RWA: Social Formation and Big Names Speak

Claire Ryan reports that

Dr. Natalie Tindall, RWA Academic Grant Committee Chairperson, and one other committee member resign. (Information received by email from Dr. Tindall)

Staying with the academic perspective, Dr Jodi McAlister has commented that

From an academic perspective: one thing I already knew but that this debacle has made even more clear to me is that to studying the literary sphere is just as (and often more) important than studying texts themselves.
The "genre worlds" approach (Fletcher, Driscoll & Wilkins 2018), which holds that a genre world is comprised not just of a body of texts but also by a sector of the publishing industry & a social formation/s, is going to be *very* useful in parsing this in future scholarship, imo

Of particular relevance to this situation is Fletcher, Driscoll and Wilkins's comment that

A genre world is a social entity defined by interaction between its participants. This kind of interaction includes (but is not limited to) discussions and feedback with writing buddies and writing groups, mentors, and editors both pre- and postpublication, discussions and panels between authors and readers, and reader feedback given to the author directly (via social media or “fan mail”) and indirectly (via reviewing sites such as Goodreads). Genre worlds also “distinguish between significant and peripheral participants” (Becker 35), and an author is less likely to be influenced by a single reader than to be influenced by an editor or peer. (1008)

Here's a letter to the RWA signed not "by a single reader" but by over 1300. A similar letter, from reviewers and librarians has also been sent. But since writers' peers are clearly extremely important, it might be relevant to see what some of the "big names" of romance have to say about the RWA crisis.

Beverley Jenkins has been speaking out about this from the start. Here's one of her earlier tweets, with the #IstandwithCourtney hashtag:

Suzanne Brockmann expressed her support for radical change from the 24th onwards:

and on 2 January posted a letter to the Board which, among other things, contains a statement that she is "ashamed to be associated with an organization that is currently working hard to show the
entire world that it's willing to go to extremes to protect the white supremacy at its foundation."

On 29 December Nora Roberts issued a statement (archived here, which I'm mentioning because her website was loading rather slowly) about the developments at RWA:

Writer, the middle word in Romance Writers of America, is a word without gender, a word without color or race, a word without sexual orientation, without creed. We’re writers, and as such must expect to be treated, must demand to be treated, fairly and equitably by our professional organization.

That's just part of her post, in which she outlines why she left the RWA some years ago and concludes

Let me add, as a personal note, that over the course of my life, the course of my career, the couple hundred books I’ve written, I may have–most likely have–said or done or written something that was offensive, racist, homophobic. Without intent–but intent doesn’t mean a damn to those hurt. So I’ll apologize without qualification.
I hope I’ve learned along the way. I intend to continue to learn and do better.

One assumes that the RWA holds/held these authors in high esteem, since they're Past Recipients of the RWA Lifetime Achievement Award: Suzanne Brockmann (2018); Beverly Jenkins (2017); Nora Roberts (1997).

Roberts is also a member of the RWA Hall of Fame, as is Julia Quinn. Julia Quinn has commented that "members of RWA leadership acted inappropriately and in violation of many organization rules" and has therefore signed the petition to recall the President of RWA.

Lisa Kleypas, a two-time RITA-winner is also among the Romance Trailblazers for her "Popularization of the non-aristocratic hero in historical romance" and "Early historical fat representation." In 2018 one of her novels was criticised for orientalism. Kleypas responded by writing that:

In my life, I’ve had a lot to learn AND unlearn. All I can say is, I’m sorry. Thank you for helping me to understand the lack of awareness I had about this issue. Obviously I would never want to hurt anyone by perpetuating an offensive stereotype, especially about women from a culture I respect so tremendously, and I feel terrible about it.
I will make changes to the book immediately, so all future editions will be culturally sensitive and mindful of how every single character is portrayed. Thank you again for making me aware of this and teaching me something I needed to understand, both as an author and as a person.

Kleypas has also signed the recall petition.

J. R. Ward, who has been "nominated for multiple RITAs, and won three times" has written (on 31 December) that the current events and the revelations that have come out as a result of them have opened her eyes to much that she was not aware of:

My relationship with RWA was awesome and uncomplicated because I’m white and I’m heterosexual and I’m physically able. I didn’t know any of that other sh*t was going on because I’m white and I’m heterosexual and I’m physically able. I didn’t look any further than my own experience because I’m white and I’m heterosexual and I’m physically able- and all of that means I don’t have to.
And that’s white privilege in action right here.

Like Roberts, she acknowledges potential issues within her own works:

I am sure over the course of the books I’ve written that there are things that have been microaggression
s or been ignorant or offensive. I’m sure I’ve done things that are all of that in personal or correspondence. I want to put a stake in it right here that I am apologizing for any of those mistakes. I’m trying to learn and be better and do better. I am not going to get it right, now or in the future, but I am committed to keep trying and keep learning, and I am so grateful for the POC in my life who are helping me along the way.

I'll add more statements if I come across them. Here's an article from 30 December in the New York Times. As of this date, the RWA "Board and Staff" appeared unmoved

 
The full archived text of that statement can be found here. But here's part of it:

"We do not take positions for or against specific literary criticism [...] We do, however, have explicit policy for our members' professional conduct. [...] In accordance with RWA policy, the Ethics panel met and delivered its report to the Board, dismissing all charges against Ms. Milan except one: a violation of the association's express purpose of creating a "safe and respectful environment" for its community of writers. [...] RWA is not alone in trying to balance free speech with civil discourse and the damage - personal and financial - its absence can do. It is, however, up to us to find a pathway forward to meet the competing needs of free expression without subjecting our members to harassment, intimidation, and financial loss. [...] In an abundance of caution over confusion regarding RWA's policies and procedures, the complaint against Courtney Milan has been closed and no action is being taken at this time. [...] Our members have strong opinions, which we applaud. But when expressed inappropriately, and in some cases far worse, by our organizational leadership - past and present - these can result in personal and financial harm to members.

This would appear to:

a) continue to characterise certain forms of literary criticism as "unacceptable behavior" which can be construed as "harassment" and "intimidation"
b) does not appear to apply the same criteria to racist primary texts as it does to literary criticism
c) does not address the "personal and financial harm to members" caused by actions of RWA members and staff, as detailed online over the past few days.

[And editing again to add that an article about the situation was published in The Guardian on 31 December.

Another article appeared on 2 January on NBC News's website, written by Mikki Kendall, who summarised the situation thus:

The complaint against Milan was fundamentally that her criticisms — accurate though they were — had cost other writers opportunities by drawing attention to their flaws. So the real issue isn't whether her criticism about racist elements in other writers' work was accurate, but whether some writers might lose money because of those criticisms.
This is about writing, but it is also about our culture and whether we want the people who have traditionally influenced it to continue to do so without engaging with the consequences their work might visit on other communities.

An author statement by Caroline Linden, also from 2 January, outlines suggested norms for authors with regards to reviews:

I don't think saying a book has racist content is bullying. I don't think the vast majority of reviewing is bullying, if the reviewer honestly believes what she writes. Authors may hate what the reviewer says, may think the reviewer is mean or too picky or flat-out wrong, but that is part of being an author. You put those words and that story out there, and the world gets to comment on it. It ain't all five-star raves.

Olivia Waite used her column in the Seattle Review of Books to discuss the crisis. And archivist Steve Ammidown, at the Bowling Green State University's Popular Culture Library, is trying to archive all the relevant online posts.

On 4 January an interview with Kathryn Lynn Davis was published in The Guardian (their second article on the RWA crisis). In it Davis

said she was “encouraged” by the administration of Romance Writers of America (RWA), a trade association for romance writers, to file a formal complaint against Milan, an influential former board member and diversity advocate. She now feels she had been “used” to secure a political outcome that she had never intended.

She also clarified that, contrary to what was written in her complaint, "she did not have and lose a written book contract, but that a publisher had delayed further discussion of a potential contract in the wake of the controversy." Davis also states that she "decided to make some changes to the novel Milan had criticized [...] and that she has republished edited ebook versions."

As noted in the article, literary agencies have also been withdrawing support from the RWA. Claire Ryan, who is still keeping track of events, noted that on 3 January

• Jessica Faust of Bookends Literary Agency makes a statement that the agency will not be participating in RWA events until changes are made.
• The Nancy Yost Literary Agency withdraws from RWA membership and requests a refund of dues.
• Gallt and Zacker Literary Agency publish an open letter to the RWA stating that they will not attend any RWA events until the current leadership is replaced and there is a full audit into the complaints against Courtney Milan. The open letter is signed, at time of posting, by thirty six agents from notable agencies.

All this provides support for the genre worlds model with respect to norms and behaviours. Davis still seems to be implying that Milan was in the wrong for how she expressed her criticism: Davis says she has now made changes to her novel not because of Milan's comments but because "people have contacted me and have told me calmly what it was that offended them" (emphasis added). However, it is evident she has has felt the pressure of the behaviours being modelled by significant authors and the weight of the opinions of other significant players in romance publishing.]
---

Fletcher, Lisa, Beth Driscoll, and Kim Wilkins. ‘Genre Worlds and Popular Fiction: The Case of Twenty-First-Century Australian Romance’, Journal of Popular Culture 51.4 (2018): 997-1015.

New to the Wiki: Publishing, Brockmann and More

I've added a new page to the blog: it's a Race and Romance Bibliography.

In addition, there are some new items which have been added to the Romance Wiki bibliography.

Billekens, F.G.W., 2019. 

Never Mind Me When There's You: The Submission Of The Heroine In YA Supernatural Romance Fiction, Bachelor's Thesis, Utrecht University. Abstract and link to pdf

Brouillette, Sarah, 2019. 

"Romance Work." Theory & Event 22.2, pp. 451-464. Abstract

Haefner, Margaret J., 2009. 

"Challenging the -isms: Gender and Race in Brockmann's Troubleshooters, Inc. Romance Novels", Journal of Media Sociology 1.3/4: 182-201.

McAlister, Jodi, 2018. 

'The literary text as historical artifact: The colonial couple in Australian romantic fiction by women, 1838-1860', Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, No. 24: 38-51. Abstract

Priest, Hannah. 2018. 

“Sparkly Vampires and Shimmering Aliens: The Paranormal Romance of Stephenie Meyer.” Twenty-First-Century Popular Fiction, edited by Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson, Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pp. 182–192.

Sagun, Karryl Kim Abella, 2019. 

Book Mavens of Manila : an interpretative phenomenological analysis of contemporary niche publishers in the Philippines. Doctoral thesis,Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. [I include this because it incorporates material from "three Wattpad self-publishers based in the Philippines: Mina V. Esguerra, Noreen Capili, and Kimberly Villanueva. All three agreed to be quoted verbatim, and to be referred to by name. They have all published both on electronic platforms (particularly Wattpad) and on print. They also share the same genre for their works: romance" (123).]

Taylor, Jessica Anne. 2013. 

“Write the Book of Your Heart: Career, Passion and Publishing in the Romance Writing Community,” Ph.D. Thesis, University of Toronto. Abstract and link to pdf

Diversity and Inclusion at RWA 2018

Diversity and inclusion were important themes of this year's Romance Writers of America conference. Avon have announced the creation of "The Beverly Jenkins Diverse Voices Sponsorship [...] to encourage Own Voices writers to be more fully represented at the RWA annual conference" in coming years. Prior to the event the RWA had announced that

In continuing its commitment to increasing diversity and inclusion within the organization and the romance industry, Romance Writers of America will hold its second Diversity Summit at the 2018 RWA Conference in Denver on Friday, July 20. The Summit is a meeting that gathers high-level publishing professionals, key contacts at major retailers, members of the RWA staff and Board, and selected committee and chapter leaders who are registered for the conference. A summary of the Summit will be provided to membership by August 6, 2018.

The Diversity Summit will once again be moderated by 2016’s Librarian of the Year recipient Robin Bradford. We'll be discussing the results of a survey RWA commissioned from NPD Book focusing on the buying habits of readers across ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation, as well as revealing initiatives within RWA to promote inclusiveness within our own organization and the industry. We will be inviting publishers to share their ideas, in-house initiatives, and ways in which RWA can be a resource for them.

Key speeches given during the conference were also indicative of the depth of the Board's commitment to "increasing diversity and inclusion".

The 2018 Librarians Day Luncheon Keynote Speech from award-winning author Sonali Dev (this is an audio file) called for librarians to think about the voices which have been silenced and pledge to help them to be heard, because librarians have power when they make decisions about which books to order for their libraries.

This is really important. We hope our library and archives colleagues take the time to sit and listen and then use our enormous power to take action. https://t.co/07YqewLXPj

— Browne Pop Culture Library @ BGSU (@BGSU_PopCultLib) 26 July 2018

LIBRARIANS!!!!! This amazing speech is for you. #CollectionDevelopment librarians, this is ESPECIALLY for you. https://t.co/En8EEoPnXL

— Robin ⚾️🍹🎼📚 (@Tuphlos) 26 July 2018

From something Dev says in the speech, I think it was given after Suzanne Brockmann's Lifetime Achievement Award Speech (link to a transcript on Brockmann's website) in which Brockmann recounted how, at the very beginning of her career, she was asked by an editor to make a gay secondary character straight. She acquiesced, but vowed that in future she 'would not write books set in a world where gay people [...] were rendered invisible, [...] erased “because that’s just the way it was.”' Brockmann also referred to current US politics.

The video below is of the entire awards ceremony. The section relating to Brockmann begins at 45:35 minutes (Brockmann herself appears just after the 56 minute mark).


Lisa Lin relates that "During her speech, I saw some who did not appear to react well, and I have seen some negative reactions on social media". Lin is among the many authors who have responded online in support of Brockmann's speech. Nicki Salcedo's response includes examples of how her writing has been marginalised:

Much of the feedback on my books was related to race. There weren’t comments on plot or pacing. No issues with dialogue or themes. The feedback was:

“We don’t have an African-American imprint at this time…”

“Your manuscript might find a better home with [insert publisher of Black books in completely unrelated genre]…”

“Are your main characters Black?” [I pondered this for a long time before responding and decided to say yes. I did not get another response.]

“I find your main character completely unbelievable…” [She was Black from an affluent family]

“We don’t know where to shelve your book in the store…” [With fiction? Or maybe romance? Just a guess…Or somewhere near the Colored People’s water fountain?] [...]

and then there's this, about the different ways the same novel was treated when Salcedo

removed all references to race in the novel. I did not revise or alter my manuscript in any other substantive way. All I did was make the main character “not Black.”

In 2012, that same manuscript became a Golden Heart Finalist. I wish I could say I was surprised. But I wasn’t.

I submitted my manuscript for the final round of judging and included my characters as I intended. Black, brown, and white. At the RWA National Conference, I sat in an appointment with an editor from a Big 5 publisher. She was a final round judge for the Golden Heart Contest. “I read your manuscript,” she said. “I hated it.” This is a direct quote.

Individual contest judges who are biased would seem to be an ongoing problem. This year, for example, Alana Albertson reported that her inter-racial romance received a very low score for the ending:

Received my RITA scores. 1 "judge" gave my interracial romance, Invaluable, 2.9 out of 10, and checked no to the question
Is the resolution of the romance emotionally satisfying and optimistic? The book ends with him proposing to her. Hmm #Rita #ritassowhite pic.twitter.com/hRpzWwSzMX

— Alana Albertson (@AlanaAlbertson) 2 August 2018

The RWA Board had already made changes to the rules governing the judging of the RITAs but these will only come into force next year:

OK, this is the new RITA judging rules for next year. It contains a warning that judges can be asked to explain their scoring, and possible consequences of up to lifetime disqualification from the RITAs (and, one hopes, from judging as a PAN member also). pic.twitter.com/He36DNbqiU

— KJ Charles (@kj_charles) 2 August 2018

RWA responded swiftly to concerns about this year's judging process with the following post:

RITA scores went out to entrants last night and we have heard the concerns of those who believe their entries were subject to biased judging.  ​This year, one of the major focuses of the RWA Board has been to evaluate procedures for the RITA Contest in light of the existence of bias among some judges. This bias results in an unfair scoring of books representative of marginalized populations, and harms the integrity of the award. ​At the July board meeting, the Board passed a new policy that we hope will allow patterns of biased judging to be identified and for actions to be taken against those judges if deemed necessary. [...]

While these policies only apply to the 2019 contest and beyond, we can begin documenting judging patterns this year. If an entrant feels their submission was judged unfairly due to invidious discrimination against content, characters or authors​, we ask that the entrant reply directly to the scoring email with this information. Deputy Executive Director Carol Ritter will review the complaint and will make a record of possible biased judging. These files will be carried over each year and if a pattern is identified, action can be taken as set out in policy.

It is the Board's goal to create a RITA Contest that allows for fair and equitable judging of all entries, and we hope the changes made put us on a path to that reality.

Good News! More Romance Studies at DePaul

Laura Vivanco

DePaul has approved a SECOND pop romance class, this one taught by Julie Moody-Freeman. "Romance, Gender, and Race" ABD 221, Spring term.

— Eric Selinger (@emselinger) January 28, 2016

Poster features novels by Brenda Jackson, Sandra Kitt, Suzanne Brockmann (Harvard's Education) and The Brightest Day anthology. #ABD221

— Eric Selinger (@emselinger) January 28, 2016

I can't find any more details yet on DePaul's website but Julie E. Moody-Freeman is:

an Associate Professor in African and Black Diaspora Studies.  She received her Ph.D. in Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  Her teaching and research interests include studies in Black Feminist Theory, the Rhetoric of Colonialism and Post-Colonialism, African American popular romance fiction, and Black Speculative fiction.

Moody-Freeman’s publications include co-edited books The Black Imagination, Science Fiction, and the Speculative (Routledge, 2011) and The Black Imagination: Science Fiction, Futurism, and the Speculative (Peter Lang, 2011) as well as a co-edited special issue of African and Black Diaspora Studies: an international journal (Routledge, July 2015) on “Remapping the Black Atlantic: Diaspora, (Re) Writings of Race and Space.”

ENG 232: Final Syllabus

After a lot of dithering (my usual way of thinking things through), I finally chose the books and topics for my popular romance course next quarter.  As you'll see, I'm sticking with the idea of building the course around Laura's book, and since I'm not going up for promotion this year, I hope to have the time to blog about how each segment goes.  I did, though, change the list of novels considerably.  It's not even remotely representative of the genre now--there's only one historical romance, for example, and that one isn't a Regency--but the books all do the three things they need to do:  fit the topics, help me with my research, and teach well, year after year.

Now to choose the books for course #2, the Love Seminar!  (Hint:  I think I'm going to take the easy way out, whatever that turns out to be....)  

Schedule Of Classes, Topics, And Readings

Topic 1:  What is a “Romance”?  A “Romance Novel”?  A “Popular Romance Novel”?

M:  Introduction to the Class and to each other.  Introduction to “romance,” the “romance novel,” the “popular romance novel” and the “Harlequin Romance” as critical and historical categories.

W:    Vivanco, Introduction and Chapter 1 (“Mimetic Modes”) of For Love and Money

M:  Unsung Hero:  chapters 1-10 (feel free to read ahead)

W:  Unsung Hero:  the rest of it!

Topic 2:  Twice-Told Tales: Romance, Myth, and Fairy Tale

M:  Vivanco, Chapter 2 (“Mythoi”)

W:    Bet Me 

M:  Bet Me

Topic 3:  My Metafictional Romance

W:  Vivanco, Chapter 3 (“Metafiction”)

M:  Natural Born Charmer

W:  Natural Born Charmer

Topic 4:  My Metaphorical Romance

M:  Vivanco, Chapter 4 (“Metaphors”) and Conclusion

W:  Homecoming

M:  Homecoming

Topic 5:  Lore, Deportment, and Problem Fiction: Thinking in Romance

W:  Thomas Roberts, An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction, chapter 7 (“Thinking with Tired Brains”) and chapter 8 (“Reading in a System”); Catherine Roach, “Getting a Good Man to Love:  Romance Fiction and the Problem of Patriarchy."

M:  False Colors 

W:  False Colors

M:  False Colors

Topic 6:  (Psst!  Isn’t It Really Just “Porn for Women”?)

W:  Ann Barr Snitow, “Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different”; assorted readings on Fifty Shades of Grey (to be chosen later)

M:   Start Me Up

W:  Start Me Up

Breaking News: Conferences!

Laura Vivanco

The

first ever Australian conference on the life and works of Georgette Heyer: mistress of the Regency and historical romance, writer of detective fiction, and one of the most prolific best selling authors of the 20th century.

will be held on 25 February 2012 at the Epping Club, 45 Rawson St., Epping, NSW, Australia. One of the speakers will be Jennifer Kloester. More details here.

There will be a GLBT panel at the 2012 Romance Writers of America conference. The panel members are Kim Baldwin, Suzanne Brockmann, Lauren Dane, Sarah Frantz, K. A. Mitchell, Heather Osborn and Radclyffe. 

Activism and the Romance Genre

Laura Vivanco

One of the panels at the Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association's Annual Conference will be on "Popular Culture and Activism":

Popular Culture and Activism welcomes papers or presentations that explore the sphere of activism in the production of popular culture. Whether historical or contemporary, investigations into the role of activism in shaping popular culture or the role of popular culture in shaping activism are encouraged. Possible topics might include the way individual activists or groups have utilized popular media or sought to influence popular media. Other issues to consider are: how have activist groups been portrayed in popular culture? What forms of activism are being employed on college campuses or in local communities, and how does this tie in with or shape popular culture? What are the political or ideological implications of popular culture as reflected in television shows, films, music videos, the internet, magazines, fiction, etc.

Submissions are due by the 30th of June.

Just recently it was mentioned at Dear Author that

Donna Hayes, Harlequin’s Publisher and CEO is the recipient of this year’s “W Award” presented by the YWCA of the City of New York. Ms. Hayes is being recognized not only as a business woman at the top of her field, but also for supporting the YWCA’s mission to empower women and eliminate discrimination through the books she and Harlequin Enterprises publishes each month.

According to Shelf Awareness

Created in 2005, the YWCA-NYC’s W Award honors women and companies that embody the YW’s mission to empower women and eliminate racism. [...] In a statement, Anne Winters-Bishop, the YWCA-NYC’s CEO noted that Hayes is the first woman to run the company since Harlequin was founded in Winnipeg in 1949, and added: "Above all, [Hayes] stresses Harlequin’s mission to entertain, enrich and inspire women."

Just a few of the other instances of romance-related activism I can think of are

• the Romance Writers of America's

"Readers for Life" Literacy Autographing [which] has become one of the most popular events at RWA's annual conference. More than 500 romance authors participate in this two-hour autographing event, and each year we raise thousands of dollars, which are donated to ProLiteracy Worldwide. Since 1990, RWA has donated more than $600,000 to literacy charities.

• Brenda Novak's annual online auction in aid of research into diabetes
• Suzanne Brockmann's decision

to continue Jules and Robin's story and do what I'd originally intended -- make them the hero and hero of a mainstream romance novel. I also decided to turn the concept of the holiday romance novella onto its ear by writing a story centered around Jules and Robin's wedding, set in Boston.

And I decided that every single penny I earned from this book, from now until the end of time -- all advances, royalties, subrights, the whole enchilada -- would go to MassEquality, an organization whose sole purpose is to preserve equal marriage rights in Massachusetts . Because enough is enough.

• and Nora Roberts' offer to

match up to $5,000.00 USD any donations made by Smart Bitches readers to Defenders of Wildlife, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that works to preserve not just ferrets but endangered wildlife across the US, most particularly that species much loved by paranormal romance writers: the wolf.

Romance protagonists may also engage in activism: Sir Waldo Hawkridge in Georgette Heyer's The Nonesuch supports orphanages; Rita B. Dandridge has explored "black women's activism in African American women's popular historical romances" (1); the protagonists of Karin Kallmaker's In Every Port march in response to the assassination of Harvey Milk; and Margaret Ann Jensen has noted that in

Season of Storm by Alexandra Sellars [sic], a 1983 SuperRomance [...] The hero [...] is a Native who is fighting the Canadian government and a logging company for the restoration of his tribe's land rights. The book refers to ruthless corporate policies that place profits before people, to the short life span of Native people, to the police state mentality of the RCMP and to the pervasive racism that even the heroine is forced to acknowledge is part of her and her society. (81-82)

While I wouldn't want to overstate the amount of activism that is undertaken by romance authors and readers, or which occurs in romances, the above examples demonstrate that despite being considered "escapist" fiction, romance protagonists, their authors, and readers are not infrequently involved in far from escapist activities.

• Dandridge, Rita B. Black Women's Activism: Reading African American Women's Historical Romances. African American Literature and Culture 5. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. [Two of the novels analysed in that book, Beverly Jenkins’ Indigo (1996) and Shirley Hailstock’s Clara’s Promise (1995), are the subject of an earlier essay, "African American Women's Historical Romances: Race and Gender Revisited," which can be found on pages 42-56 of The 2000-2003 Proceedings of the SW/Texas PCA/ACA Conference. This essay is available online.]
  
• Jensen, Margaret Ann. Love's $weet Return: The Harlequin Story. Toronto, Ontario: The Women's Educational Press, 1984. [Excerpts available via Google Books.]
  

PCA Romance Panel 10: The Construction of Gender: (Killer) Heroes and Heroines

Jessica's notes on this panel are available here and describe papers by Darcy Martin, Jim and Margaret Haefner, Jacob Lusk and Marnie Jones.

Interview: Sarah on Women Constructing Men

Laura Vivanco

Sarah has co-edited a volume of essays on "women constructing men", and it includes an essay she's written herself, on the topic of Suzanne Brockmann’s Sam Starrett. I thought it would be interesting to interview her to find out more. But first, here are some details about the volume:

Women Constructing Men: Female Novelists and their Male Characters, 1750-2000. Ed. Sarah S. G. Frantz and Katharina Rennhak. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2009.

Female novelists have always invested as much narrative energy in constructing their male characters as in envisioning their female. The collected articles in Women Constructing Men demonstrate that the topic of female-authored masculinities not only allows scholars to re-discover almost every novel written by a woman, but also triggers reflections on a host of theoretical questions of gender and genre.

Here's a list of the contents of the volume:

• Sarah S. G. Frantz and Katharina Rennhak - Female Novelists and their Male Characters, 1750-2000: An Introduction
• Shawn Lisa Maurer - Happy Men: Mid-eighteenth-century Women Writers and Ideal Masculinity
• George Haggerty - Male privilege in Frances Burney’s The Wanderer
• Katharina Rennhak - The Medium Makes the man: Anne Plumptre’s Something New and The History of Myself and My Friend
• Sarah Ailwood - Too Much in the Common Novel Style: Reforming Masculinities in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility
• Sara Pearson - Constructing Masculine Narrative: Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor
• Frederick Burwick - The Lifted Veil: George Eliot’s Experiment with First-person Narrative
• Rainer Emig - Assimilating the "pretty youngster": George Eliot’s Eroticized Men on the Borderlines of Morality, Religion, Race, and Nation
• Roxanne Harde - "His spirituality or his manliness": Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s (Re)constructions of Christian Masculinity
• Virginia Richter - The Differential Construction of Masculinity in the Writings of Virginia Woolf
• Ellen McWilliams - Knitting Paradise Lost: Masculinity and Domesticity in the Novels of Carol Shields
• Katherine Bode - Looking (Im)properly: Women Objectifying Men’s Bodies in Contemporary Australian Women’s Fiction
• Angela Laflen - Unmaking the Self-made Man: Louise Erdrich’s Fictional Exploration of Masculinity
• Sarah S. G. Frantz - "I’ve tried my entire life to be a good man": Suzanne Brockmann’s Sam Starrett, Ideal Romance Hero

LV: Could you explain very briefly how "the topic of female-authored masculinities [...] allows scholars to re-discover almost every novel written by a woman"?

SSGF: I don't know about the "briefly" part. :) When I first sent out the call for proposals for this book, someone expressed interest in writing about Rochester in Jane Eyre. I did a little bit of research and found one article on MLAB that was focused on Rochester. One. To my mind, very reductively, feminist literary criticism started when it realized that male critics were analyzing female characters in books by men (Pamela, for example) with very little understanding of what it meant to live the female experience. Feminist literary criticism quickly and logically moved from examining female characters written by men to female characters written by women. With the rise in masculinity studies, people began to study male characters written by men from a gendered perspective, as constitutive of gender expectations as much as female characters. But there's a gaping hole there. Very rarely do critics of gender studies and gender creation examine the ways in which female-constructed masculinity is equally as constitutive of gender dynamics as the other three possible permutations. Surely women are revealing a lot about the world as constructed by gender when they create male villains or fathers or brothers or lovers or ideal heroes? There has, up until now, been very little work done on female-authored masculinity. Even authors like Austen have only very recently received extensive evaluation of their construction of ideal masculinity. So Women Constructing Men allowed us to bring together some cutting edge research by some very smart people about the ways in which female novelists--both in the canon and on the fringes--construct masculinity in their books.

LV: The volume spans three continents and 250 years. As you've noted elsewhere, those years include the period during which what came to be known as "the Great Masculine Renunciation" took place:

Gone were the scarlets and purples, satins and velvets, lace and embroidery of conspicuous consumption that men wore in the middle of the eighteenth century. Romantic-era men wore instead dark blue or black wool coats, stiffly starched, blindingly white shirts, and skin-tight, skin-colored pantaloons [...] But this Great Masculine Renunciation entailed more than Romantic era men suddenly realizing that dark blue wool and starched shirts were more masculine than red velvet and pantaloons. Indeed, the ideological work that went into making that realization a reality demonstrates the radical transformation that representations of and assumptions about masculinity experienced in the Romantic era. I argue, in fact, that the total transformation in men's fashions in the Regency era was an outward manifestation of a similar renunciation in men's ability to express their emotions. This emotional change was of particular concern to female authors of novels in which a man and a woman had to fall in love with and express their love to each other--female authors of which Jane Austen was one of the earliest.

For her part, Katharina Rennhak has previously written that

A study of gendered authorial identities around 1800 seems especially promising: As has been shown by recent scholarship, the later phase of the long eighteenth century not only saw the triumphal (discursive) procession of the ideology of separate spheres and (as a consequence?) the beginning of the marginalisation and exclusion of women writers from literary histories; but it was also the time when female novelists were rapidly gaining a significant market share.

But the volume also takes us right up to the end of the twentieth century, and very significant social changes had occurred during the 250-year period. Were there any aspects of women's constructions of men and manhood that remained constant?

SSGF: A fascination with men! The vast majority of women, after all, are attracted to men and enjoy their attentions and want from them companionship and relationships and sex and love. Female novelists, then, get the opportunity to create their own romantic ideal. It's amazing how much time and effort over the centuries that women have put into doing precisely that and its equally amazing to me that this aspect of their writing hasn't yet received sustained study.

I guess something else that's consistent is that women consistently attempt to write ideal men, the perfect mate, the one man who can solve all problems. Sometimes their construct succeeds and everyone lives happily ever after, but often it fails and that spirals everything in the book down into destruction. But the impulse to write Mr. Right is a strong one and seems to be universal.

LV: We were discussing slash fiction and m/m romance recently, and you've mentioned that "the book I will be writing for the next few years is about the power, appeal, and history of the modern American romance hero." Could you tell us a bit more about why you and others find romance heroes so fascinating?

SSGF: Personally, I find romance heroes fascinating AS female constructs. I'm not much interested in male characters written by men. I'm interested in what female authors include when they write a hero. I'm fascinated with why angsty, dark, tortured heroes are so popular. I'm fascinated with what we, as woman, consider ideal, with what we consider attractive in a romance hero vs. what we'd like in real life mate. And I'd have to say I'm not alone, considering the success of all the many hero-focused romance series out there. As to why we find them fascinating? Well, we're surrounded by men, we like men, we have to work with men every day, and I think the ideation of good and bad men is a way to work through issues in our lives and relationships.

LV: Sarah, you summarised Brockmann's oeuvre in an article published in Teaching American Literature in 2008 and you've written elsewhere that

A game I like to play in all of Brockmann’s books is finding the tears. Because Brockmann’s heroes like to cry. The entire of personality of her most famous character, Sam Starrett, and his love affair with Alyssa is built around his relationship to his own tears, and they’re pretty powerful stuff.

Is it Sam's tears that make him your "Ideal Romance Hero"?

SSGF: Heh. Well, the famous scene in Over the Edge when Alyssa finds him crying after he's torn up his room is quite wonderful, to be sure. I guess I like vulnerability in my heroes, the proof that they can be moved. And I really enjoy seeing how Brockmann plays with her heroes' tears now. But my article on Sam is about how Brockmann uses him to explore the romance hero tropes (rapist hero, rake, the unforgettable former lover, and the superhero), only to discard them all as inappropriate to a truly heroic masculinity. I show how "a true, lasting masculinity, deserving of a happy ending, cannot be built without love as its foundation," which is a really sweeping thing to say, I know, but it's the conclusion of my paper and I think it does a pretty good job of showing how I get to that point. Overall, I'm very proud of the book as a whole. I think it does a wonderful job of showing what can be done if we open our eyes to female-authored masculinity and I'm very interested in what might happen to the field in the future. And thanks for this lovely interview!

LV: Thank you for telling us more about Women Constructing Men!
-----

• Frantz, Sarah. "Jane Austen's Heroes and the Great Masculine Renunciation." Persuasions 25 (2003): 165-175.
• Frantz, Sarah. "Suzanne Brockmann." Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice 2.2-3 (Special Issue Spring/Summer 2008).

PCA 2009: Romance 4

Jessica has another of her summaries up at Read React Review, this time for

4030 Romance IV: The Politics of Romance 2: In the Ideological Cuddle
Saturday, April 11, 10:00 A.M. – 11:30 A.M.
Chair: Darcy Martin, East Tennessee State University

―The Romance of Pain: Sadomasochism and Power Exchange in Popular Romance Fiction
By Sarah Frantz, Fayetteville State University

―Transcending the Domestic: Cultural Power and Domestic Identity in JD Robb's In Death Series
By Tessa Kostelc, University of Wyoming

―Challenging the '-isms': Gender and Race in Brockmann's Troubleshooters Series
By Margaret Haefner, North Park University

―'Til Death Do Us Part': The Institution of Marriage in Megan Hart's Broken and Tempted
By Glinda Hall, University of Arkansas, Fort Smith

More on Politics and Romance

Laura Vivanco

I've written about politics and romance before, particularly here but also in two separate posts about individual romances. I'm returning to the topic because RfP asked me a question elsewhere which (a) would be difficult to respond to in a short space there and (b) which I thought perhaps some readers of TMT could help me answer.

I'll give a bit of background first. Jessica had been asking for recommendations and one commenter suggested she might like to read Loreth Anne White's Seducing the Mercenary. I responded by commenting that

Having read the reviews [...] I wonder if there’s any exploration in the novel of the underlying political situation and whether the US’s involvement constitutes neo-imperialism. The situation, as described in one review, is as follows: “It is up to Emily [the heroine] to determine whether Jean-Charles [Laroque, who's the hero], a former mercenary who arrived in Ubasi [a fictional African state] a year earlier and ousted the dictator, should be captured or assassinated” and Emily “is working with the United States to bring the former dictator back into power, and it will be Emily’s profile that decides what needs to be done with Laroque.”

RfP, who had read the novel, responded that

I’d venture to guess that the answer is overall no, or perhaps mixed. It’s a complicated setup for such a short book, so most of it doesn’t get explored. [...]

In terms of politics, I’m sorry to laugh, but I do a bit when I try to imagine a Silhouette exploring “the underlying political situation and whether the US’s involvement constitutes neo-imperialism” in much depth. Mind you, the heroine isn’t a conscienceless drone, and I appreciate seeing a romance heroine in such a significant position, but there’s not a lot of space for a twist that deeply questions the initial premise. [...]

Do you disagree with my skepticism on category romance tackling this scale of political theme? I tend to expect that in science fiction more than in romance; and within romance, I expect more in that regard (though I often don’t get it) when I read single-title (i.e. longer) romantic suspense and historicals. Have I missed out on an interesting trend since I don’t read much category romance these days?

First of all, the reference to science fiction reminded me of Lois McMaster Bujold's speech about science fiction romance (which I came across via a post at the Smart Bitches):

There are indeed problems for this Odd Couple partnership between SF and Romance, but subtly not, or not only, the ones I necessarily thought. I certainly learned some lessons about how genre boundaries are maintained not only by publishers but by their readerships. [...]

I was more surprised to learn something new to me about fantasy and science fiction -- which is how profoundly, intensely, relentlessly political most of the stories in these genres are. The politics may be archaic or modern, fringe or realistic, naive or subtle, optimistic or dire, but by gum the characters had better be centrally engaged with them, for some extremely varied values of "engaged". Even the world-building itself is often a political argument. [...]

Romance and SF seemed to occupy two different focal planes [...]. For any plot to stay central, nothing else in the book can be allowed to be more important. So romance books carefully control the scope of any attending plot, so as not to overshadow its central concern, that of building a relationship between the key couple, one that will stand the test of time and be, in whatever sense, fruitful. This also explains some SF's addiction to various end-of-the-world plots, for surely nothing could be more important than that, which conveniently allows the book to dismiss all other possible concerns, social, personal, or other. (Nice card trick, that, but now I've seen it slipped up the sleeve I don't think it'll work on me anymore.)

In fact, if romances are fantasies of love, and mysteries are fantasies of justice, I would now describe much SF as fantasies of political agency. All three genres also may embody themes of personal psychological empowerment, of course, though often very different in the details, as contrasted by the way the heroines "win" in romances, the way detectives "win" in mysteries, and the way, say, young male characters "win" in adventure tales. [...]

So the two genres -- Romance and SF -- would seem to be arm-wrestling about the relative importance of the personal and the political. [...]

So: is the personal political? It does explain the edginess of the mutual rejection between the communities of taste of SF and Romance -- each is in effect rejecting the others' judgment of what is the most important aspect of the world, which naturally gets danders up. My own view is that the political sits atop the personal as upon a disregarded foundation; the concerns of higher status could not even begin to exist without a hell of a lot of unsung and often unpaid or underpaid work being done, and not just by women, to keep the real world running. To even acknowledge the debt would be to court bankruptcy, so it is carefully ignored.

I'd tend to agree with Bujold's view of the relationship between the personal and the political, because I see the personal (in romances this is primarily the romantic relationship) as taking place in a social, and therefore political (in the broadest sense, not party political) context.

Although RfP's probably right that political issues aren't generally tackled in any depth in romances, that doesn't stop me reading between the lines of the romance in order to catch glimpses of the political. And then there are the romances which, like White's novel, include situations or comments which are quite overtly political, even if the author doesn't explore the politics in much detail. I'm certainly not the only person to notice the politics in some romances. C. J. D. Duder notes that "The study of popular imperialism, how the British Empire was represented to the British people, is now popular among historians" (427). Duder's focus is on Kenya and "It was just as the political battles over white settlement in Kenya were heating up that a minor literary phenomenon, popularly known as the 'Kenya Novel,' began to appear in British bookstores. This was a variety of that much despised popular literary genre, Romantic Fiction" (428). Duder identifies these novels as having had an "immense, if indirect, propaganda value [...] to the position of white settlement in the Colony" (431) because

Riddell and Strange used their novels as a means of presenting the white settler view of Kenya to British readers. The settlers themselves, whatever their personal failings, are collectively responsible for the railways, roads, hospitals and schools, progress in other words, which the twentieth century has brought to Africa. They are the civilization in the Dark Continent. (432)

But what of more recent romances? To what extent can and do they include politics? Melissa James has written that the inspiration for one of her novels, Her Galahad (a Silhouette Intimate Moments, reviewed here), was

My university course in Aboriginal History in 1999. I read about the Stolen Generation, ‘half-caste’ children forcibly taken from their parents and either illegally adopted out or sent to orphanages to become Anglicized in culture. I was shocked at the extent to which the governments of the day were willing to go to do this. Such as giving the kids fake death certificates for their parents so they wouldn’t return to their homes. Such as imprisoning the parents on fake charges to get them out of the way. I had to write about it, using all those ideas plus other truths that my abuse counselor mother gave to me, to show just how life is for many who are perceived as “different” in society – and the last documented case of this kind was in 1987, so it wasn’t that long ago.

Another Silhouette Intimate Moments romance which devotes a sizeable (by romance standards) amount of attention to politics is Suzanne Brockmann's Get Lucky. Lucky, the hero, is asked by the heroine why he decided to join the SEALs (151) and he points to a photo and says "This [...] is Isidro Ramos. He's why I joined the SEALs" (152). He goes on to explain that his mother

started working full time for a refugee center. This was back when people were leaving Central America in droves. That's where she met Isidro - at the center. [...] Isidro later told me he'd been out trading for gasoline on the black market, and when he came home, his entire town had been burned and everyone - men, women and children, even infants - had been massacred. (154)

and

"[...] I used to go with him to meetings where he would tell about these horrible human rights violations he'd witnessed in his home country. The things he saw, [...] the things he could bear witness to ..." He shook his head. "He told me to value my freedom as an American above all else. Every day he reminded me that I lived in a land of freedom, every day we'd hang an American flag outside our house. He used to tell me that he could go to sleep at night and be certain that no one would break into our house and tear us from our beds. No one would drag us into the street and put bullets in our heads simply for something we believed in. Because of him, I learned to value the freedom that most Americans take for granted. [...] I joined the Navy - the SEAL teams in particular - because I wanted to give something back. I wanted to be part of making sure we remained the land of the free and the home of the brave. [...]"(157-58)

What I think is happening here (and was also happening in Betina Krahn's The Book of True Desires, which I looked at a while ago) is that the novel is contributing to the construction of, or reinforcing an existing model of, American identity. That's a deeply political project. In this particular case I found it impossible not to think about alternative views of American history in relation to Latin America which were left unspoken by the hero and unwritten about by the author. Greg Grandin has observed that

After World War II, in the name of containing Communism, the United States, mostly through the actions of local allies, executed or encouraged coups in, among other places, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina and patronized a brutal mercenary war in Nicaragua. Latin America became a laboratory for counterinsurgency, as military officials and covert operators applied insights learned in the region to Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. By the end of the Cold War, Latin American security forces trained, funded, equipped, and incited by Washington had executed a reign of bloody terror -- hundreds of thousands killed, an equal number tortured, millions driven into exile -- from which the region has yet to fully recover. (4)

As I suggested earlier, sometimes, at least for a reader like me, the politics seeps out from between the lines of a romance, and at others it moves quite directly into view, making its presence felt much more acutely.

Have any of you come across examples of romances, particularly category romances, where politics stepped out from behind the central relationship and captured your attention?

• Brockmann, Suzanne. Get Lucky. Richmond, Surrey: Silhouette, 2000.
• Duder, C. J. D. “Love and the Lions: The Image of White Settlement in Kenya in Popular Fiction, 1919-1939.” African Affairs 90.360 (1991): 427-38.
• Grandin, Greg. Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. Macmillan, 2007.
  

The pictures are of "The 'Glasses Apostle' in the altarpiece of the church of Bad Wildungen (Germany). Painted by Conrad von Soest in 1403, the 'Glasses Apostle' is considered the oldest depiction of eyeglasses north of the Alps" (from Wikimedia Commons) and Franz Eybl's "Lesendes Mädchen," (also from Wikimedia Commons). In my journey around Wikimedia Commons I also came across the cover of this comic book, and as it probably embodies many readers' ideas about the worst possible fusion of science fiction and romance, I couldn't resist including it too. Its title is Rocket to the Moon and the description reads "Could Ted Dustin, rocket explorer, and Maza, beautiful princess of Lunar, stem the powerful hordes of Green Monsters who sought to conquer the world?"

Romance in Teaching American Literature

Laura Vivanco

It's the morning, I wanted to post about some journal articles, and those seemed like good enough reasons to include this picture. However, the journal I'd really like to bring to your attention is not the Morning Journal but Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice. As explained in an introduction by guest editor Suzanne Milton,

This special issue of Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice, devoted to essays written about selected contemporary American romance fiction writers, is intended to provide instructors with bio-bibliographical information about several novelists, highlighting primary themes and motifs, with some analysis of the author’s contribution to the genre. Each entry provides a comprehensive list of the author’s fiction works that can be further explored in the classroom. This issue may also be of interest to researchers, librarians and readers who wish to learn more about a particular novelist.

Unfortunately the articles are liberally sprinkled with editing errors (Sarah Frantz's surname was misspelled, for example).

There's lots of food for thought and discussion, though. For example, Milton writes that

contemporary romance can be traced back to the 1980’s when historical romance was still popular, but a variety of sociological trends created a socio-psychological shift and romance writers responded to these changes by creating more assertive heroines who played an increasingly significant role in shaping their own destiny.

There seems to be an implication in there that historical romance is no longer popular, which seems a rather odd idea to me. In addition, although I'm aware that significant changes took place in the genre in the 1980s, I wonder why Milton didn't decide to trace the modern romance genre back rather further than that. I don't think any history of the genre would be complete without some mention of Mills & Boon (now part of Harlequin), which came into existence in 1908 and published contemporary romances long before the 1980s. One might also wish to mention Mary Stewart, who

is considered by many to be the mother of the modern romantic suspense novel. She was among the first to integrate mystery and love story, seamlessly blending the two elements in such a way that each strengthens the other. Pamela Regis writes, "Stewart's influence extends to every writer of romantic suspense, for Stewart understood and perfected this hybrid of romance and mystery and used it as a structure for books so beautifully written that they have endured to become part of the canon of the twentieth-century romance novel." Popular authors continue to list her books among their favorites and cite her as influential to their own work. And even thirty years after publication, her books continue to be reprinted again and again. (MaryStewartNovels.com)

The essays in this volume of Teaching American Literature, which are all in pdf format, are as follows:

• Gillian Mason's "Rosemary Rogers: The Positive Power of Romance and Sexual Fantasy."

• Suzanne Milton's "Danielle Steel: Bringing Family Issues to Light." Milton writes that "Danielle Steel is one of the most widely-read romance fiction writers of this century. [...] Sixty-five of her writings fall into the category of romance fiction." Although I haven't read any of Danielle Steel's novels, I got the distinct impression from this essay that, unlike romances, which focus on a central couple, Steel's novels tend to be more akin to sagas since they cover a long span of the heroine's life, or even tell the story of more than one generation of a family.

• Sarah S. G. Franz's [sic] "Suzanne Brockmann: The Military and the Romance." Sarah's a persuasive advocate for Brockmann, but at first I wondered if this claim went a little too far: "Suzanne Brockmann, New York Times best-selling and RITA-award-winning author, pioneered and popularized military romances." Heyer's An Infamous Army, for example, is a military romance and her The Spanish Bride is historical fiction/military romance. I suppose, though, that one can have many pioneers and there certainly seems to be a consensus that, in the words of AAR's Blythe Barnhill, Brockmann's Tall, Dark, and Dangerous mini-series started the Navy SEALS trend."

• Wendy Wagner's "Jennifer Crusie: Romance as Academic Question." I'd be really, really interested to know what evidence (other than the subject matter of the novel) Wagner has for this:

  One of the subplots of Trust Me On This involves Crusie's subtle mockery of academic life. [...] Trust Me On This reflects Crusie's disenchantment with academic life; at around this time, Crusie put her dissertation writing on hold in order to complete the MFA program at Ohio State. (4-5)

  Wagner goes on to add that

  In an essay she wrote for Paradoxa in 1997, Crusie argues that romance fiction is not fantasy but instead is centered on women's reality [...] This essay has a fitting placement at the end of her academic career and basically asserts her divergence from academic feminism and the academic literary canon. (5)

  Yet, as Wagner notes (7-8) Crusie edited a collection of essays and short stories (published in 2005) about Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which I'd tend to think of as forming part of "the academic literary canon." And what of Crusie's "This Is Not Your Mother's Cinderella: The Romance Novel As Feminist Fairy Tale," an essay published in Romantic Conventions, a 1999 collection of essays published by Bowling Green State University Popular Press and written by academics about the romance genre? I'd also have to conclude that when Wagner wrote this she hadn't read the blog post Crusie wrote in July 2007 in which Crusie revealed that

  Last week, out of the blue, I had the inexplicable urge to finish my PhD. It’s been hanging fire for over ten years, but suddenly the need was there. And because I am impulsive, I e-mailed good people at OSU and said, “Can I come back and finish?” and by the end of the day, I had half of my committee and a welcome back from the head of the English Department.

• Fahamisha Patricia Brown's "Beverly Jenkins: African American History and the Romance Novel." Although this is the shortest of all the essays, it goes a long way towards explaining why Jenkins is "the first African American writer since Frank Yerby (1916-1991) to establish a reputation as an author of American historical romance, Beverly Jenkins today stands alone" (3).

• Patricia Kennedy Bostian's "Amanda Scott: Bringing History to Life." Bostian states that "the successful heroine of the Regency is one whose values are firmly planted in the 20th century, while the setting is meticulously 18th century" (1). I suspect some readers of this blog might disagree with that.

• Leslie Haynesworth's "Janet Evanovich: Comedy and Romance."

I found Louis Rhead's poster for the Morning Journal at Wikimedia Commons.