fn 7 is very interesting--naming a phenomenon I think I've seen but had never identified. Anyway, more importantly, this is from THE LEOPARD, my eyes turn into anime hearts: “Restless and domineering, the Princess dropped her rosary brusquely into her jet-fringed bag, while her fine crazy eyes glanced around at her slaves of children and her tyrant of a husband, over whom her diminutive body vainly yearned for loving dominion.”
Well ... hmm. I get that it's a losing game to prove the respectability-in-general of *anything* to committedly hostile outsiders, but as a person who believes that good work can be done in pretty much any genre (however narrowly defined), I have had the following experience in trying to figure out what the good romance novels are:
--I notice that, when science fiction, comic books, horror, fantasy, and several other despised categories of novel were in their "fighting for respectability" phase, there were certain authors and books that emerged as sort of "undeniably good," and while these weren't the only good or always the best SF/F/H/comics they often constituted a decent starting point;
--When I try to figure out what this would be for the romance, by reading criticism of the romance, I basically *never* can find anyone who will stick up for any particular book qua itself; it's always Radway-style arguments that amount to "you can't criticize this type of book because if you do it just means you LOOK DOWN ON WOMEN, you JERK";
--This makes me suspicious as hell; it seems manipulative and I wanted a book recommendation, not a spurious diagnosis.
Sometimes people really are willing to be won over, and when a person defaults to your option 3), it can be a blown opportunity. I think.
to put it slightly better (maybe): I think you can argue something is bad or inept, you can argue for something's significance (hence why stans online love citing numbers), you can argue something has certain formal qualities… but I don't think you can argue that something is good
I guess I think of (3) as basically like what I do with Taylor, or Evangelion for that matter—I am not going to prove that these things are good or worth your time but you as a reader can see where my interest gets me. But I can't be like, here's the sacred geometry by which this horny cartoon is "good."
This connection definitely helped me as somebody who liked Evangelion already but did not really know about or care for Taylor Swift. I think a lot about your response to the "kids these days aren't reading" thing and about building the kind of literary critical community you'd want to be in and the inverse being probably impossible, which I think is what you and Phil are responding too with romance novel critics stuck in modes (1) and/or (2).
fn 7 is very interesting--naming a phenomenon I think I've seen but had never identified. Anyway, more importantly, this is from THE LEOPARD, my eyes turn into anime hearts: “Restless and domineering, the Princess dropped her rosary brusquely into her jet-fringed bag, while her fine crazy eyes glanced around at her slaves of children and her tyrant of a husband, over whom her diminutive body vainly yearned for loving dominion.”
Well ... hmm. I get that it's a losing game to prove the respectability-in-general of *anything* to committedly hostile outsiders, but as a person who believes that good work can be done in pretty much any genre (however narrowly defined), I have had the following experience in trying to figure out what the good romance novels are:
--I notice that, when science fiction, comic books, horror, fantasy, and several other despised categories of novel were in their "fighting for respectability" phase, there were certain authors and books that emerged as sort of "undeniably good," and while these weren't the only good or always the best SF/F/H/comics they often constituted a decent starting point;
--When I try to figure out what this would be for the romance, by reading criticism of the romance, I basically *never* can find anyone who will stick up for any particular book qua itself; it's always Radway-style arguments that amount to "you can't criticize this type of book because if you do it just means you LOOK DOWN ON WOMEN, you JERK";
--This makes me suspicious as hell; it seems manipulative and I wanted a book recommendation, not a spurious diagnosis.
Sometimes people really are willing to be won over, and when a person defaults to your option 3), it can be a blown opportunity. I think.
to put it slightly better (maybe): I think you can argue something is bad or inept, you can argue for something's significance (hence why stans online love citing numbers), you can argue something has certain formal qualities… but I don't think you can argue that something is good
I guess I think of (3) as basically like what I do with Taylor, or Evangelion for that matter—I am not going to prove that these things are good or worth your time but you as a reader can see where my interest gets me. But I can't be like, here's the sacred geometry by which this horny cartoon is "good."
This connection definitely helped me as somebody who liked Evangelion already but did not really know about or care for Taylor Swift. I think a lot about your response to the "kids these days aren't reading" thing and about building the kind of literary critical community you'd want to be in and the inverse being probably impossible, which I think is what you and Phil are responding too with romance novel critics stuck in modes (1) and/or (2).