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Laura Vivanco, For Love and Money: The Literary Art of the Harlequin Mills & Boon Romance
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This book is an indignant and compelling defence of a subgenre that is typically denounced by people who have read few or even no examples, but that is adored by its fans and inspires great loyalty. It's also both clever and honourable in its approach -- a rare and admirable combination.
The cleverness lies in Vivanco's use of Northrop Frye's literary modes (from his wonderful 1958 Anatomy of Criticism) to sidestep the whole, ridiculous muddle we're all in about what 'genre' is, and about the supposed values of a 'literature' that is routinely opposed to 'genre fiction'. Instead of having to wade through casual and often ignorant dismissals of her subject (and her introduction quotes some doozies), Vivanco applies a taxonomy of mythic, high- and low-mimetic, and ironic modes, which makes excellent sense, highlights the variety HM&B authors achieve within the firm's commercially dictated formulae, and allows for consistently interesting argument by example. Within that framework there are chapters on mythoi, metafiction, and metaphors, each demonstrating a set of subtleties, allusions, and cultural values in HM&B work over the last eighty or so years.
The honour is in the book's readability and friendliness to anyone interested. Much contemporary litcrit may have its values, but has among them an unrelenting elitism in the use of very polysyllabic and abstract jargon with which even specialists struggle and which is for the general reader usually an insurmountable barrier. Vivanco, contrariwise, makes her clever thinking seem straightforward, and writes easily and well. I wouldn't call her style belleletristic, exactly, but it's certainly far closer to the readable, generally knowledgeable, and culturally alert criticism of the mid-twentieth-century than to the ugly, intellectually clotted and narrow work that has become so common in more recent decades.
If you do read HM&Bs you'll find a lot of pleasure in this book, some welcome recommendations from the firm's enormous backlist, and nothing to put you off an 'academic' or 'intellectual' text. If you don't, but have any interest at all in romance (in any of its manifold senses), in genre/s, or in the popular culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, you'll find yourself substantially rewarded and left thoughtful. And whatever your own reading habits, if you know anyone who reads HM&B or has any of the other interests I mention, the PDF or Kindle editions can still be given for Christmas.
2011-12-17 02:25 pm (UTC)
'Penny dreadfuls' seems a bit harsh! I know what your mother meant, of course, but given how lurid and sensationally violent the real penny dreadfuls were (and how low their production standards), I'd bet the original Messrs Mills & Boon thought of what they were doing as being as much in opposition to such true vulgarity as to highbrow literary snobbishness. It's interesting that your ma thought otherwise -- in the early 1970s, yes? if I'm remembering your profile correctly.
It's a good time to be fan of 'genre romance', I think -- not just as the Age of Nora Roberts, or for some of the younger writers coming through and being marketed as mainstream (Rachel Hore, say), but in the activity in the generic borderlands. The interface with SF&F in particular has produced some wonderful work -- Lois, obviously, in all three of her worlds, but also Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Patricia Briggs, Carrie Vaughn, and a lot of lesser but still very decent writers also.
In any case, hope you enjoy Laura Vivanco's book, and do please report back.
2011-12-19 02:01 pm (UTC)
We have a lot of reading in common! I also read Mary Stewart in the 1970s, using my mother's copies, and after my older brother sprang Dragonflight on her one year, Anne McCaffrey. (RIP -- not unexpected but saddening news.) I also remember vividly finding her Dragonsong and Dragonsinger in the school library once, searching for summer reading, and devouring them both in a day, so I too will cheer for school (and other) librarians. Richard Adams I think everyone in the family read when Watership Down came out, but I can't recall if anyone besides me went on to Shardik and The Plague Dogs. Georgette Heyer wasn't a parental author, oddly, though I'm pretty sure my brother read some; much later I discovered her for myself and read all the Regencies as well as some others -- a great pleasure, that stood me in good stead doing the Reader's Companion to A Civil Campaign.
Tablets are wonderful things, and the PDF is certainly recommended for them. We've had some feedback from purchasers of the Kindle edition, praising the layout on smaller screens, which is pleasing -- but I confess that I don't really understand why anyone would choose to read any substantial text on a G3-size screen. It certainly makes consulting any of the footnotes a slog, and many of Laura Vivanco's are well worth attending to. Ah well. In any case, all feedback on the various editions is very welcome, and I do hope you enjoy the book.