grow into a better person, and she usually finds love in the process.
So, having got a rough idea of how one might define "women's fiction," "chick lit" and "romance," and rather intrigued by the idea of trying to answer Rosina's challenge about how to label her contemporary novels, I set out to read them. (I should probably mention that I bought Tied to the Tracks, but Rosina sent me a copy of The Pajama Girls). The first thing I saw was, of course, the covers.

The cover of the hardback of Tied to the Tracks is on the left, the cover of the paperback's on the right. Neither says "romance" to me, though the one of the right looks to me like it could possibly be non-urban chick lit. They don't say "romantic comedy" either, though the paperback cover is possibly more headed in that direction than the rather dark picture on the hardback's cover. I'm sure this is rather subjective. What do you think? And the cover of The Pajama Girls, with its cushions, didn't say much to me at all about the book's genre, though I did think that I wouldn't want to lean back on them because they look too expensive. In Australia Tied to the Tracks appeared under Lippi's Sara Donati pseudonym and with a different cover. This one seems to me to convey an impression of history (which is appropriate, since the story is about a group of documentary makers) but at first glance it looked as though it might actually be set in the past, at a seaside resort (rather than in present-day, albeit fictional, Ogilvie, Georgia).

Covers do matter because as Sheldrick Ross and Chelton found in their study of readers
Once the reader starts to browse within a range of books, then the cover and the clues provided on the book itself become important. Titles are also important - readers said they were drawn both to an unusual, catchy title (in the case of an unfamiliar book) and to a familiar title that struck a chord. (53)
How do you react to the covers of Rosina's novels? Do you find a title like The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square appealing? Does it sound unusual or familiar to you? And does it have a different feel to Tied to the Tracks? For me, a title which refers to clothing and "girls" is more likely to make me think of women's fiction and/or chick lit.

Having finally dragged myself away from the cover art and titles and back to the contents of the novels, I asked myself how I'd describe Rosina's contempory novels. They don't feel like "romantic comedy" to me because that makes me think I should be laughing out loud. Mind you, I don't laugh at Jenny Crusie's novels either. So perhaps it's that I don't associate "romantic comedy" with occasional glimpses of wry humour. If I had to choose a label for these novels, I'd make up a new one. I think they're contemporary romantic emotional-mystery fiction. You can read an excerpt of The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square for yourself and see what you think.

What reading these novels made me realise was how much I take it for granted when reading romance that I'll have access to what at least one of the main characters (and usually both of them) are thinking. I expect to know what they're feeling and, pretty early on, why they're thinking and feeling that way. It's not that a romance can't keep any secrets in reserve till the end, or that they all break the "rule" about "show don't tell" but generally, while the main characters in a romance may not understand what they're feeling (and they certainly don't know they're heading for a happy ending), the author makes sure that the reader does.

Lippi makes both her characters and the reader do some hard work trying to understand what's going on, and that seems to create a degree of emotional distance between the reader and the characters. I think it's because it's more difficult for me as a reader to get caught up emotionally in a scene if I'm having to work really hard to decipher what the characters are feeling. Candy at the Smart Bitches, in her review of Tied to the Tracks, explained this better than I can:
The best books allow me to lose myself in the characters’ heads and inhabit their skins, and this book came close in a couple of spots, because Lippi is very skilled at building characters who are interesting and real, people you can imagine meeting and liking in real life, but I still felt oddly disengaged emotionally from Angie and John as lovers.
I think Candy's right about this being a feature of the best romances (or, at least, the ones I enjoy the most), but I'm not sure that it's necessarily a feature of "The best books" in all genres. In any case, I wouldn't describe Lippi's novels as romances.

It's because the reader is almost put in the role of a detective, trying to work out the truth from the clues given in the text, that I added the "emotional-mystery" element to my (very cumbersome) label of "contemporary romantic emotional-mystery fiction". That sense of having to do detective work is underlined by both the form of the novels and the occupations of some of the characters. In Tied to the Tracks the heroine is a documentary film-maker, invited to a small town in Georgia to make a documentary about Miss Zula. As Lippi has said,
Miss Zula is a mystery to most people, even those who have known her all their lives. Even to me. There's a very complex backstory about this woman who has forged her way at considerable personal cost, but that information dribbles out because she won't have it any other way.
Through the inclusion of excerpts from websites, books, the town's newspaper, notes that inhabitants of the town leave for the documentary-makers, and other material, the text of the novel also invites the reader to interpret and assess a mass of different texts in a way which parallels the work that the documentary makers must undertake in order to understand the many mysteries to be uncovered in Ogilvie.

The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square is also written using this technique, since parts of the story are told through messages left on John Dodge's answering machine, with the occasional letter or newspaper article included too. The mysteries in this novel are not so difficult to uncover as Miss Zula's, but they're much more obviously emotional mysteries, and that's underlined by the fact that the novel includes a number of characters who are psychotherapists.

Julia Darrow, one of the pajama girls of Lambert Square, and owner of the shop which sells fine linens (and, presumably, the rather fine pillows/cushions depicted on the cover of the novel) might seem to have an occupation which has little or nothing to do with detective work, but it too provides metaphors for the work the reader must do. When we first encounter her she soon turns
her attention to the three large cartons on the worktable. All from her buyer in Italy, six months' worth of her best finds. There was a pleasant shiver of anticipation when a box arrived from Rosa, the thrill that was usually reserved for children on Christmas morning. She adjusted the blade on her penknife and began the delicate business of separating fragile goods from the box they came in. [...] Julia peeled away layers of plastic, linen, and archival tissue paper to reveal a bedsheet with a five-inch border of elaborate silk embroidery, white on white. She reached for a fresh pair of white cotton gloves. (25)
While Julia carefully handles and assesses the fine linens, she herself may perhaps be thought of as "fragile goods" living inside a box: "maybe she was living inside a box, but it was a very large, very nice box" (219).

It's a bit difficult to give more explanation of the kind of detective work the reader has to do without either giving spoilers or quoting vast chunks of text, but there are hints throughout these novels that the characters (and by implication the readers) have to work at understanding what's truly going on. Here's an example from the excerpt of The Pajama Girls:
"When it comes to Exa Stabley," Mayme said, "here's what you've got to do. Listen to her like you would to a radio station. Sometimes you listen real close, and sometimes you let your mind wander off to more important things. The radio won't take offense, and neither will Exa."
Between Exa, Mayme and the rest of her female employees providing insight and direction, Julia had eventually learned how things worked in Lamb's Corner with a minimum of missteps. (23)
As with Exa, there are parts of the book to which you might need to "listen real close," whereas others might be interesting but less important to working out the central mysteries. And the fact that Julia needed to learn "how things worked in Lamb's Corner" is an indication of the complexity of the community in which she, Dodge, and the reader find themselves. Luckily for Dodge, the previous owner of the shop he's just bought sent him a list of descriptions of some of the main personalities, which helps him understand them and he is easily able to observe more for himself since "it was reading people that was his true talent" (7). He spends his first morning in Lambert Square sitting, doing this kind of "reading" while the reader of the novel literally reads along with him:
The plan was to stay right there for as long as he could manage to get away with it. [...] Sunglasses gave him the freedom to watch the crowd without causing alarm. He meant to look like just another stranger in a place where strangers were welcome. (15)
Some aspects of the detective work the reader has to perform are easier than others. Lippi drops some easy to spot clues with some of the names she chooses, for example. John Dodge, known as Dodge, has a habit of fixing up failing businesses and then dodging away, on to the next one. Another character, a child whose parents went through a bitter divorce, is known as Bean Hurt. But at other times the clues are more difficult to spot and interpret. In fact, while reading Tied to the Tracks the only occasion on which I felt I had a good grip on the subtext (see the illustration below) of what was really going on was when John and Angie, who were lovers years ago, meet again at a family party:
Angie saw the youngest of the grandsons, a little boy with a round potbelly, a head of streaky blond curls, and a fat strawberry of a mouth. He stood on a chair aiming an arrow at a bull's-eye set up on an easel at the other end of the veranda, all his concentration on the target. [...] As Angie stood up to get a better look, John Grant came around the corner. [...] John's face, familiar and strange and beautiful. How could she have forgotten that face? The answer was, of course, that she had not. She had forgotten nothing at all. In that split second when he met her eye, Angie saw that same flash of recognition [...].

Somebody screamed. John, who looked down at the blossom of blood on his neatly creased trousers, made no sound that Angie heard. He touched the arrow embedded in his upper left thigh, not quite center, tilted his head as if trying to make out a whispering voice, and then fell over. (57)
I wonder if part of the reason I can't understand the sub-texts in the conversation is that, as is mentioned not infrequently, many of the characters are Southerners, who express themselves via "southern circumlocution" (Tied 52). Mind you, John Grant in Tied to the Tracks doesn't seem to be very quick at working things out either. As he says, "I've never been good at reading the signs" (264) and "I'm missing something obvious. I know I am, for the simple reason that I always do, as you have pointed out to me before" (270) and we're told that "John was clueless" (270). I'm reminded of my reaction to Dorothy Dunnett's novels. While I could just about keep up with what was happening in the Lymond Chronicles and The Pyjama Girls, I felt almost literally clueless when it came to the Dunnett's Niccolo series and Lippi's Tied to the Tracks. As it happens, Lippi's "all time favorite historical novelist is Dorothy Dunnett."

Since I started studying the romance genre, I've read very little fiction outside this genre. Reading these two novels reminded me that, as Angela Toscano wrote in a comment at Romancing the Blog,
Reading is a risky endeavor. It can engage our feelings and our perceptions in ways we’d rather it didn’t; often it does this unexpectedly. There’s no guarantee that you won’t be dissatisfied. But then there’s no guarantee that you will. I think a good story is always worth that particular risk.
Sheldrick Ross and Chelton found that "Readers adopted various strategies to establish the right balance, between safety/certainty and novelty/risk" (52) and "After choosing by author, the second most popular strategy was to use genre" (53). Genre labels, then, can help to lower the risks that a reader takes. I'm beginning to think that the differences between genres don't depend solely on the subject matter of the books; different genres (and this may vary from sub-genre to sub-genre, or from one category romance "line" to another) seem to offer different emotional and/or intellectual rewards to the reader.

I'm fairly certain John Dodge in The Pajama Girls would recognise the importance of genre labels to many book buyers, although at the time of the novel he's "had enough of bookstores for a while" (7) and has turned his attention to pens and paper, the very materials with which books are (or have been) created. He's someone who
had been studying the body language of shoppers for years. It was all about figuring out what people thought they wanted, and if you approached it just right, actually selling them something they wouldn't feel bad about the next day, and at a profit. (7)
  • Lippi, Rosina. The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2008.
  • Lippi, Rosina. Tied to the Tracks. 2006. New York: Berkley, 2007.
  • Sheldrick Ross, Catherine and Mary K. Chelton. "Reader’s Advisory: Matching Mood and Material." Library Journal (February 1, 2001): 52-55.
I found the picture of Cupid here but unfortunately there's no indication there of which painting this is taken from. Do any of you recognise it?

17 comments:

  1. I think the hardback cover of TIED TO THE TRACKS looks rather like the covers of the old Ace Gothics, except that the colors are brighter.

    http://tinyurl.com/4s2ywt

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  2. Interesting! There's nothing particularly Gothic in the atmosphere or the plot, but Tied to the Tracks does involve the heroine trying to uncover secrets (though not about two possible heroes, one or both of whom she thinks may be villains, as happened not infrequently in Gothics). And there might be a tiny bit of that sense of the heroine being an outsider, arriving in a community where the inhabitants possibly want to hide things from her.

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  3. I too think the hardback cover of Tied to the Tracks evokes a nod to a historical romance. As soon as I saw the paperback version, I thought of Southern Women's fiction, particulary Joshilyn Jackson's "Between, Georgia" and "The Girl Who Stopped Swimming."
    http://joshilynjackson.com/bio.html
    The Autrailian cover makes me think of Atlantic City and the boardwalk (well, what I think it might have looked like in the 1960s anyway)
    I wouldn't really peg any of these books as "Romance" though, and I wouldn't peg them as "Chick Lit" either. My Chick Lit visual cues are more cartoon characters, or pop colors. I think that it could be completely subjective for me alone though. I do expect most "Chick Lit" to be lighter, with a humorous edge. When I'm trying to describe a tone of a story to someone, I usually find I don't have enough distinctions.
    JulieB

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  4. Laura -- wow. Thank you for taking the time and effort to write this post. It's the best not-quite-a-review I've ever had.

    A few bits of information that might clarify some things:

    I hate the hardcover art for TTTT, and I worked hard to get them to reconsider the whole angle they took, without success.

    I like the trade paper cover, though it has no immediate or obvious connection to the novel.

    The Australian cover just mystifies me.

    I don't like the hardcover jacket for Pajama Girls, either. Another big battle that I lost.

    Finally, my original title for Pajama Girls was Pajama Jones which I still think is a great title. My editor thought that most people are not familiar with the colloquial usage of "jones" as strong desire or unshakable yearning or habit.

    As in (for example) I've got a chocolate jones I can't shake, or the movie Love Jones or a short story that has influenced me greatly, Bambara's My Man Bovanne" which starts with the line. Blind folks got a humming jones if you notice.

    I really loved that title for all kinds of reasons, many of which you've touched on here. But the marketing department rules in these matters, and thus the Pajama Girls came into being. I don't hate the title, but it does feel a little too -- flimsy is the word that comes to mind.

    Finally, you've given me a lot to think about so I'll go away and do just that. And thanks again.

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  5. As soon as I saw the paperback version, I thought of Southern Women's fiction, particulary Joshilyn Jackson's "Between, Georgia" and "The Girl Who Stopped Swimming."

    That's not too bad, then, because that is the setting for the novels, though I don't know if they'd really count as Southern Women's fiction since the main female characters aren't Southerners. I didn't pick up on that clue on the cover because my set of references are different (i.e. as I'm in the UK I've not seen a lot of Southern Women's fiction). If anything, the paperback cover of Tied to the Tracks reminded me a little bit of the paperback, UK version of Crusie's Welcome to Temptation, which has a woman jumping up, against a background of lots of blue sky and fluffy clouds. It's a very different cover from the US versions with a single cherry (hardback version) or an apple with a bite taken out of it (paperback version).

    I do expect most "Chick Lit" to be lighter, with a humorous edge. When I'm trying to describe a tone of a story to someone, I usually find I don't have enough distinctions.

    That's the sort of problem I was beginning to realise existed when I started thinking about the emotional effect/intellectual effort, and, yes, tone, that I was associating with different genres. It's very, very hard to pin down that sort of thing in a description, so the genre definitions tend not to be able to express a great deal about the feeling that the books produce/are intended to produce in the reader. And yet, according to Sheldrick Ross and Chelton, a lot of readers choose their reading material to match their mood, and they're looking for particular emotional experiences from the books they pick up.

    And, to return to Barbara Samuel's question, I wonder if that might be one reason why a reader might not follow an author across to a new genre. I've noticed, for example, that since Julie Cohen moved to Little Black Dress (which is more chick lit in tone, though some of the actual plots might fit in a romance novel), there's something a bit different about the emotions they evoke, compared to when she was writing for Harlequin Mills & Boon Modern Extra/Heat. The covers are very different too, of course.

    Finally, my original title for Pajama Girls was Pajama Jones which I still think is a great title. My editor thought that most people are not familiar with the colloquial usage of "jones" as strong desire or unshakable yearning or habit.

    It would have tied in with the nickname that Dodge gives Julia. I have to admit, though, that I had such a vague memory of that usage of "jones" (I must have seen it once, somewhere on the internet) that when he gave her the nickname I knew it referred to something, but I couldn't remember what, since it's not a meaning of "jones" that I'm familiar with.

    However, what I'd pick up on is probably not very representative of what potential readers in the US would know (as demonstrated by my lack of knowledge of Southern Women's Fiction).

    you've given me a lot to think about so I'll go away and do just that. And thanks again.

    Please do come back again, Rosina, when you've finished thinking/if you reach any conclusions you'd like to share with us. You gave me a great deal to think about too! Before I posted this blog entry I spent quite a bit of time thinking about different genres and how and why we as readers go about choosing the books we read. And I also wondered about what happens when a reader picks up a book expecting it to provide a particular experience, only to find that this book doesn't provide it. I imagine that some readers, who start out in a more adventurous mood, might be quite happy about it, but other readers might feel disappointed, even though if they'd approached the book with different expectations (and when they were in a different mood), they might have really loved it. Publishers' marketing departments obviously have a difficult job to do, particularly for books which don't fit neatly into any one genre.

    And I'd still like someone to give me a definition of "literary fiction." On the surface of things, it gives the impression of being more diverse in the sorts of plots and endings that it offers the reader. And yet, perhaps it doesn't. One review of Tied to the Tracks (from Publishers Weekly, via the Barnes & Noble website) seemed to hint that the reviewer, having expected to read a novel of "literary fiction," was annoyed because to him/her Tied to the Tracks felt too much like "chick lit" or "romance":

    Despite earnest attempts to tweak modern romance cliches, historical novelist Lippi (1999 Pen/Hemingway winner for Homestead) falls victim to the predictable plotting of contemporary chick lit in her first present-day excursion, a story of love in a small Southern town. [...] the novel makes no real emotional demands.

    I really wonder what sort of "emotional demands" that reviewer was expecting. Was he/she expecting a tragic ending (or at least a death or two along the way), which would be more "emotionally demanding" and less "predictable"? And notice how this reviewer seems to be implying that all chick lit is "predictable" and that modern romance is filled with cliches.

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  6. I meant to add the following quotation from Sheldrick Ross and Chelton, which may cast some light on the reviewer's use of the words "predictable" and "cliches":

    When readers reject a book as "poorly written," they often mean that the book was successfully written to achieve an effect that they personally dislike - too sexually arousing, too scary, too sentimental, too full of verbal effects, too descriptive, or too literary for them. A fan of the stripped-down Hemingway style might dislike the sensuous language of romance and declare that all romances are "poorly written." (53)

    Some books are "poorly written" or full of cliches or predictable, of course, but it seems as though in general it's best not to take such criticism too much to heart if the person making them is someone who doesn't like the entire genre (or sub-genre) in which that book is written/perceived to be written.

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  7. I believe the original meaning of jones/ing is an addict's drug craving; and I think that meaning is still current in the US. And the transferred meaning--"jonesing" for chocolate, or pizza, or a good mystery novel--is also current.

    As for cover illustrations, I was thinking not only of Ace Gothics but also of the Charles Geer covers for so many hardcover gothic and romantic suspense novels of that era, by the likes of Barbara Michaels and Mary Stewart. They usually featured a glimpse of an old building and a lot of lush foliage. The Ace Gothics usually had the old building (castle, manor, plantation house) in the background, often atop a hill, with the girl fleeing from it in a filmy nightgown.

    I wonder how the book I'm currently reading would be classified: DON'T HEX WITH TEXAS by Shanna Swendson, in her Katie Chandler series. It combines chick lit, magic, mystery, and romance. And is a lot of fun. It's a Ballantine TP, and I don't recall any genre tag on the spine.

    WV---houxtusz

    Inuit word meaning "chick lit marketed as romance"

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  8. Finally, my original title for Pajama Girls was Pajama Jones which I still think is a great title. My editor thought that most people are not familiar with the colloquial usage of "jones" as strong desire or unshakable yearning or habit.
    and
    believe the original meaning of jones/ing is an addict's drug craving; and I think that meaning is still current in the US. And the transferred meaning--"jonesing" for chocolate, or pizza, or a good mystery novel--is also current.
    Exactly. And I think many people would recognize it. It's been around since 1975 or so:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIbp5C-5WXM
    As far as a definition of literary fiction goes, Wikipedia (yes) had an interesting definition. Fiction that does not fit into another genre, and is character rather than plot driven.
    I can buy the argument that in order to be literary fiction, it should not be easily placed into another category or genre. I do not, however agree that all genre fiction is plot driven versus character driven.
    I suspect one might just as easily make the arguement that literary fiction is a work written by an author who is not a female.
    JulieB

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  9. Re: the title. While many people might recognize it, I know if confronted with the title, "Pajama Jones," I'd immediately think "Bridget Jones," rather than "Jonesing for Pajamas." So maybe the marketing dept. was on to something.

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  10. Wow! I got quoted!

    Some books are "poorly written" or full of cliches or predictable, of course, but it seems as though in general it's best not to take such criticism too much to heart if the person making them is someone who doesn't like the entire genre (or sub-genre) in which that book is written/perceived to be written.

    And speaking of quotes it rather reminds me of something Oscar Wilde wrote "Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear." I think the same thing can be applied to books. What is 'good' literature is often what we prefer to read or what moves us emotionally (even if we do not admit to such a thing in criticism) and what doesn't is what is 'bad' or 'cliche'.

    Similarly, it occurs to me that authors and readers will define genre in the same way and say very defensively of certain books that "it isn't a romance" merely because they, personally, do not want to be associated with that genre despite the fact that the actual story may have all the elements of romance --or whatever-- in it. How we define what we read, what we like, what we take pleasure is very much connected to the way we identify ourselves. So when people say "I don't read chick lit, romance, at all, etc." what they are really saying is not something about their tastes but about themselves. That is "I am THIS sort of person NOT that sort of person."

    Which makes me wonder if categories are more a reflection of self than the text?

    Angela Toscano

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  11. What is 'good' literature is often what we prefer to read or what moves us emotionally (even if we do not admit to such a thing in criticism) and what doesn't is what is 'bad' or 'cliche'.

    I think that's often true, and I think, as discussed here, that literary criticism shouldn't be based on these sorts of personal prejudices/preferences.

    when people say "I don't read chick lit, romance, at all, etc." what they are really saying is not something about their tastes but about themselves. That is "I am THIS sort of person NOT that sort of person."

    Yes, I can see how people might say that sort of thing, so as not to distance themselves from the stereotypes attached to the readers of particular genres. But sometimes I suspect that people just read the same texts in different ways, and a sub-plot or theme which might seem fairly minor to one person might be the focus of another reader's attention. Jane Austen, for example, might be read as romance, or satire, or social commentary, depending on which aspects of her novels an individual was most interested in.

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  12. The literature/genre (supposed) divide is something I have done a
    lot of thinking about too. In a longer post on the subject I tried to
    summarize thus:
    "the distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction is
    artificial and has more to do with social and class issues than
    anything else. Literary fiction is just another genre, with its own
    set of expectations and history and intended audience. Some people
    would argue that the literary genre is inherently more worthwhile or
    better than the other genres, but I see those arguments as circular
    and self-serving."
    The discussion here -- and especialy the Oscar Wilder quote --
    made me realize that to call a novel 'literary' is the end result of a
    gatekeeping process with very few admissability criteria. It is
    a matter of class, an adult version of the 'you're cool because I say
    so, come sit at my lunch table' way of dividing up the world. So the
    idea that literature is what doesn't fit into any genre classification
    is only half the formula for chosing a cubbyhole.

    I might call any given novel a mystery because it's got the
    elements that are commonly held to be part of that genre. Somebody who
    subscribes to a simplistic definition of 'literature' as serious or
    superior doesn't approach it that way. In extreme cases the question
    is more along these lines: do I feel comfortable admitting that I,
    with my superior taste and understanding, consider this novel
    worthwhile? If the answer is yes, then the justification given is:
    character driven (which is silly, and the subject for another post on
    its own), serious, insightful. Regardless of what elements of
    better-defined genres might be in evidence.

    It's the BECAUSE I SAID SO genre.

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  13. Rosina, I totally agree with you that it is a matter of class. There is a hierachal structure to genre definitions that acts like a caste system that authors and readers find very difficult to escape. This is what I meant earlier when I said people use their preferences as a way of defining themselves. When I say "I don't read romance, I only read classics" what I am stating is that I am not one of the unwashed masses. I have moved beyond popular literature. I am a rung above you. I am sophisticated and cultured in my tastes.

    I do agree with you, Laura, that people read the texts in different ways and therefore different elements of the same text dominate and lend themselves to varying defintions of genre. However, I believe the contempt in which genre literature, especially romance, is held is not just about a different reading of texts. It is about how the association one has with different kinds of art forms is used as a signifier to others indicating what your class and education level are.

    --Angela Toscano

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  14. I'm just adding a link to your longer post on the topic of "literary fiction", so that other people can find it easily.

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  15. ANGELA wrote: And speaking of quotes it rather reminds me of something Oscar Wilde wrote "Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear." I think the same thing can be applied to books. What is 'good' literature is often what we prefer to read or what moves us emotionally (even if we do not admit to such a thing in criticism) and what doesn't is what is 'bad' or 'cliche'.

    Or, as Bishop Warburton put it: "Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man's doxy."

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  16. It's definitely all a matter of personal taste and reader expectations.

    You point to one of my biggest problems with a great deal of romance genre writing. I prefer not to be deeply in characters' heads. Because I'm aware of my preference, I choose my times to read romance. I have to be "in the mood" for a romance novel or I just won't get into the emotional experience the author is trying to achieve.

    I tend to manage my "risks" by sticking with authors and sub-genres I've found fit my taste. When I try a new author, if it doesn't suit it will be a DKF and I'm unlikely to pick up anything else written by that writer. For example, thank heavens I started with Mary Jo Putney's classic regencies and not her recent forays into magic or I'd have missed some terrific novels.

    It takes a very good writer -- and by "good" I mean a writer who is in control of prose and narrative structure, not just "what I like" -- and extremely interesting characters with a compelling voice for me to want to read 1st person or very tight 3rd person. And even then, I'd rather be an emotional detective than have the author spoon-feed me what a character's thoughts and emotions "mean" or leave too many signposts.

    If I'm going to be inside characters' heads and filitering scenes and inter-personal chemistry through the characters, give me Henry James, with all the emotional tics and tensions, self-delusion and self-discovery, painful candor and stifling repression. Those characters require every bit as much emotional detective work as a distancing 3rd person POV.

    I get more, not less, emotionally involved with a story when I'm actively constructing the character motivations and emotional tone from all the pieces the author weaves together -- narrator's voice, character voices and subtext in dialog, body language, silences, mise en scene, imagery and metaphor, rythmn and timbre of the prose, world-building, etc. The really successful authors who adopt that sort of approach achieve almost a cinematic effect -- it's the external evidence and subtext and below-the-surface meanings that, taken together, pack an emotional punch beyond simply what we share of the thoughts/feelings of a character.

    Your comparison with Dorothy Dunnet's writing is absolutely on point. I suppose this is fundamentally why I share Rosina's opinion of Dorothy Dunnett as an author -- and I'd add, not just an author of historical fiction. I am totally in awe of what she does in the Lymond Chronicles, and only a little less in the House of Niccolo.

    The LC, for me, is a true masterpiece of fiction which is unique in terms of both narrative and character study. I have to pay close attention but the effort is fully rewarded. I am more emotionally invested in the central character, and "understand" him more profoundly and suffer with him more acutely, than any other fictional character I've ever met, even though Dunnett only gives us a handful of scenes from his POV over the course of six novels. As a reader, I think that the extreme distancing techniques she uses -- the very theatricality of her characters -- when combined with all the rest of her narrative arsenal, actually contributes to the emotional intensity she achieves, like a great film director.

    I read very little contemporary romance/women's fiction/chick lit, etc. But you've convinced me I need to try TTTT.

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  17. I read very little contemporary romance/women's fiction/chick lit, etc. But you've convinced me I need to try TTTT.

    As I said, I'm not convinced that any of those labels really suit TTTT. I wasn't arguing that that was a bad thing, though, just that it's something that probably makes marketing the book a little more difficult, because so many people do find such labels useful.

    Since you like historical fiction, if you get on well with TTTT you might be interested in Rosina's historical fiction, the Wilderness series, which she writes as "Sara Donati."

    give me Henry James, with all the emotional tics and tensions, self-delusion and self-discovery, painful candor and stifling repression. Those characters require every bit as much emotional detective work as a distancing 3rd person POV.

    It's interesting that you should mention him. I tried reading one of his novels for fun and got stuck within a few page because of precisely the issues you mention, and I was thinking of that experience when I wrote this blog post on TTTT and TPGOLS.

    As you say, "It's definitely all a matter of personal taste and reader expectations."

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