Sandra’s Miscellany

Came across this today while browsing news.

In a review of In Her Shoes, Moira Macdonald of The Seattle Times writes:

One could wonder here why light novels by male authors are called fiction, while light novels by women are called chick lit, but that's the wrong question, too.

And I had to say, “Yeah. What’s up with that?”

Okay, so the reviewer doesn’t understand that “light novels by women” are not, by default, chick lit. But it made me consider something that’s been bugging me for a while, and that’s how blatantly romantic and schlocky novels by Nicholas Sparks are “novels” and blatantly romantic and schlocky novels written by women are labeled “romance,” then automatically demoted in cultural importance.

While I’m ducking stones thrown at me from Sparks fans, I’ll say that I read Message in a Bottle while visiting my parents one Christmas, and after about 50 pages I was bored stupid. People talking deeply about profound life issues for seemingly limitless pages bores the hell out of me when the language and tone are so self-regarding. This is the kind of thing that turns readers off literary fiction (the language shouts, “Look at me! Aren’t I clever?”) and is the reason I simply can’t finish otherwise good books like, most recently, Bel Canto.

And I come from literary snobdom. I know how to read it, how to talk about it, what I should be thinking about it.

So anything that smacks of self-regard just doesn’t do anything for me. I like a story to be itself, not hemmed in with the author’s ego.

Harlan Coben does the same thing. He can’t just tell a story for the story’s sake. He’s got to be cute and insert his little tidbits of authorial intrusion that both denigrate his characters and pull the reader out of the story’s drama. This is not clever storytelling, but Coben’s laughing all the way to the bank, so I guess most readers don’t mind this kind of dog-and-pony show.

Give me a straightforward story — one that makes me forget the author — anytime. And I don’t care if it’s written by a man or a woman.