By Edward Nawotka
Romance writers, are, if anything, unashamed of what they do—not the least of which is make a lot of money and have a lot of fun doing it. At the Web site Allromanceebooks.com, discussed in our lead article today, the site asks readers to rate each book’s “heat index” (explained below). Readers gobble up the books, but their authors rarely, if ever, get much critical attention, let alone acclaim.
Of course, on the other hand, many so-called literary writers write luke-warm sex scenes. That’s the very reason there’s such a thing as the “Bad Sex Award.” In fact, this year’s winner, Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, also happened to win the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious book prize.
In a recent essay in the the UK Telegraph, Oliver Marre argued that Littell’s sex scenes were no worse than many others and really, the whole tittering about sex in literature is ultimately self defeating. He pointed out that in 2005, after Giles Coren (food critic and Times journalist) won, Coren said “The reason the award exists is because of a very defeatist, embarrassing, self-flagellatory approach to literature. It’s an anti-literature award.” That’s a statement, if there ever was one, that lends support to romance as very legitimate literature.
What do you think? Is the reason romance writers don’t get more attention or critical acclaim rooted in a puritanical, slightly immature public attitude toward sex? If so, is it different elsewhere in the world?
Tell us in the comments below or via Twitter using the hashtag #ppbonus.
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David Bowman
8 months ago
Too true, our authors are proud of what they do. Power to their elbows, and keyboards!
David Bowman
Publisher
Bluewood Publishing
Noel Griese
8 months ago
One reason is that describing the sex act – the “two-backed beast” – leads to generally bad prose. On that note, Jonathan Littell has just been named this year’s recipient of the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award for a passage in his 2006 novel Les bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones). The judges noted that “a mythologically inspired passage and lines such as ‘I came suddenly, a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg’ clinched the award. – Noel Griese, Southern Review of Books
Pepper
8 months ago
I think the basic premise is flawed. And ridiculous. The “bad sex award” isn’t given out as a giggling, anti-literature award. The winners of the “bad sex award” are, in those scenes, absolutely terrible. The writers are the ones displaying a “defeatist, embarrassing, self-flagellatory approach to literature” and a “a puritanical, slightly immature public attitude toward sex”. Why? Because the winning entries I’ve seen usually are embarrassing. Not because they are writing about sex, but because they are writing about sex in often euphemistic and/or coy ways, using over the top metaphors, stupid descriptions, and ultimately, showing no real respect for sex or the human body. In the literary world, sex is something dirty, and often times something grotesque. Hell, that’s look at Coren’s “Winning entry.”
“And he came hard in her mouth and his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth and he blacked out and she took his dick out of her mouth and lifted herself from his face and whipped the pillow away and he gasped and glugged at the air, and he came again so hard that his dick wrenched out of her hand and a shot of it hit him straight in the eye and stung like nothing he’d ever had in there, and he yelled with the pain, but the yell could have been anything, and as she grabbed at his dick, which was leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath, she scratched his back deeply with the nails of both hands and he shot three more times, in thick stripes on her chest. Like Zorro.”
Really? This is literature? This is good writing? This is something he wrote and published and was proud of? He thinks people who claim this is “bad sex” are puritans? He’s delusional, for starters. Secondly, nobody wants to read this. His come hit him in the eye? He yelled with pain? She left marks on his chest like Zorro? Sex is actually ridiculous enough without writers turning it into farce.
Romance authors don’t get any respect for a slightly different reason. Yes, the sex is dismissed, but even romances with no sex would be critically dismissed (and of course they exist). They don’t get respect because they deal with “domestic” issues–issues which have been squarely in a women’s sphere for most of recorded time, but most recently emphasized by the Victorians and their “domestic angels.” Despite feminism and equality, culturally some things haven’t shifted. Domestic issues like love, family, children, and marriage aren’t interesting enough for literature. And unless the love ends in tragedy (it never does in romance!) then it’s not worth talking about. Second, it’s a genre primarily written by women and for women. It’s deemed as “low culture” and obviously only women who are nearly illiterate, who don’t know any better, or who are so silly they have nothing to do but read about love and sex all day can or should be interested in those books. (Assumptions that are supported by cliches and common knowledge, like the housewife who only reads romance to escape her dull life. Besides that, how could somebody be so uncouth as to buy their books at the check out line in the grocery store?! Talk about your lowest common denominator!)
It’s a question that long interested me, including when I was working on my MA in Literature. The attitudes are easy to trace, and judging by the random, dismissive comments I’ve heard directed towards romance for my entire academic career, still alive and strong. Hell, after the recent Harlequin Horizons debacle, I was reading John Scalzi’s blog, and many of the people commenting (all of whom write or read Science Fiction/Fantasy, so it’s not as though they have escaped the “shame” of writing genre) were dismissive of the “stupid” women who even want to write romance and claim “they have it (being completely scammed) coming.” Sex probably does have a part of that, especially since “bodice ripper” is synonymous with “romance” for most people, but despite romance being the biggest market in the publishing industry, it deals with a “silly” topic for “silly” people and will continue to be marginalized.
Jessica Freely
8 months ago
I think romance authors operate under a double whammy, as far as established cultural arbiters are concerned. We write about sex, and we write in a genre dominated by women. Fortunately, that which marginalizes us as far as what people consider to be “important,” also contributes to strong sales. I’ll take commercial viability over critical acclaim, thanks much.
Pat Brown
8 months ago
I think the disdain shown the writing of erotica is a combination of that immature puritanical attitude so entrenched in American society and the belief that something so popular can’t be very good. That, and the idea that it’s easy to do and therefore dismissed by ‘real’ writers.
Pat Brown
http://www.pabrown.ca
Where mystery and romance meet and no one comes out unscathed.
Fiona McGier
8 months ago
Actually I disagree with that last comment. Writing erotic scenes isn’t “easy to do”…even though we have all had sex, most of us even have had good sex, still, writing about it makes one feel slightly foolish. The sex act itself has been called “funny toil” for a reason. It was once said that “the positions are laughable, the reward questionable, and the expense damnable.” While actually involved in good sex, the goal of mutual pleasure makes everything seem okay. But while you are sitting at a computer typing, trying to imagine the positions, the feelings, the sense of urgency, all of it can easily become hackneyed and repetitive, unimaginative and dull. And no sex scene should ever be dull! So perhaps romance writers are not given respect because authors who write in other genres can’t write a good sex scene!
T. Moore
8 months ago
Ultimately one of the reasons I left AllRomanceEbooks.com was because the only books selling had such racy and badly written sex scenes that real romance appeared to be dead, or buried under nothing but raw sex. And my books originally had sex scenes, but I removed them because they detracted rather than contributed to the flow of the plots of my boos. So, not having a way to compete with sex badly written, I was forced to withdraw. I was not going to be lumped in with such terrible, hackneyed prose! It would also appear that romance is equated with the sex act, when in fact sex should only complement the romantic interaction, and only for the right reasons. And the best romance writers in the world have only suggested the sex involved, when these writers do not leave anything to the reader’s imagination. No thanks. I’m better off selling my books elsewhere.
Lenny
8 months ago
I also agree that sex is not easy to write. On the other hand, I don’t feel foolish. What is difficult, and therefore taxes one’s writing ability, is to make it evocative, identifiable and non-repetitive. It should flow, without non-sequiturs and continuity problems. It shouldn’t be clichéd and full of euphemisms. Oh, wait! Doesn’t that sound like regular writing?
Can I (modestly) offer a sample of my own prose in contrast to the sample given above? And if anyone has advice on how to get published, please contact me!
“My lover pulled my thong aside more fully and lowered his face to my sex. I closed my eyes, anticipating the touch of his tongue. Electricity jolted through me when his mouth wrapped around my vulva. God, he’d tried to suck me up! My hands crossed on my chest and my index fingers and thumbs toyed with my nipples, sending tiny shocks pulsing down to my centre. His tongue flicked and circled. His lips sucked and massaged. My fingers twirled and tweaked.”